Posts Tagged: "Patent Litigation"

IEEE Approves Pro-Patent Holder Policy Updates

On Friday afternoon, the IEEE Standards Association Board of Governors (IEEE SA BOG) announced they had taken action to update the Patent Policy for IEEE standards development. The updates, which will not go into effect until January 1, 2023, appear at first glance to be minimal, but will likely have an extraordinarily positive impact for patent owners.

Patent Filings Roundup: Beer Bong Companies Clash; Crypto Company Sues Coinbase; Campaigns Spiral in Otherwise Quiet Week

District court and Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) filings were both down substantially this week, with 57 and 15, respectively, and 91 district court terminations. The drop-off of patent filings in the Western District of Texas has perhaps not been as pronounced as might be expected, though obviously most of those cases are being assigned to other judges there, or continuations of defendants being added to suits already within the Waco court’s jurisdiction. The Traxcell campaign continued to spiral, with many new defendants added; ditto the Hilco capital-led Bell Semiconductor case, which added an even more diverse list of defendants to the already-long roster. Otherwise most suits this week, with the exception of a few highlighted below, are related to earlier-filed suits.

CAFC Affirms Merck’s Win at PTAB over Mylan Challenge to Diabetes Treatment Claims

In its third precedential patent opinion this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) earlier today upheld a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision finding that Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Inc. failed to show that certain claims of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp.’s patent for a Type 2 Diabetes treatment were anticipated or would have been obvious over the cited prior art. Judge Lourie authored the opinion.

Patently Strategic Podcast: Means-Plus-Function and the Risk of Losing Your Way

Inventors and practitioners alike are continually trying to push the bounds of protection on innovations. Whether it’s describing a telegraph as a means for communication or a lightbulb as a means for lighting an environment, using broad language, like “means for” language, to cover all the possible workarounds might seem more advantageous than disadvantageous, at first glance. In patent law, this broad language or “means for” phraseology is called functional language because it describes the device or system in terms of what it accomplishes rather than the actual structure. However, using functional language has lost favor over time. For example, a blog published by Patently-O in 2011 shows that the use of “means for” language has dropped precipitously from about 1990 to present day. What has turned this seemingly advantageous practice into a disadvantageous one?In this episode of Patently Strategic, the panel walks through several court cases that either: invalidated a patent for failing to define structures in the specification for the all the means-plus-function claim terms or maintained validity of the patent because the specification provided sufficient structure for all the means-plus-function claim terms.

Federal Circuit Clarifies Alice Step Two Analysis in Reversal of District Court’s Rule 12 Dismissal

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), with Chief Judge Moore writing, today reversed and remanded a district court’s dismissal of an amended complaint in a case where the district court found a patent directed to a method of distributing large video files via a peer-to-peer (P2P) network patent ineligible under Section 101. While the CAFC did not rule on whether the claims are patent eligible, it held that “there are plausible factual allegations that the claims include inventive concepts, and that is enough to preclude dismissal” on a Rule 12(b)(6) motion.

CAFC Says PTAB Got it Wrong in Mixed Ruling on Food Slicer Patent

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) yesterday issued a precedential decision, in part holding that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by failing to “fully and particularly set out the bases upon which it reached its decision” to render obvious certain claims of Provisur Technologies’ patent. The CAFC also said the Board erred in its analysis finding two of the claims not unpatentable. The opinion was authored by Judge Prost. The case relates to claims 1-14 of Provisur’s U.S. Patent No. 6,997,089 for “a method and system for ‘classifying slices or a portion cut from a food product according to an optical image of the slice,’” according to the CAFC opinion. The PTAB held that Weber, Inc. had proved unpatentable as obvious claims 1–10, 13, and 14 but not claims 11 or 12. Provisur appealed the unpatentability determinations and Weber cross-appealed the finding that claims 11 and 12 were not unpatentable.

Jump Rope Company Asks High Court to Weigh in on CAFC Approach to Collateral Estoppel for PTAB Invalidations

The inventor of a novel jump rope system (the Revolution Rope), Molly Metz, is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court through her company, Jump Rope Systems, LLC, to seek clarification of the collateral estoppel doctrine as applied by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) to bar a patent infringement suit in district court where the CAFC has affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) finding of unpatentability. Jump Rope Systems is arguing that the CAFC’s decision in  XY, LLC v. Trans Ova Genetics, L.C. (2018) conflicts with the Supreme Court decisions in B&B Hardware, Inc. v. Hargis Indus., 575 U.S. 138 (2015); Medtronic, Inc. v. Mirowski Family Ventures, LLC, 571 U.S. 191 (2014); and Grogan v. Garner, 498 U.S. 279 (1991).

Review Not Warranted: SG Tells SCOTUS to Scrap Amgen’s Case on Enablement Test for Biotech Patents

The United States Solicitor General (SG) on Wednesday accepted the U.S. Supreme Court’s invitation to file an amicus brief regarding Amgen’s petition for certiorari in its case against Sanofi. Amgen is seeking review of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC’s) decision invalidating antibody patent claims based on a lack of enablement for genus claims. The High Court invited the SG to file a brief in April and, on September 21, the SG recommended that the Court deny the petition and said Amgen’s argument that the CAFC “erred by treating enablement as a question of law and by examining the full scope of the claims in assessing whether they are fully enabled…. lack merit.”

Patent Filings Roundup: Western District Waters Tested; IP Edge Runs from Disclosure in Delaware

Twenty-three inter partes reviews (IPRs) and no post grant reviews were filed this week; plaintiffs filed an average-ish 79 new district court filings, though many were associated with older campaigns. The Daedalus Prime subsidiary asserting Intel patents has filed suits against Samsung and TSMC; Volkswagen filed a number of IPRs against Fortress-backed Neo Wireless. There were, again, no discretionary denials at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), though certainly merits-based denials continue apace; many challenges against Magnetar entity Scramoge have been instituted; and Red Hat filed a declaratory judgment action for non-infringement against litigation-funded Valtrus [Centerbridge Capital, run by Key Patent Innovations] on patents not yet asserted in district court, just as Google began challenging a different set of patents asserted against just them.

Exploring the CAFC’s Ridiculous Written Description Standard for Life Sciences Patents

The written description requirement is really the backbone of the quid pro quo between the public and the patent applicant. In exchange for information about an invention, society is willing to grant the applicant a patent, which conveys exclusive rights for a limited period of time to what is claimed, not described. But the description provided in the specification must demonstration that the applicant really has an invention in the first place and what the boundaries of that invention are—this is the written description requirement in lay terms.

Novartis to Appeal CAFC’s ‘Unprecedented’ U-Turn in Ruling on Multiple Sclerosis Drug Claims to SCOTUS

Novartis Pharmaceuticals announced today that it will appeal the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC’s) June decision invalidating its patent for a dosing regimen for its multiple sclerosis drug Gilenya to the U.S. Supreme Court, after the CAFC denied its request to rehear the case. The CAFC in June vacated a different three-judge panel’s January opinion upholding Novartis’ U.S. Patent No. 9,187,405. In the original ruling, Chief Judge Moore had dissented from the majority; in the rehearing, Moore authored the opinion vacating the January decision, with Judge Linn dissenting.

District Court Grants Dismissal of Due Process Case Against Former USPTO Officials

A Tennessee district court judge on Monday granted a number of former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) officials’ motion to dismiss a case brought by Martin David Hoyle and B.E. Technology alleging violation of the plaintiffs’ constitutional right to due process under the Fifth Amendment. Hoyle filed the suit in the Western District of Tennessee’s Western Division in August 2021 against former USPTO Director Michelle Lee and a number of other former USPTO officials for allegedly depriving the plaintiffs “of their valuable property rights in quasi-judicial administrative proceedings before the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (‘PTAB’).” The complaint further claimed that PTAB proceedings have been “tainted by various improprieties and underhanded tactics, designed to stack the deck against [plaintiffs] and in favor of their far more powerful opponents.”

Federal Circuit: PTAB Denial of Motion to Terminate in Arthrex Remand Where SCOTUS Vacated CAFC is Proper

Following a remand on Appointments Clause issues under United States v. Arthrex, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ruling finding all challenged claims of Polaris Innovations Limited’s patents unpatentable and denying Polaris’ motions to terminate. The decision is precedential and authored by Judge Stoll. Polaris’ U.S. Patent Nos. 6,532,505 and 7,405,993 are directed to computer memory. In May 2016, Polaris filed suit against NVIDIA Corporation for infringement of certain claims of the two patents. NVIDIA then filed inter partes review (IPR) petitions challenging some claims as invalid. A final written decision on the petition involving the ‘993 patent issued on December 19, 2018, finding all challenged claims unpatentable. A final written decision on the petition involving the ‘505 patent issued on December 4, 2018, likewise finding all challenged claims unpatentable.

CAFC Affirms District Court Analysis of Standard for Granting Patent Term Adjustment

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday issued a precedential decision affirming a Virginia district court’s grant of summary judgment for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) with respect to SawStop Holding LLC’s challenge of the denial of patent term adjustment (PTA) for two of its patents. The CAFC agreed with the district court that PTA was not warranted because the claim at hand did not issue under a decision that reversed an adverse determination of patentability. Instead, “‘the claim remain[ed] under rejection after the Board decision’ and ‘the patent only issue[d] after further prosecution’ and amendment.”

Worldwide Litigation of SEPs: Piecemeal Remedies for SEP Infringement Across the World

Technological standards promulgated by standards-setting organizations (SSOs) have greatly advanced the state of consumer technologies in areas like wireless communications. However, when dealing with infringing standards implementers, the remedies that one system of national courts provides can vary widely from another system. Navigating this complex system of global litigation and competing remedies against infringers was the subject of “Worldwide Litigation of SEPs: What the FRAND is Going On?,” a panel taking place on the third and final day of IPWatchdog LIVE 2022.