Posts in Patents

The Federal Circuit recently affirmed in part and reversed in part a district court decision holding that Actavis Laboratories FL, Inc.’s (“Actavis’s”) generic Abbreviated New Drug Application (“ANDA”) product infringed claims of patents owned by Nalpropion Pharmaceuticals (“Nalpropion”) and that the asserted claims were not invalid. The Court found that the district court did not err in finding that Nalpropion’s U.S. Patent No. 8,916,195 (“the ’195 patent”) was not invalid for lack of written description, but that the district court did err in finding that the asserted claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 7,375,111 (“the ’111 patent”) and 7,462,626 (“the ’626 patent”) were not obvious in view of the prior art.

It’s been five years since the Supreme Court remade the law of patent eligibility in Alice Corp Pty Ltd v. CLS Bank Int’l. As we all know, in Alice the Supreme Court dictated that patent-eligible subject matter is determined based on a two-step test. The application of this test under Queen Alice’s reign has drastically altered the patent landscape. Over 1,000 patents have been invalidated by the federal courts and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), while over 60,000 patent applications have been abandoned before the USPTO following rejections for patent ineligible subject matter. Patents and portfolios in many fields – particularly software and biotechnology – have declined in value or simply become unsaleable at any price. Defenders of Queen Alice and her critics go back and forth endlessly, driven by differing permutations of ideology, technology, judicial philosophy and business goals. I have contributed my share to those discussions, no doubt. But today, let’s get down to data and see what has really happened under Queen Alice’s rule.

In the most recent exploration of Section 101 by the Federal Circuit, Chief Judge Sharon Prost authored a non-precedential opinion holding the claims of a patent for a method of administering inhaled nitric oxide (iNO) ineligible for patent protection under the Alice/Mayo framework. The ruling paves the way for industrial gas company Praxair Distribution to move forward with its abbreviated new drug application (ANDA) for a nitric oxide delivery system. Judge Pauline Newman dissented in part, stating that the “method that is described and claimed does not exist in nature” and “was designed by and is administered by humans,” so should be patent eligible.

SPIP Litigation Group, LLC v. Apple, Inc. and Cisco Systems, Inc., No. 19-253., concerns four patents that have been the subject of decisions by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and the Federal Circuit. More than 25 lawyers have participated in the litigation. The briefs and evidence in the trial court covered more than 2,500 pages. My client, on appeal from an adverse summary judgment, did not contend that the factual record failed to support that result. My client raised only two legal issues when it appealed to the Federal Circuit from the district court’s decision that the patents were not infringed. The appeal briefs covered 202 pages. Three Federal Circuit judges heard oral argument and issued their decision 12 days later. It read: “AFFIRMED. See Fed. Cir. R. 36.” Did the judges understand the technology any better than I do? No one can tell. Did my client deserve some explanation, even if exceedingly concise, from the judges? The petition I have now filed with the Supreme Court claims that the Federal Circuit judges deprived my client of a constitutional right by declaring, “You lose, but we won’t tell you why.”

As the summer winds down, it is time again to focus on how to fix the U.S. patent system. In June, the Senate Judiciary’s IP Subcommittee held unprecedented hearings on patent eligibility. They are now back in closed door sessions with selected stakeholders to further consider language to amend Section 101, having received extensive feedback. My testimony in part addressed the unconstitutionality of the U.S. Supreme Court’s cases on patent eligibility, which have created judicial exceptions that arrogantly ignore the plain wording of Congress’ statute (“invention or discovery” in the disjunctive in Sections 100(a), (f) and (g) and Section 101) and its legislative history, and despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the sole power to create patent law. The doctrine of judicially-created non-statutory obviousness-type double patenting is the flip side of the coin of the patent eligibility issues.  A rejection for “non-statutory obviousness-type” double patenting is based on a “judicially-created doctrine” grounded in public policy and which is primarily intended to prevent prolongation of the patent term by prohibiting claims in a second patent not patentably distinct from claims in a first patent. This is problematic for at least the following reasons.

Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Professor Joshua Wright, and attorney Lindsey Edwards of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, have condemned the decision in FTC v. Qualcomm Inc. (N.D. Cal. May 21, 2019) in the George Mason University Law & Economics Research Paper Series. In their paper, “Section 2 Mangled: FTC v. Qualcomm on the Duty to Deal, Price Squeezes, and Exclusive Dealing,” the authors characterize the decision as being a part of “the misguided trend of using antitrust law to intervene in contract disputes between sophisticated parties negotiating over intellectual property rights.”

On August 23, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB’s) Precedential Opinion Panel (POP) issued a decision granting patent owner 360Heros’ request for rehearing of an earlier PTAB decision to institute an inter partes review (IPR) requested by GoPro and also denied institution of that IPR under the one-year time-bar codified in 35 U.S.C. § 315(b). The PTAB agreed with 360Heros that the one-year time-bar began tolling from the filing date of a counterclaim alleging patent infringement that was dismissed by the district court for lack of standing. The POP panel included U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Andrei Iancu, Commissioner for Patents Drew Hirshfeld and PTAB Chief Administrative Patent Judge Scott Boalick. The 360Heros decision may offer inventors an escape route from the PTAB death squad. For the first time since the America Invents Act became law, the shoe could be on the other foot.

On August 15, Trading Technologies International, Inc. (TT) petitioned the Federal Circuit again for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc of its recent decision that found TT’s Ladder Tool invention to be subject to the USPTO’s Covered Business Method (CBM) review process and abstract under Section 101. TT argues that the PTAB did not follow the precedent of the Supreme Court or Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) when reviewing its patent claims. The latest brief relates to U.S. Patent No. 7,725,382 (the ‘382 patent), while TT’s request for rehearing filed July 31 related to U.S. Patent No. 7,693,768.

During the week of August 12 – 16, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), issued 26 institution-phase decisions in inter partes review (IPR) proceedings. Nine IPR petitions were denied institution while 17 were instituted; nine of the instituted IPRs were joined to other proceedings that are already ongoing at the agency. Pfizer saw a lot of success last week in having seven IPRs instituted against Sanofi-Aventis, challenging four injectable insulin treatment patents that are at the center of district court infringement litigation between the two parties. The PTAB also instituted IPRs on a series of three LifeNet patents covering tissue graft technologies, which have been asserted against RTI Surgical, including one patent which helped LifeNet earn a multimillion-dollar award for patent infringement in district court.

The Federal Circuit recently reversed the District of Minnesota’s denial of summary judgment in Solutran, Inc. v. Elavon, Inc., Nos. 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 22516 (Fed. Cir. July 30, 2019) (Before Chen, Hughes, and Stoll, Circuit Judges) (Opinion for the Court, Chen, Circuit Judge), holding that the claims at issue, which related to processing paper checks, were invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The physicality of the limitations of the claims did not save the claims. See Physicality of Processing Paper Checks Does Not Save Solutran’s Claims. “[W]e have previously explained that merely reciting an abstract idea by itself in a claim—even if the idea is novel and non-obvious—is not enough to save it from ineligibility,” Judge Raymond Chen of the Federal Circuit explained for the majority. The Federal Circuit can state that proposition until every single judge is blue in the face and there will be one exhausting, inescapable truth—it is wrong! Indeed, this logical impossibility is written into so many Federal Circuit decisions one must wonder how it is possible any of the judges who believe this nonsense were ever able to achieve an acceptable score on the LSAT in order to gain admission to law school in the first place.

With exponential growth in patent filings each year and expanding company portfolios, Patent Quality Assessment (PQA) has become a significant and crucial task. USPTO maintenance fees, which are required to be paid periodically to keep a patent alive for 20 years, further add to the importance of maintaining only quality patents. Patent professionals worldwide have developed a myriad of metrics to assess the quality of patent assets. Benchmarking tools include terms like “Qscore” and “Asset indexes” to quantify the qualitative attributes of a patent.

Earlier today, the Precedential Opinion Panel (POP) of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) overruled the institution decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in GoPro, Inc. v. 360Heros, Inc., IPR2018-01754, which related to U.S. Patent No. 9,152,019. Substantively, with respect to the determination that any federal pleading filed will trigger the running of the time-bar clock of Section 315(b), the POP explained that GoPro’s arguments would require terms not present in the statute to be read into the statute (i.e., “complaint” to be read as “proper complaint”). Further, the POP explained that GoPro failed to demonstrate that a complaint filed without proper Article III standing is considered a legal nullity for the purpose of Section 315(b)’s time bar.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the USPTO’s Precedential Opinion Panel delivers a key ruling for inventors; the Second Circuit rules that a series of six film scores weren’t works for hire under U.S. or Italian law; Gilead files for inter partes review of patents owned by the U.S. government covering PrEP treatments; Qualcomm and LG Electronics enter into a five-year patent licensing agreement for wireless technologies; Taiwan begins implementing a patent linkage system for drug approvals; HP appoints a new CEO; Eminem music publishing firm files a copyright infringement suit against Spotify; and the DOJ and the Copyright Office support Led Zeppelin in the “Stairway to Heaven” copyright case.

Yesterday, we ran a series of excerpts from responses to Senator Thom Tillis’ (R-NC) questions for the record to panelists following the June hearings on U.S. patent eligibility law, held by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property. Along with Tillis and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) also posed several questions to the participants in the 101 hearings. Hirono’s questions overall demonstrate a good faith desire to get to the heart of the problems in search of real solutions.

A Federal Circuit panel comprising Judges Lourie, O’Malley and Chen issued a precedential opinion yesterday, August 21, in part reversing a district court’s finding that certain claims of Chamberlain Group, Inc.’s (CGI’s) patent for a “moveable barrier operator” (for example, a garage door opener) were not abstract under Section 101. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied Techtronic Industries’ (TTI’s) motion for judgment as a matter of law that the asserted claims were patent-ineligible and granted CGI’s motions for enhanced damages and attorney fees. The district court disagreed with TTI’s assertion that the claims at issue were directed to the abstract idea of wireless transmission of content, instead finding that “[h]ere, the ’275 patent claims are not directed to the transmission of data, but to garage door openers that wirelessly transmit status information.”