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 Michael Borella — CosmoKey asserted U.S. Patent No. 9,246,903 against Duo in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, alleging infringement. The District Court found the patent's claims to be ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because they were directed to an abstract idea and lacked an inventive concept. On review, the…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Imposition of liability under the equitable doctrine of inequitable conduct (as it has been variously defined) can result in a patent being held unenforceable; for this reason, former Chief Judge Rader called it the "atomic bomb of patent law" (see Aventis Pharma S.A. v. Amphastar Pharms., Inc., 525 F.3d 1334,…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — In a nonprecedential decision, the Federal Circuit gave a mixture of success and failure to the parties in four separate inter partes review decisions by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, in C.R. Bard, Inc. v. Medline Industries, Inc. The case arose in IPRs instituted in response to a challenge…
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By Michael Borella — In academic settings, objective indicia of non-obviousness are sometimes presented as a common way of rebutting contentions that a claimed invention is obvious. These indicia, set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co. and reiterated in KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., include commercial success, long felt but unsolved needs, unexpected results,…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Dominating the entering gallery of the Impressionists exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago is Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (see below). Painted in the pointillist style, the work comprises millions of individual paint dots reminiscent of photos taken with late 20th Century technology made up of…
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By Michael Borella — Two years ago, MyMail and ooVoo went to the mat in the Federal Circuit over claims that the District Court for the Northern District of California found ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Patent holder MyMail was able to convince two out of three judges on the Federal Circuit panel that the…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The Federal Circuit issued three decisions on Monday relating to Eli Lilly & Co's. challenge in separate inter partes review proceedings on obviousness grounds of nine patents licensed by Teva Pharmaceuticals Int'l, with disparate results. The patents were related to humanized monoclonal antibodies immunologically specific for calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP),…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Most judicial outcomes, particularly on appeal, are broadly based on varying combinations of process and outcome. The law is replete with process-based decisions (standing, jurisdiction, waiver, to name a few) and of course even more frequently perhaps coming to the "correct" outcome is a major decisive factor in a court's…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The Federal Circuit, and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals before it, generally reviewed decisions by the Patent and Trademark Office under the same standard applied to district court decisions, whether the factual basis for the decision was "clearly erroneous" (questions of law were, and are, decided de novo),…
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By Michael Borella — Sensormatic asserted U.S. Patents 7,730,534, 7,936,370, 7,954,129, 8,208,019, and 8,610,772 against Wyze in the District of Delaware, alleging infringement. Wyze moved the District Court to dismiss under Rule 12(c), on the grounds that the claims are directed to ineligible subject matter. The motion was granted. Sensormatic appealed. In Alice v. CLS Bank,…
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