Patent Law Weblog
recent posts
- REGENEXBIO Inc. v. Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2026)
- Apple v. Squires: USPTO Director Has Unlimited Discretion on IPR Institution
- The Ghost in the Machine: Why GenAI Can Be Both a Brilliant Researcher and a Terrible Advocate
- Bayer Files Suit Against Trio of COVID-19 Vaccine Makers
- Allen v. Cooper (4th Cir. 2026)
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Category: Federal Circuit
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By Kevin E. Noonan – Minerva and Hologic, competitors selling devices used for ablating uterine endometrial tissue, are notable for their dispute last year that gave the Supreme Court an opportunity to reassess an established patent law doctrine, assignor estoppel (reminiscent of the Court's review of the Federal Circuit's standard for obviousness in KSR Int'l v.…
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By Kevin E. Noonan – Judge Giles Sutherland Rich, famous for many things (including being the principal author of the 1952 Patent Act and in particular Section 103, which cabined at least for a while the Supreme Court’s penchant for invalidating patents to such an extent that Justice Jackson remarked that the only valid patent was…
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By Kevin E. Noonan – A change in the weather is known to be extremeBut what's the sense of changing horses in midstream?I'm going out of my mind, oh, ohWith a pain that stops and startsLike a corkscrew to my heartEver since we've been apart "You're a Big Girl Now," Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan…
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By Donald Zuhn –- After reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its 16th annual list of top patent stories. For 2022, we identified ten stories that were covered on Patent Docs last year that we believe had (or are likely to have) a significant impact on patent practitioners and…
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By Kevin E. Noonan – As the dodo of patent practice, the number of interferences has been steadily dwindling since enactment of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act in 2012 abolished the practice in favor of a "first inventor to file" regime and a derivation proceeding for instances where a patentee is found to have taken the…
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By Kevin E. Noonan – The Federal Circuit recently affirmed a district court judgment of invalidity for obviousness and for noninfringement for a series of patents challenged in ANDA litigation, in Genentech Inc. v. Sandoz Inc. In doing so, a majority of the panel illustrated perhaps unintentionally how initial impressions regarding the issues before the Court…
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By Kevin E. Noonan – On November 15th, the Federal Circuit handed down its opinion affirming all aspects of the District Court's decision in Pharmacyclics LLC v. Alvogen, Inc. The case illustrates once more the importance of the clear error standard in support of factual aspects of a district court's decision, even regarding ultimate questions of…
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By Kevin E. Noonan – Early last month, a group of scientists* filed an amici curiae brief in support of the appeal by Junior Party the University of California/Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, "CVC") of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's decision to award priority to Broad Institute, Harvard University, and MIT…
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By Kevin E. Noonan – The Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's (PTAB) Final Written Decision (FWD) in an inter partes review (IPR) that Mylan Pharmaceuticals failed to show the claims of U.S. Patent No. 7,326,708 were either anticipated or rendered obvious by the asserted prior art, in Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. Merck…
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By Donald Zuhn — Earlier this month, the Federal Circuit affirmed the grant of summary judgment in favor of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, finding that the USPTO did not err in its interpretations of 35 U.S.C. § 154(b)(1)(C)(iii) and did not violate…
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