Senate Consideration on Patent Transparency and Improvements Act Stalls Out With the House of Representatives passing H.R.3009 Innovation Act in December 2013, the question is now whether the Senate will pass their version of an Innovation Act in the coming months. The Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S.1720) is similar to the House text, with eight of the eleven major Senate provisions included in the […] Continue Reading →
Federal Circuit Finds Clones Unpatentable The Federal Circuit issued its opinion in In re Roslin Institute, a case involving cloned animals. The Roslin Institute (Roslin) owns a patent for methods of cloning animals, based on the work that created Dolly the Sheep. The inventors of that patent also assigned to Roslin an application claiming protection for the clones themselves. During […] Continue Reading →
“Insolubly Ambiguous” Standard not Applicable at the USPTO InIn re Packard the Federal Circuit held that the USPTO need not follow the insolubly ambiguous standard in order to satisfy a prima facie rejection for indefiniteness. Rather, the Federal Circuit held that when the USPTO has initially issued a well-grounded rejection that identifies ways in which language in a claim is ambiguous, vague, incoherent, […] Continue Reading →
Jury Returns Verdict for Apple in Patent Infringement Suit On Friday, May 2, 2014 a jury found Samsung Electronics Co. ("Samsung") liable for infringing two patents owned by Apple, Inc. ("Apple"). The two patents are U.S. Patent No.5,946,647, which is directed to systems and methods that analyze text for things that can be hyperlinked, e.g., email addresses, websites, and phone numbers, and then provides […] Continue Reading →
MVS Filewrapper – Blog:Supreme Court Revises Standards for Sanctions in Exceptional Patent Cases Two U.S. Supreme Court opinions issued today—Octane Fitness, LLC v. Icon Health & Fitness, Inc. and Highmark Inc. v. Allcare Health Management System, Inc.—have changed the framework for which exceptional cases are analyzed under § 285 of the Patent Act. For years, the controlling case with regard to § 285 of the Patent Act was […] Continue Reading →
Competing Without Practicing – Preliminary Injunctions for Patent Infringement InTrebo Manufacturing, Inc., v. Firefly Equipment, LLC, the Federal Circuit held that a plaintiff seeking a preliminary injunction for patent infringement does not need to practice the patent at issue in order to receive an injunction, so long as it sells a competing product. Trebro brought suit alleging that FireFly's sod harvester product infringed its […] Continue Reading →
StoneEagle v. Gillman – Patent Inventorship, Authorship, and Ownership In StoneEagle Services, Inc.,v. Gillman the Federal Circuit confirmed that assistance in reducing aninvention to practice generally does not contribute to inventorship. In this case, the issue centered on whether there was a sufficient controversy regarding inventorship for the case to remain in federal court. The plaintiff alleged that the defendant had "falsely claimed that […] Continue Reading →
Means-Plus-Function Claims and Written Description for Priority InEnOcean GMBH v. Face International Corp., the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded a final order of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) and the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (“Board”) with respect to EnOcean’s U.S. Patent Application No. 10/304,121. The Federal Circuit held (1) the term “receiver” was recited with sufficient structure as […] Continue Reading →
Patent Invalidity Based on Non-Compliant Claims of Priority InMedtronic Corevalve, LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corp., the Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment of invalidity of the asserted claims of U.S. Patent No. 7,892,281 ("the '281 patent") based on the patent's claimed priority date. Medtronic sued Edwards for infringement of claims 3, 4, 7, 12, 14, and 15 of the '281 patent. The U.S. District […] Continue Reading →
Federal Circuit Clarifies Patent Term Adjustment The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has issued an opinion that provides guidance for how Patent Term Adjustments should be calculated. Between June 2009 and May 2011, Novartis filed four civil lawsuits against the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) in the United States District Court for the […] Continue Reading →