New and Useful – April 5, 2013April 5, 2013

· In Power Integrations, Inc. v. Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. the Federal Circuit clarified several points relating to claim construction, determinations of non-obviousness, and calculation of damages. The court confirmed that claiming a “circuit” in conjunction with a sufficiently definite structure for performing the identified function is adequate to bar means-plus-function claiming. The court also confirmed that secondary considerations of non-obviousness could constitute evidence sufficient to support a finding of non-obviousness. Finally, the court held that plaintiffs are not entitled to compensatory damages for injury caused by infringing activity that occurred outside the territory of the United States, regardless of any foreseeability of world-wide damages. A more in-depth analysis of this case will be posted shortly.

· In Rubin v. The General Hospital Corp., Dr. Berish Y. Rubin and Dr. Sylvia L. Anderson (collectively, Rubin) sued The General Hospital Corporation (GH Corp.) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts requesting correction of inventorship of two patents assigned to GH Corp., or alternatively invalidation of the two patents. Rubin alleged that the inventors named in the patents used confidential information—from a manuscript and abstract submitted by Rubin to the American Journal of Human Genetics—to complete the inventions described and claimed in the patents. The district court granted summary judgment to GH Corp.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the grant of summary judgment, reasoning that the dispute was fundamentally a question of priority of the invention. The court ultimately agreed with the district court, concluding that Rubin and Anderson could not be added as joint inventors or be substituted for the named inventors of the patents because they did not meet the requirements of 35 U.S.C. § 116 for joint invention or §256 for correction of inventorship, and that the issue of priority is appropriately determined by PTO interference proceedings.

· The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of N.Y. has handed down its decision in Capitol Records, llc. V. ReDigi Inc. ReDigi considers itself the "world's first and only online marketplace for digital used music." ReDigi's website "invites users to sell their legally acquired digital music files, and buy used digital music from others at a fraction of the price currently available on iTunes." ReDigi's website sold various records belonging to Capitol Records. Capitol Records brought an action against ReDigi, alleging direct copyright infringement, inducement of copyright infringement, contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. In its defense, ReDigi asserted that the “first sale” doctrine precluded a finding of copyright infringement. The district court disagreed, however, holding that the very nature of transferring digital files over the internet constituted copyright infringement because in order to transfer a file, a copy of the file must be made on the transferring computer. Because the “first sale” doctrine does not protect against reproduction of copyrighted material, ReDigi could not successfully assert the defense for the present action.

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