Patent Law Weblog
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Category: Federal Circuit
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By Donald Zuhn — Last month, in In re Efthymiopoulos, the Federal Circuit affirmed the determination by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board affirming the Examiner's rejection of all pending claims of Appellant Constantin Efthymiopoulos's U.S. Patent Application No. 08/737,141 as being obvious. The '141 application relates to methods of…
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By Michael Borella — Synopsys brought a patent infringement action against Mentor Graphics in the Northern District of California, alleging infringement of various claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 5,530,841, 5,680,318, 5,748,488, and 6,836,420. Claim 1 of the '841 patent recites: A method for converting a hardware independent user description of a logic circuit, that includes flow…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The Federal Circuit recently affirmed a district court's claim construction and determination that claim terms were not indefinite in Massachusetts Institute of Technology v. Shire Pharmaceuticals, Inc. The case involved U.S. Patent Nos. 5,770,193 and 5,759,830, directed to three-dimensional scaffolds for growing cells in vitro for in vivo organ culture. …
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By Michael Borella and George Lyons III — Decided September 30th, this Federal Circuit case is already making waves. The majority opinion seems to be at tension with the Court's outcome in BASCOM Glob. Internet Servs., Inc. v. AT&T Mobility LLC, but the real attention-grabber is Judge Mayer's concurrence. Therein, he argued that claims such as…
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Federal Circuit Denies Petition for Rehearing in Medtronic v. Robert Bosch Healthcare Systems By Kevin E. Noonan — One of the aspects of inter partes review that differed from other post-grant review proceedings before the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (succeeded by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board) is a requirement for transparency with…
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Rule-Based Data Processing Patent Held to Be Directed to Patent-Ineligible Subject Matter By Joseph Herndon — On October 11, 2016, the Federal Circuit issued a precedential opinion in FairWarning IP, LLC v. Iatric Systems, Inc. affirming dismissal of a patent infringement suit brought by FairWarning holding that the asserted patent, U.S. Patent No. 8,578,500, claims…
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Just When You Thought the Federal Circuit Was Softening Restrictions on Software Patents, the Tide Turns Again By Joseph Herndon — Intellectual Ventures I LLC ("IV") sued Symantec Corp. and Trend Micro (defendants) for infringement of various claims of three U.S. Patents (Nos. 6,460,050; 6,073,142; and 5,987,610). The District Court held the asserted claims of…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Before the Supreme Court's recent forays into the topic of subject matter eligibility in patent law, the most contentious line of cases (from the Federal Circuit) concerned the written description requirement of Section 112. Indeed, some (like former Chief Judge Rader) believed that the statute does not contain a separate…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The complexities that can be attendant on defending against an infringement allegation, and the possibility that a straightforward path to non-infringement can be complicated by claim construction even for terms construed using their plain meaning, are illustrated in the Federal Circuit's opinion affirming a jury verdict of infringement in LifeNet…
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By Michael Borella — Patentee McRO sued a number of video game developers and publishers in the Central District of California and the District of Delaware for alleged infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 6,307,576 and 6,611,278. Several of the Delaware suits were transferred to the Central District of California, and the defendants filed a Rule…
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