Posts in Federal Circuit

Kahoot AS! filed a petition for writ of certiorari on July 24 asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) “settled expectations” doctrine for denying inter partes review (IPR) requests is authorized under the patent statute. The petition also asked the High Court whether 35 U.S.C. § 314(d) bars judicial review of that question.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision today reversing a jury verdict from the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware that had found Boston Scientific Corporation (BSC) liable for infringing a patent owned by the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System (UT) covering drug-releasing biodegradable polymer fibers. The Federal Circuit concluded that BSC was entitled to judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) on both invalidity and non-infringement.

In the space of a few months, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts delivered two decisions that, read together, change how patent applicants and their counsel should approach the deceptively simple question of who invented what. Fortress Iron, LP v. Digger Specialties, Inc., No. 2024-2313 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 2, 2026), holds that if an inventorship error cannot be corrected under 35 U.S.C. § 256, the patent is invalid — full stop, no intent required. Inline Plastics Corp. v. Lacerta Group, Inc., No. 1:18-cv-11631 (D. Mass. Nov. 13, 2025), holds that if an inventorship omission was intentional, the entire patent family is unenforceable for inequitable conduct — the Therasense penalty at full weight.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today affirming in part and reversing in part a district court ruling that had found four patents covering digital picture frame technology ineligible under 35 U.S.C. Section 101. The court remanded one patent claim to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California for further proceedings and affirmed the ineligibility finding as to the remaining three patents at issue.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Thursday granted motions to dismiss as moot two appeals from an International Trade Commission (ITC) determination in which the ITC found Cartessa Aesthetics LLC violated Section 337 via infringement of Hydrafacial LLC’s patent, but suspended enforcement of an exclusion order because the patent was about to expire. The CAFC also vacated the underlying ITC determination.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today affirming a district court’s dissolution of a preliminary injunction (PI) and denial of a temporary restraining order (TRO) in a Schedule A design patent dispute over foldable fans. Circuit Judge Hughes wrote for the majority, joined by Circuit Judge Prost, while Circuit Judge Stoll dissented from the portion of the opinion addressing the merits of the design patent analysis.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Tuesday vacated and remanded a decision for a patent owner against Apple, concluding that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) made several errors in finding the claims of the speech recognition patent at issue were not shown to be unpatentable. Zentian Ltd. owns U.S. Patent No. 10,839,789, which is titled “Speech recognition circuit and method.” Apple petitioned for inter partes review (IPR) of multiple claims of the patent, arguing in relevant part that “claim 1 was obvious over prior art reference U.S. Patent No. 5,819,222 (“Smyth”) or the combination of Smyth and U.S. Patent No. 6,832,194 (“Mozer”) and that claim 29 was obvious over Smyth, Mozer, and several other references.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Woodway USA, Inc. v. LifeCore Fitness, Inc., vacating a grant of summary judgment of noninfringement in favor of LifeCore Fitness, doing business as Assault Fitness. The court found that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California relied on an overly restrictive claim construction, vacating and remanding the decision for further proceedings.

On Friday, the Federal Circuit affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision invalidating claims of Woodway’s treadmill patent after rejecting the patentee’s central argument that the Board had improperly construed the claim term ‘running surface.’

Enanta Pharmaceuticals v. Pfizer has been widely characterized as a case that turns on the acceptance or rejection of an alleged typographical error in a provisional patent application. That characterization is inaccurate. The alleged typographical error is a distraction that obscures the fact that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit analyzed the case under the wrong legal framework. Properly understood, Enanta is not about a typo at all; rather, the dispositive question is whether the inventors possessed the invention prior to the public disclosure of the allegedly infringing compound.

In a precedential decision authored by Judge Hughes on Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) vacated-in-part and remanded a decision of the Court of Federal Claims that had awarded 4DD Holdings, LLC, and T4 Data Group, LLC $12,683,065.86 for the U.S. government’s infringement of their copyrighted software TETRA®. 4DD sued the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) for infringement of its copyrighted software, TETRA, which served as an interoperability solution for military healthcare records stored by the two agencies in separate databases (dubbed the “Defense Medical Information Exchange (DMIX) program).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued two decisions today affirming Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) final written decisions that found claims of three patents owned by Slingshot Printing LLC unpatentable as obvious. The rulings, issued in Slingshot Printing LLC v. Canon U.S.A., Inc., followed a set of inter partes review (IPR) proceedings that Canon U.S.A., Inc. and Canon Inc. brought against Slingshot’s printhead patents.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in ASSA ABLOY AB v. CPC Patent Technologies Pty Ltd., affirming Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) final written decisions that upheld the validity of several claims covering a biometric access control system. ASSA ABLOY AB and its affiliates, including HID Global Corp., ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions, Inc., and Master Lock Company LLC, argued the Board misconstrued a key claim term and ignored one of its unpatentability theories, but the CAFC found neither argument persuasive.

The full U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing Tuesday, titled “From Genes to Machines: the Patent Eligibility Debate,” during which witnesses testified about the pros and cons of reforming U.S. patent eligibility law, with human genome patentability featuring as a key sticking point. While the hearing became heated at times—mostly over the peripheral topic of drug pricing—witnesses and Committee members ultimately seemed willing to work together on language that might move the bill forward.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision Monday in Google LLC v. Parus Holdings, Inc., vacating a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) final written decision that upheld two claims of a voice browsing patent owned by Parus Holdings, Inc. The court found that the Board made multiple errors under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in rejecting Google’s obviousness challenge and remanded the case for further proceedings.