Patent Law Weblog
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Category: Obviousness
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The Federal Circuit addressed questions of motivation to combine and reasonable expectation of success in finding obviousness as well as when an obviousness determination by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board is supported by substantial evidence, in Almirall, LLC v. Amneal Pharmaceuticals LLC. The case arose in an inter partes…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — In a crowded pharmaceutical art, the deficiencies thereof being so patent that the FDA encouraged industry to address and correct them, concerning a formulation developed to address the opioid crisis raging earlier in this century (see "Empire of Pain"), when is a resulting formulation obvious over that prior art and…
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By Donald Zuhn –- Earlier today, the Federal Circuit affirmed the final determination by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board finding claims 1, 2, and 4-14 of U.S. Patent No. 8,409,862 unpatentable as either anticipated or obvious. The '862 patent is directed to using mass spectrometry to detect low levels…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — There are some cases where the Federal Circuit makes its decision based on the eternal verities of patent law (insofar as there are any eternal verities in patent law). One such decision arose earlier this month when the Federal Circuit affirmed a determination of non-obviousness by the Patent Trial and…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Joint inventorship has been called "one of the muddiest concepts in the muddy metaphysics of patent law" because the "exact parameters of what constitutes joint inventorship are quite difficult to define." Mueller Brass Co. v. Reading Indus., 352 F. Supp. 1357, 1372 (E.D. Pa. 1972), aff'd, 487 F.3d 1395 (3d…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The inter partes review (IPR) provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act have been castigated by many for the propensity of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to find claims challenged in these proceedings to be anticipated or obvious (albeit this outcome has been less frequent for technologies in…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Arthrex, Inc., 141 S. Ct. 1970 (2021), at the end of its last term resulted in many cases with pending certiorari petitions that were based on Appointment Clause challenges to be remanded to the Federal Circuit, and many (if not most) of…
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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 — 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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