Posts in Federal Circuit

On April 11, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision in Niazi Licensing Corp. v. St. Jude Medical S.C., Inc. in which the court affirmed most of a ruling from the District of Minnesota, including sanctions against Niazi for improper use of expert testimony, as well as a finding of no induced infringement by St. Jude on one of Niazi’s asserted patent claims. However, the Federal Circuit’s decision reversed the Minnesota district court’s ruling invalidating most patent claims asserted by Niazi for indefiniteness under Section 112. The CAFC found that Niazi’s asserted claims were not invalid simply for including descriptive words or terms of degree, as long as the intrinsic record and extrinsic evidence enable a skilled artisan to identify the boundaries of a claim’s scope.

On April 8, in a mixed and split precedential decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed, reversed, vacated, and remanded a decision by the U.S. District Court for the district of Delaware in a patent infringement suit brought by Meso Scale Diagnostics (Meso) against Roche Diagnostic Corporation and BioVeris Corporation (collectively Roche). Judge Pauline Newman dissented. Meso brought suit claiming that Roche violated exclusive license rights belonging to Meso by both direct and induced infringement of their patents. The CAFC affirmed the district court’s findings on the direct infringement claim, reversed the induced infringement finding, vacated the awarded damages, and remanded for a new trial on damages.

In late March, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard oral arguments in Arthrex, Inc. v. Smith & Nephew, Inc. (Arthrex II) to determine whether the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) had effectively addressed the constitutional violation under the Appointments Clause that was identified in previous rulings from the Federal Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court (Arthrex I). While the impact of the Federal Circuit’s ruling will likely be cabined by the recent Senate confirmation of Kathi Vidal to serve as USPTO Director, the decision could call into question the validity of at least the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) operations during the tenure of Drew Hirshfeld as performing the duties and functions of the USPTO Director up to Vidal’s confirmation.

On April 4, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision in Littelfuse, Inc. v. Mersen USA EP Corp. clarifying how U.S. district courts handling claim construction are to construe a patent’s independent claims in light of limitations included in dependent claims. While the Federal Circuit found that the District of Massachusetts was correct to give meaning to the term “fastening stem” by looking to uses of “fastening” and “stem” within the patent, the appellate court vacated and remanded a stipulated judgment of non-infringement, as the district court’s construction of certain independent claim terms would render superfluous other claim terms from dependent claims.

On March 20, Zaxcom, Inc., the owner of U.S. Patent No. 9,336,307 for Engineering Emmy® and technical OSCAR award-winning wireless microphone technology, petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) for rehearing en banc after the court found its original patent claims unpatentable as obvious. Zaxcom argued that the CAFC’s precedent in Fox Factory, Inc. v. SRAM LLC, 944 F.3d 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2019), “confused the law” regarding a rebuttable presumption of nexus. Now, former CAFC Chief Judge, Paul Michel, has filed an amicus brief supporting Zaxcom and asking the full CAFC to resolve “unintentional confusion and conflict” in the court’s obviousness jurisprudence.

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) reversed and remanded a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas that Dyfan, LLC’s claims were invalid as indefinite. The CAFC concluded that the disputed claim limitations were not drafted in means-plus-function format, and therefore 35 U.S.C. § 112 ¶ 6 did not apply. Patent owner Dyfan sued Target Corp. for infringement of various claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 9,973,899 and 10,194,292. Following a claim construction hearing, the district court found that the disputed (1) “code”/“application” limitations and (2) “system” limitations of the patents-in-suit were invalid as indefinite. Specifically, the district court found that: (1) these claim limitations of the patents-in-suit are in means-plus-function format under Section 112 ¶ 6 and (2) the specification does not disclose sufficient structure corresponding to the recited functions. Dyfan subsequently appealed.

Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) further explained the “on-sale” bar in Junker v. Medical Components, Inc., Case No. 2021-1649 (Feb. 10, 2022). As previously reported here, the case hinged on whether a letter between Larry Junker’s business partner and Boston Scientific Corporation (BSC) was a “commercial offer for sale” before the one-year grace period took effect. The CAFC held that all necessary terms for a commercial offer were present in the letter, and therefore, the letter qualified as a commercial offer for sale invalidating Junker’s patent.

On March 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) Precedential Opinion Panel’s (POP’s) decision allowing patent owner DynaEnergetics Europe GmH to amend its claims, and also affirmed the PTAB’s decision that the original claims of the patent were unpatentable. Hunting Titan, Inc. petitioned for inter partes review of claims 1–15 of the U.S. Patent No. 9,581,422, asserting grounds of unpatentability based on anticipation and obviousness, including allegations that the claims were anticipated by U.S. Patent No. 9,689,223 (Schacherer). The Board instituted trial on all grounds and found all of the original claims unpatentable.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today denied VoIP-Pal.com, Inc.’s petition for a writ of mandamus asking it to direct a California district court to vacate its decision in favor of Twitter, Inc. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued an order on November 2, 2021, refusing to grant VoIP-Pal’s motion to dismiss Twitter’s request for a declaratory judgment that its products do not infringe VoIP-Pal’s U.S. Patent No. 9,935,872. VoIP-Pal’s patents relate generally to a system for routing communications over Internet Protocol networks, and the company has been engaged in litigation with Twitter, Apple, Amazon and others for several years now.

Earlier this month, Ameranth Inc. filed a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court requesting review of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC’s) decision affirming a district court ruling that Ameranth’s patent was ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Ameranth claims that “federal courts have declared thousands of new and useful inventions abstract and patent ineligible” based on SCOTUS’s decision in Alice Corp Pty. v. CLS Bank Int’l (U.S. Supreme Court, 2014). The culmination of the post-Alice upheaval is the CAFC’s paralytic gridlock of denying rehearing en banc in American Axle & Mfg. v. Neapco Holding LLC (CAFC, 2020) according to the petition. Ameranth pled that the court should provide guidance on the standard for patent eligibility, as federal circuits continue to apply the law in a non-uniform and unarticulated manner.

In February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) agreed with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB’s) decision that the original claims of Zaxcom’s U.S. Patent No. 9,336,307 for Engineering Emmy® and technical OSCAR award-winning wireless microphone technology were unpatentable as obvious, but upheld the substitute claims Zaxcom had proposed. Now, Zaxcom has petitioned the court for rehearing en banc, arguing that the CAFC’s precedent in Fox Factory, Inc. v. SRAM LLC, 944 F.3d 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2019), “confused the law” regarding a rebuttable presumption of nexus.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit today denied rehearing and rehearing en banc to Biogen International, which had petitioned the court following a November decision  affirming a district court ruling that Biogen’s patent for a method of treating multiple sclerosis (MS) was invalid for lack of written description. Three judges split from the majority, with Judges Lourie, Moore and Newman dissenting on the denial of en banc rehearing. Judge O’Malley had dissented from the November panel decision, but she retired on March 11, 2022, and only participated in the decision on panel rehearing.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruled on Monday that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) correctly held certain claims of Almirall, LLC’s U.S. Patent 9,517,219 for an acne treatment invalid as obvious. Almirall appealed the PTAB’s final decision in IPR2018-00608, in which the Board had found that the ‘219 patent, which covers methods of treating acne or rosacea, would have been obvious over the prior art at the time of invention.

Recently, in In Re: Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) further defined the level of control a defendant must exercise over an in-district agent to establish patent venue – i.e., where a case can be filed. The Federal Circuit held that the requisite control a principal must establish over its alleged agent in order to establish venue is “interim control”: day-to-day control over the manner of carrying out the specific actions for which the alleged agency relationship exists. Accordingly, in reversing the lower court, the Federal Circuit held that the dealerships in question were not agents of Hyundai or Volkswagen for the purposes of selling cars to consumers and providing warranty services.