Posts Tagged: "Judge Ray Chen"

Federal Circuit Affirms District Court’s Finding of Validity of Claims Directed to Aveed®

When relying on scientific guidelines to support an obviousness rationale, practitioners should offer evidence for why contradictory guidelines should be discounted. A claimed constituent is not “necessarily present” if the prior art reference lists several alternative constituents and a skilled artisan could not reasonably deduce that the authors of the prior art reference used the claimed constituent.

Entire Market Value Rule Inappropriate When Patented Feature Not Sole Driver of Customer Demand

Power Integrations, Inc. owns U.S. Patent Nos. 6,212,079 (“the ‘079 patent”) and 6,538,908 (“the ‘908 patent”). Power Integrations sued Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation and Fairchild (Taiwan) Corporation (collectively “Fairchild”) for infringement. A jury found Fairchild literally infringed the ‘079 patent and infringed the ‘908 patent under the doctrine of equivalents. The jury subsequently awarded damages of $140 million, applying the entire market value rule in calculating damages. Fairchild appealed. The Federal Circuit affirmed the judgments of infringement, but concluded that the entire market value rule was inappropriately used in this case to calculate damages.

CAFC Vacates Board for Moving Target Rejections, Failure to Consider Reply Brief

The moving target rejections were largely due to the fact that the examiner’s first clear explanation that she was relying on structural identity, and not inherency, appeared in the examiner’s answer. Judge Reyna explained: “[T]he equivocal nature of the examiner’s and Board’s remarks throughout the examination of the ‘989 application, including whether inherency was the basis for the rejection, clouded the issues before Durance.”

Federal Circuit Vacates, Remands After PTAB Fails to Consider Arguments in Reply Brief

On Friday, June 1st, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a decision in In re: Durance striking down a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that affirmed a patent examiner’s obviousness rejection of a microwave vacuum-drying apparatus and associated method. The Federal Circuit panel consisting of Judges Alan Lourie, Jimmie Reyna and Raymond Chen…

WesternGeco’s Time-Bar Argument Fails to Save its Invalidated Patents

On appeal, WesternGeco argued 1) the Board erred as to its unpatentability determinations; and 2) the IPR proceedings were time-barred under 35 U.S.C. § 315(b) because ION acted in privity with PGS, and over a year passed between its infringement complaint against ION and the PGS IPR petition. Based on the Federal Circuit’s en banc decision known as Wi-Fi One, the time-bar issue was appealable, but WesternGeco’s argument was unpersuasive because the relationship between ION and PGS was not close enough to trigger the time bar.