Posts in Courts

As we continue to wait for President Barack Obama to select the next Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property (a.k.a. the Director of the USPTO), I feel compelled to make yet another nomination.  As some may know, since September 2008, I have periodically nominated various people who I thought would make a good choice for the next PTO Director, including…

Last Thursday I wrote regarding the USPTO, GlaxoSmithKline and Dr. Tafas jointly requesting an extension of time within which to either request reconsideration or rehearing en banc of the Federal Circuit’s decision in the claims and continuations saga.  This morning I learned that the Federal Circuit has granted the requested extension of time, so the parties have until the end…

Today, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Aventis v. Amphastar (Docket No. 08-937). Inequitable conduct was the sole issue presented in the cert petition, which Aventis filed on January 23, 2009. According to the procedural summary in Aventis’ cert petition, the Federal Circuit held the patent on Aventis’ $2 billion-per-year drug to be unenforceable due to inequitable conduct because of…

I just received word that the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Dr. Triantafyllos Taffas and SmithKline Beecham Corporation (i.e., GlaxoSmithKline) filed a joint request for an extension of time to request either reconsideration or rehearing en banc at the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.  The motion seems to be primarily provoked by the government who…

Dr. Chris Mammen focuses his practice on patent and related intellectual property litigation and appeals. Twenty years ago, in the 1988 Burlington case, the Federal Circuit expressed its displeasure with the frequent assertion of the inequitable conduct defense in patent litigation, famously calling it a “plague.” Later that year, in the en banc portion of the Kingsdown case, the Federal…

In the Arrhythmia case the invention in question was directed to the analysis of electrocardiographic signals in order to determine certain characteristics of heart function. In essence, the invention was a monitoring device. It had been discovered that 15% to 25% of heart attack victims are at high risk for ventricular tachycardia, which can be treated by the administration of drugs. Unfortunately, the drugs used have undesirable and dangerous side effects, which led the inventor to come up with a monitoring device capable of determining which heart attack victims were at the highest risk for ventricular tachycardia.

I was reading the March 30, 2009, edition of Fortune magazine today and there is an article titled After the Panic, Innovation, written by Glenn Hutchins, a co-chief executive of the technology investment firm Silver Lake.  His brief article chronicles how we managed to get into this economic crisis and concludes that, as always, scientific advances and entrepreneurship will lead…

I knew it was bad news when I saw that Judge Rader did not write the opinion, but rather concurred in part and dissented in part.  But, as I predicted, the Federal Circuit issued its decision while I am in Chicago teaching the PLI Patent Bar Review Course and unable to devote real time to writing about the GlaxoSmithKline and…

According to Reuters, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) says that the House and Senate are close to agreeing on language for a patent reform bill that would virtually ensure its passage. According to Hatch, patent reform will happen this year, saying that he would be shocked if patent reform was not enacted in 2009. Hatch says “[th]is is the closest we’ve…

On Tuesday, March 10, 2009, at 1pm ET, the Practising Law Institute will host a 1 hour telephone briefing discussing the future of standard setting bodies in the wake of the recent decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Qualcomm v. Broadcom.  This discussion of standard setting is particularly topical at the moment given…

Not long ago the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a decision in Abbott Laboratories v. Sandoz, Inc., a decision that just screams for Congress to codify Rule 56 and settle once and for all the duty of candor that is owed to the Patent Office during the patent application process. To be perfectly clear, it…

Since the United States Supreme Court first addressed the patentability of computer software in Gottschalk v. Benson the law surrounding the patentability of software has changed considerably, leaving many to wonder whether software is patentable at all. Originally in Benson, the Supreme Court decided that software was not patentable, but then later retracted the blanket prohibition against patenting software.

The attorneys for 800 Adapt, Inc. have recently filed a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari review of 800 Adapt, Inc. v. Murex Sec. Ltd., 539 F.3d 1354 (Fed. Cir. 2008) claiming that the Federal Circuit does not provide enough deference to district courts on claim construction and they should. According to Stephen Milbrath and David Magana of Orlando based Allen…

For those who own or purchase patents and then seek out litigators more interested in using the judicial process to harass plaintiffs, this should mean significant problems lie ahead. No longer is the Eastern District of Texas going to be the warm and friendly place where patent trolls get favorable rulings and force major corporations to litigate in a hostile environment. To be sure, the patent troll problem has not been solved, and cases will continue to be brought, but they will need to be brought in places where the dispute really ought to be litigated.

Last week I was in Arlington, Virginia, teaching the PLI Patent Bar Review Course, so I was a bit out of touch with what was happening in the patent world as I tried to help a number of would-be patent attorneys and agents get through the PLI immersion course. Like clockwork, during this time out of the office the United…