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 — There are (at least) two ways of looking at the course of the Federal Circuit's evolving interpretation of the Supreme Court's subject matter eligibility jurisprudence under Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Labs., Inc. and Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l. One way is to consider the Court to be adrift, unable to…
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By Joshua Rich — Less than two years ago, in Return Mail, Inc. v. U.S. Postal Service, 139 S. Ct. 1853 (2018), the Supreme Court held that a government entity — in that case, the U.S. Postal Service — is not a "person" under the America Invents Act, and therefore unable to avail itself of…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The procedural niceties of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's implementation of the post-grant review features of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act continue to be explicated in the Federal Circuit (and of course, the Supreme Court). Most recently, the question before the Federal Circuit in Nike, Inc. v. Adidas AG…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — In what may be simple happenstance, the Federal Circuit issued opinions on the same day reversing a District Court grant of summary judgment in opinions written by Judge Lourie, here in BASF Corp. v. SNF Holding Co. The case arose over BASF's allegations of infringement by SNF of U.S. Patent…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Summary judgment, while clearly advantageous, requires that there be no disputed question of material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. When a district court grants judgment improvidently, by misapplying the law, judgment can be reversed and the matter returned to the…
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By Donald Zuhn –- Last month, in Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc., the Federal Circuit reversed a decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey finding certain claims of U.S. Patent No. 8,853,156 to be directed to ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101, and remanded for…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's (PTAB) claim construction (and inter partes review (IPR) decision invalidating claims for obviousness) in it recent Genentech, Inc. v. Iancu decision, and also had the occasion to review and affirm the Board's procedure-based denial of patent owner Genentech's motion to…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The Federal Circuit continued its recent willingness to affirm findings of infringement under the doctrine of equivalents (see, e.g., "Eli Lilly & Co. v. Hospira, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2019)"), in Galderma Laboratories, L.P. v. Amneal Pharmaceuticals LLC. The case came to the Court after ANDA litigation over Galderma's low dose…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Ever since the Supreme Court's decision in Dickinson v. Zurko, patent applicants (and with the advent of inter partes review proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, patentees) have found it difficult to overcome Patent Office determinations of obviousness, due to the deference to factual issues the Zurko case…
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By Joshua Rich — It's often said that hard cases make bad law. And that is what had happened here: faced with an unreasonable number of potentially asserted claims in litigation, and a Plaintiff not required to identify which of those claims it would actually assert within the filing limit (one-year) between being served with…
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