Posts in Federal Circuit

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.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision on Tuesday, authored by CAFC Chief Judge Moore, vacating a district court’s grant of a preliminary injunction (PI) for Socket Solutions, LLC that had barred Import Global from manufacturing, using, selling, offering to sell, or importing into the United States its Neat Socket® product.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision Monday in MPH Technologies Oy v. Apple Inc., reversing a district court’s narrow construction of key claim terms and its finding of indefiniteness. The ruling revives MPH Technologies’ patent infringement claims against Apple, which had been stipulated away following the district court’s adverse claim construction rulings.

The U.S. Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Monday denied a petition for a writ of mandamus filed by Amazon.com Services LLC requesting that a district court proceeding be stayed pending the outcome of a separate proceeding against Google involving one of the same patents.

What value is a patent that expires before it issues? Until recently, that question seemed wholly academic. In In re Forest, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) answered it directly: A patent that issues after its expiration date has no value; it provides neither exclusionary rights nor provisional rights. In the court’s view, the applicant has no cognizable interest in the patent or the application on which it would be based.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision Friday affirming a grant of summary judgment of noninfringement entered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The appeal, brought by the Regents of the University of Michigan against Leica Microsystems, Inc., concerned the construction of claim language describing a “supercontinuum” white light pulse used in fluorescence detection technology.