Supreme Court grants certiorari in Bilski In an order today, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal in Bilski v. Doll regarding the patentability of method claims. Back in October, the Federal Circuit decided In re Bilski, adopting the "machine-or-transformation" test as the exclusive test to determine whether a method is drawn to patentable subject matter. Bilski filed a petition […] Continue Reading →
Insufficient enforcement activity in district by patentee leads to dismissal of DJ action In a decision Monday, the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court's dismissal of a declaratory judgment action against a British patentee for lack of personal jurisdiction. The facts of the case are similar to the Avocent case decided a few months ago. Here, the patentee's only contacts with the district in which the action was […] Continue Reading →
Patentee’s commercial sales not relevant for personal jurisdiction in DJ action In a decision addressing personal jurisdiction in declaratory judgment actions, the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court's dismissal of an action against a foreign patent owner. The plaintiff sought a declaration that two patents owned by a Taiwanese company were invalid and not infringed in the plaintiff's home forum, the Northern District of Alabama. The […] Continue Reading →
When compounds in a class have divergent properties, positional isomer not obvious In a decision Wednesday, the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court's determination that the asserted claims in a pharmaceutical patent were not proven obvious. As is common in pharmaceutical cases, the defendant filed an ANDA asserting the patent covering the compound and its use was invalid, and in the ensuing infringement suit admitted its proposed […] Continue Reading →
Marketing methods not patentable subject matter: no machine or transformation In a recent decision, the Federal Circuit applied the machine-or-transformation test from Bilski to affirm the rejection of all pending claims in a patent application by the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences. The claims at issue related to methods of marketing products and "paradigms" for marketing software. The Board held all claims were not […] Continue Reading →
Pirate Bay operators guilty of criminal infringement in Sweden; no webcast of US file sharing case In the past day, there has been two interesting bits of news in the world of cases alleging copyright infringement by way of peer-to-peer file sharing. The first is that the individuals who operate and maintain the servers that host The Pirate Bay, the world's largest bittorrent tracker, were held to have committed criminal copyright […] Continue Reading →
Use of court-appointed expert not abuse of discretion, even when jury told of neutrality In a recent decision, the Federal Circuit held it was not an abuse of discretion for a district court to retain an independent expert pursuant to Rule 706 to assist the jury in understanding the technology relating to a complicated electrical patent. The district court was frustrated with the technology, and observed "the notion that […] Continue Reading →
Estoppel applies to all added limitations in claims, including when present in unamended claims In a decision Friday, the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court's grant of summary of no literal infringement and that prosecution history estoppel barred application of the doctrine of equivalents. During prosecution of the patent, a total of three limitations from two different dependent claims were added to the asserted claim in separate amendments, although […] Continue Reading →
Disclosure of compounds without link to claimed method fails to meet written description requirement In a recent decision, the Federal Circuit reversed a district court's denial of judgment as a matter of law after a jury determined the asserted claims of an invention were not invalid under the written description requirement. The court, however, affirmed the district court's determination of no inequitable conduct.The Federal Circuit held the jury lacked […] Continue Reading →
Second Circuit limits 1-800 Contacts; keyword advertising can be use in commerce In a recent decision, the Second Circuit reversed a district court's grant of a motion to dismiss in a trademark infringement case. The district court, relying on the Second Circuit's 2005 decision in 1-800 Contacts, Inc. v. WhenU.com, Inc., held Google's use of its Adwords and Keyword Suggestion Tool to cause advertising to appear when […] Continue Reading →