Patent Law Weblog
Year: 2020
-
By Kevin E. Noonan — The Fountain of Youth — an enduring aspiration, particularly as the ravages of age reduce human faculties prior to leading inexorably to death. Reduction in sight is the human faculty that can have the greatest effect on quality of life in the aged — a faculty that begins to decline…
-
By Kevin E. Noonan — Over the past decade, genetic archeology has revealed two branches of the human family tree, one known since the 19th Century (the Neanderthals) and the other more recently discovered (the Denisovans, an Asian relative of the Neanderthal population). These populations evolved without genetic intermingling with Homo sapiens sapiens for about…
-
By Kevin E. Noonan — Cancer of the appendix is a very rare form of cancer, having an incidence of 0.12 per 1,000,000 person-years (Siegel et al., 2020, Cancer statistics 2020 70:7-30). Incidence is rising (by 232% from 2000-2016 in the U.S.) without a known etiological basis, particularly in individuals less than 50 years old,…
-
By Kevin E. Noonan — Earlier this year, and almost one year to the day (January 17, 2019) that the Opposition Division (OD) of the European Patent Office revoked in its entirety European Patent No. EP 2771468, the Technical Board of Appeal affirmed the revocation (after suggesting it would refer some of the Broad's questions and…
-
By Kevin E. Noonan — Trial courts tend to get more than the benefit of the doubt when their decisions are viewed under the "abuse of discretion" standard, and juries similarly are affirmed unless there isn't substantial evidence supporting their verdicts. Both these rubrics, which extend more generally to cases involving disputes outside patent law,…
-
By Michael Borella — One would think that inventions relating to computer game software would easily meet the requirements for patent eligibility, as these inventions fundamentally involve technological processes and require computer implementation. But that is not always the case. Under current interpretations of the eligibility standard, not only does the language of the actual…
-
By Kevin E. Noonan — Interferences were rendered unnecessary with the passage of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act in 2011, but they linger in disputes between patents and applications claiming priority to applications filed before the change to a "first-inventor-to-file" system. The Federal Circuit recently upheld the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's priority determination in…
-
By Kevin E. Noonan — It has long been understood that claim construction can, and frequently is, dispositive in patent litigation. This truism was the basis for the Federal Circuit affirming the District Court's decision against a generic drug producer in its recent decision in Par Pharmaceutical, Inc. v. Hospira, Inc. And the case being…
-
The authors and contributors of Patent Docs wish their readers and families a Happy Thanksgiving. It is also our hope that all of our readers, along with their families and friends, stay safe during the holiday. Publication of Patent Docs will resume on November 28th.
-
By Kevin E. Noonan — The Federal Circuit has taken the occasion, in appeals from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board as well as district courts, to remand judgments whenever the Court believes that the record below is devoid of sufficient detail to properly assess the correctness of the decisions made below (see "Merck Sharp…
Patent Docs 