Patent Law Weblog
recent posts
- BioNTech Sues Moderna over mRNA Vaccine Technology
- CNIPA Issues Letter on Identity of Foreign Inventors
- 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
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Category: Federal Circuit
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The Supreme Court has made a sport of reversing the Federal Circuit over the past decade or so, and other than reserved (and sometimes not so reserved) statements by members of the lower court, the Federal Circuit has (properly) deferred to the Supreme Court's decisions without much protest (albeit occasionally…
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By Michael Borella — Less than four weeks after the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, the Federal Circuit has used the holding of that case to strike down a patentee's claims under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Digitech sued Electronics For Imaging and a host of co-defendants for…
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Absent Description of Representative Species to Support Entire Genus, Functionally Defined Genus Claim Lacked Adequate Written Description By Donald Zuhn — Last week, in AbbVie Deutschland GmbH v. Janssen Biotech, Inc., the Federal Circuit affirmed judgments by the District Court for the District of Massachusetts in infringement and interference actions involving AbbVie Deutschland GmbH &…
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Judge Randall Rader Says Goodbye at BIO By Kevin E. Noonan — Last week, Judge Randall R. Rader, until recently Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, opened a day-long session on Intellectual Property Law by saying farewell. In a speech at varying times passionate and wistful, the Judge (who is…
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By Michael Borella — A very experienced patent attorney once told me that you should never write means-plus-function claims unless there is a Luger at your temple. This, the first opinion addressing indefiniteness to come from the Federal Circuit since the Supreme Court weighed in on the subject in Nautilis v. Biosig Instruments, does nothing…
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Whither the Meaning of "a" as a Claim Term By Kevin E. Noonan — Every once in a while a Federal Circuit panel construes a common claim term contrary to how it has been construed in prior precedent, usually based on the particular situation or circumstance the Court is addressing and consistent with the scope…
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Court Upholds PTO Determination That Reissue Cannot Cure Improper Terminal Disclaimer By Kevin E. Noonan — Despite thirty years of efforts by the Federal Circuit to bring consistency and transparency to patent law (and the last dozen years of the Supreme Court's efforts to the contrary), in many respects patent law remains "full of traps…
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By Jon Schuchardt* — Nothing endures but change. –HeraclitusPlus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. –Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr When I was your age, and Pluto was a planet, "obvious to try" was not the standard for evaluating patentability under 35 USC § 103. In KSR v. Teleflex, the US Supreme Court qualified this by rejecting the…
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Appellant's Opposition to Board Decision Not Enough to Establish Injury in Fact By Donald Zuhn — Yesterday, the Federal Circuit dismissed an appeal by Consumer Watchdog from a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board affirming the patentability of claims 1-4 of U.S. Patent No. 7,029,913. In dismissing the appeal, the Federal Circuit determined…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Interferences are not yet dead, although their echo is expected to attenuate over the next decade or so as a result of the provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act that converted the U.S. from a first-to-invent country to a first-inventor-to-file country. In Tobinick v. Olmarker, the Federal Circuit addressed…
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