Posts in Federal Circuit

Yesterday, a petition for writ of certiorari was filed at the U.S. Supreme Court taking aim at the federal judiciary’s conflation of subject matter eligibility with other areas of the patent statute, a growing concern in U.S. patent law since the Court decided Alice v. CLS Bank International (2014). Arguing that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit used a single observation to answer both steps of the Alice/Mayo inquiry, the petitioner urges the Court to correct the Federal Circuit’s replacement of its flexible two-step Section 101 framework with rigid proxies that avoid the evidentiary safeguards of other patentability statutes.

About 20 years ago, Hotels.com had a series of commercials starring a character called “Captain Obvious.” This character would make observations that were funny because they were apparent to all. And that is what non-patent lawyers think of when it comes to something that is obvious. That is also the approach taken in a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) cases, i.e. the “Captain Obvious” approach. Specifically, the recent Nielsen (The Nielsen Co. (US), LLC, v. TVision Insights, Inc., —

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision today, authored by Chief Judge Moore, first affirming a district court’s orders dismissing a patent infringement complaint without granting leave to amend and awarding attorney’s fees, and secondly, dismissing an appeal of attorney sanctions for lack of jurisdiction. VDDP, LLC sued Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, alleging infringement of its U.S. Patent No. 9,426,452, relating to “electrically controlled spectacles.”… The district court dismissed the case with prejudice under Rule 12(b)(6), denied the motion for leave to amend as futile, denied VDDP’s motion to amend the judgment under Rule 59(e), awarded Volkswagen $207,543.60 in attorney’s fees, and sanctioned VDDP’s counsel, William Peterson Ramey III, under 28 U.S.C. § 1927, holding him and VDDP jointly and severally liable for the attorney’s fees.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in 10x Genomics, Inc. v. Parse Biosciences, Inc., affirming three Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) final written decisions that found all challenged claims of three 10x Genomics patents unpatentable as obvious. Circuit Judge Cunningham wrote for the court, joined by Circuit Judges Taranto and Bryson, and rejected each of the four challenges that 10x Genomics raised on appeal.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Robert Bosch LLC, Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC v. Westport Fuel Systems Canada Inc., affirming two Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) final written decisions that found Robert Bosch and Mercedes-Benz USA failed to prove challenged claims of two fuel injector patents would have been obvious. The court rejected arguments that the PTAB lacked substantial evidence to find that a prior art reference disclosed a flexible membrane capable of flexing during actuation, thereby failing to meet a specific hydraulic link limitation.

A split U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today denied a request for rehearing or rehearing en banc of a decision issued in February of this year relating to the proper test for determining design patent infringement. In the February precedential decision, the court affirmed a district court’s grant of summary judgment of non-infringement to Armaid Company, Inc. that its massage product did not infringe Range of Motion Products LLC’s (RoM’s) design patent claims. The opinion was authored by Judge Cunningham and Chief Judge Moore delivered a dissent in which she claimed her court has caused “the legal frame of reference” in design patent law cases to become “askew.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in VL Collective IP, LLC v. Netflix, Inc., affirming a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) final written decision that found all challenged claims of a content delivery patent owned by VL Collective IP, LLC (VideoLabs) unpatentable. The court rejected VideoLabs’ argument that the Board misconstrued a key claim term, and found that neither the claim language nor the patent specification supported the narrower reading VideoLabs proposed.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Friday, August 7, affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision invalidating certain claims of WAG Acquisition, LLC’s patent for a streaming media technology patent as anticipated. Judge Stark authored the opinion of the court. 

On August 4, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) chose to issue a precedential opinion formally holding that there is no “presumption of irreparable harm” in preliminary injunction proceedings in patent cases. The court acknowledged that this conclusion should have been apparent from the 2006 Supreme Court decision in eBay  Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388, 393-94 (2006).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision Thursday in Ravin Crossbows, LLC v. Squires, affirming a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) final written decision that found claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 9,354,015 unpatentable. The dispute centered on how the Board construed the claim term “mounted to” in an inter partes review (IPR) brought by Hunter’s Manufacturing Company, doing business as TenPoint Crossbow Technologies.

An Appeals Review Panel (ARP) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s ) Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) today issued a decision on sua sponte rehearing reversing a PTAB decision that had itself reversed an examiner’s rejection of claims for obviousness-type double patenting (OTDP). The decision has been designated as precedential and was authored by USPTO Director John A. Squires, PTAB Chief Judge Kalyan Deshpande, and PTAB Acting Deputy Chief Judge Michelle Ankenbrand.

Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet, has introduced a bill to designate courtroom 201 at the Howard T. Markey National Courts Building located at 717 Madison Place NW, Washington, DC, as the “Pauline Newman Courtroom”. Room 201 is the main courtroom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday issued an opinion authored by Chief District Judge Cathy Bissoon of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, sitting by designation, affirming a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision that Lululemon had shown the challenged claims of Nike, Inc.’s patent to be unpatentable.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision Tuesday affirming a judgment of non-infringement entered by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in a dispute concerning generic versions of the topical pain patch ZTlido. The panel of Judges Reyna, Mayer, and Hughes, ruling per curiam, upheld the district court’s construction of the term “dissolving agent” and its determination that Aveva Drug Delivery Systems’ proposed generic product did not infringe under the doctrine of equivalents.