The Supreme Court held unanimously that the patent exhaustion doctrine does not permit a farmer to reproduce patented self-replicating seeds; exhaustion covers only the authorized sale of the original seeds, not progeny crops grown from them.
Ten Federal Circuit judges issued seven different opinions and could not agree on a single legal standard for software patent eligibility under § 101, affirming by an evenly divided court that Alice’s financial settlement patents were invalid — a fractured ruling that led directly to the Supreme Court’s landmark Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank decision.
The Federal Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed invalidity of Alice’s financial settlement software patent claims — but produced seven separate opinions with no majority rationale, reflecting deep disagreement on how to apply § 101 to software and setting the stage for the Supreme Court’s definitive Alice v. CLS Bank decision in 2014.
The Federal Circuit affirmed a $391 million patent infringement judgment against SAP — then the largest software patent damages award ever affirmed on appeal — for infringement of Versata’s product pricing patents, while vacating an overbroad injunction.
The Federal Circuit held that the term ‘spaced relationship’ in a heart rate monitor patent was not indefinite because it was ‘amenable to construction’ and not ‘insolubly ambiguous’ — applying its then-prevailing indefiniteness test that the Supreme Court unanimously rejected in 2014, replacing it with the ‘reasonable certainty’ standard that governs today.
The Supreme Court held 6-3 that the copyright first sale doctrine applies to copies manufactured abroad and first sold outside the United States — allowing parallel importation of foreign-made goods bearing copyrighted content without the copyright holder’s permission, and overruling the Ninth Circuit’s geographic limitation on the first sale doctrine.
The Federal Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed the Cybor de novo standard of review for claim construction — declining to overturn its 1998 precedent requiring appellate courts to review district court claim construction rulings without deference, in a decision that set the stage for the Supreme Court’s subsequent reversal in Teva v. Sandoz (2015).
The Federal Circuit affirmed that a patent holder whose domestic industry consists solely of licensing activities — with no domestic manufacturing — can satisfy Section 337’s domestic industry requirement at the ITC, opening the door wider for non-practicing entities to use exclusion orders as a patent enforcement tool.
The Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s post-trial entry of judgment as a matter of law for Apple, overturning a $208 million jury verdict and holding that Apple’s Spotlight, Cover Flow, and Time Machine features did not infringe patents covering chronologically organized data stream interfaces.
The Federal Circuit sitting en banc held that a party who induces multiple actors to collectively perform all steps of a method patent claim can be liable for induced infringement even if no single party directly infringes all steps — significantly expanding liability for divided infringement of internet and software method patents.
The Federal Circuit held that Voter Verified’s copyright claim against Premier Election Solutions for voter verification software failed under the merger doctrine — finding that the specific expression in the claimed software code was inseparable from the underlying idea of a voter-verified paper audit trail system, and thus not independently copyrightable.
The Federal Circuit held that patents on computer-implemented methods for managing stable-value life insurance policies are directed to an abstract idea and therefore invalid under § 101, ruling that adding generic computer implementation to an abstract mathematical algorithm does not create patent-eligible subject matter.
The Federal Circuit reversed an obviousness finding in a Hatch-Waxman dispute over method-of-treatment patents covering naproxen-esomeprazole combination therapy for treating pain while reducing gastrointestinal damage — holding that the district court failed to properly analyze the motivation to combine the specific drugs in the specific claimed dosing regimen.
The Federal Circuit affirmed a $371 million enhanced damages award against W.L. Gore for willful infringement of Bard’s vascular graft patent — one of the largest patent verdicts in history — holding that Gore’s employee did not qualify as a joint inventor and that the pioneering PTFE graft invention belonged solely to Bard’s inventor, Dr. Robert Goldfarb.
The Sixth Circuit held that Static Control Components had standing to sue Lexmark under the Lanham Act for false advertising in the toner cartridge market — a ruling affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2014 under a new zone-of-interests and proximate cause standing framework that displaced the split among circuits on Lanham Act false advertising standing.
The Supreme Court held that the Hatch-Waxman Act permits generic drug manufacturers to bring counterclaims to correct overbroad Orange Book use codes that improperly block FDA approval for non-patented uses of a drug.
The Second Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to YouTube, holding that the DMCA § 512(c) safe harbor does not protect a service provider that had actual knowledge or awareness of specific infringing material — and that willful blindness to pervasive infringement can disqualify a platform from safe harbor protection.
The Supreme Court held unanimously that patent claims directed to natural correlations between drug metabolite levels and therapeutic efficacy are patent-ineligible laws of nature, even when combined with conventional application steps, and established the foundational two-step Mayo framework.
The Federal Circuit affirmed an exceptional case fee award against Allcare Health Management for maintaining objectively baseless patent infringement claims, applying the then-prevailing two-part test for § 285 fee awards and addressing the standard of review for exceptional case determinations — a ruling that set the stage for the Supreme Court’s 2014 Octane Fitness decision.
The Federal Circuit held that MySpace’s social networking website did not infringe Graphon’s patents on searchable online databases, finding the asserted claims invalid as obvious combinations of well-known internet database and search technologies — an important post-KSR ruling on obviousness in the social networking and internet technology space.
The Federal Circuit held that Dealertrack’s claims covering a computer-aided system for routing automobile dealer credit applications to lenders were directed to the unpatentable abstract idea of processing credit applications — striking down the patents under § 101 because adding ‘apply it on a computer’ was insufficient to make an abstract process patent-eligible.
The Supreme Court held 6–2 that Congress acted within its Copyright Clause power when it restored copyright protection to millions of foreign works that had fallen into the public domain in the United States, and that doing so did not violate the First Amendment.
The Federal Circuit reversed a finding of indefiniteness in a touchscreen patent dispute, holding that a claim term need not be expressed in traditional means-plus-function form to invoke § 112(f) — and clarified when functional claim language triggers the algorithm-disclosure requirement, with significant implications for computer and touch interface patent litigation.
The Federal Circuit reversed a district court dismissal and held that Ultramercial’s patent on distributing copyrighted content free-to-consumers in exchange for viewing advertisements was patent-eligible subject matter under § 101 — finding the multi-step process involved meaningful, non-abstract practical implementation steps, not merely an abstract idea.
The Federal Circuit held that Classen Immunotherapies’ method claims for identifying optimal vaccination schedules to reduce chronic immune-mediated disorders were patent-eligible under § 101 in part — distinguishing between claims that merely require correlating a natural relationship and claims that require further steps of implementing a vaccination schedule based on that correlation.
The Federal Circuit held that CyberSource’s patent on a method of detecting credit card fraud by tracking internet addresses was directed to an unpatentable mental process — a gathering and comparing of information that a human could perform in their mind — and that reciting a Beauregard computer-readable medium claim did not change the analysis.
The Federal Circuit held that Myriad Genetics’ patents on isolated BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene sequences — mutations of which indicate elevated breast and ovarian cancer risk — were patent-eligible, while cDNA molecules and method claims for ‘comparing’ or ‘analyzing’ sequences were not — a major ruling later partially reversed by the Supreme Court in 2013.
The Supreme Court held that the Bayh-Dole Act does not automatically transfer title to federally funded inventions to universities; a researcher’s prior contractual assignment to a private company defeated Stanford’s patent claim.
The Supreme Court held that induced patent infringement requires knowledge of the patent, and that the willful blindness doctrine — deliberately avoiding confirmation of a high-probability fact — satisfies that knowledge requirement.
The Federal Circuit sitting en banc overhauled the doctrine of inequitable conduct, holding that rendering a patent unenforceable requires both but-for materiality (the undisclosed information would have blocked the patent) and specific intent to deceive the USPTO — dramatically narrowing a defense that had become a routine litigation tactic.
The Federal Circuit addressed joint infringement in a healthcare IT patent dispute, holding that when patients and healthcare providers together perform steps of a patented method for online patient-provider communications, neither party alone is a direct infringer — applying the direction-or-control standard for divided infringement to electronic health record systems.
The Federal Circuit ruled that the widely used ’25 percent rule of thumb’ for calculating starting-point patent royalties is inadmissible as a matter of law, vacating a $388 million damages award against Microsoft and requiring that every patent royalty calculation be tied to the specific facts of the case.
The Federal Circuit upheld Prometheus’s patents on methods for optimizing thiopurine drug dosing based on metabolite blood levels, holding the claims directed to patent-eligible subject matter because they applied natural correlations through a physical transformation — a ruling the Supreme Court unanimously reversed in 2012.
The Federal Circuit upheld patents on digital image halftoning technology as patent-eligible subject matter, holding that mathematical algorithms applied to specific, practical technological problems are not so abstract as to be excluded from § 101, and cautioning against an overly rigid application of the abstract idea exception.
The Federal Circuit reversed a summary judgment of obviousness in a deepwater drilling rig patent dispute, holding that the district court failed to give adequate weight to powerful objective evidence of non-obviousness — including commercial success, long-felt need, and failure of others — and remanded for proper analysis of the full record.
The Federal Circuit applied claim differentiation and rejected a narrowing construction of defibrillator patent claims, holding that independent claims cannot be read to require limitations found only in dependent claims — and affirmed the district court’s infringement finding on the broader interpretation.
The Federal Circuit held AstraZeneca’s patents on a once-daily budesonide inhaler formulation (Pulmicort Respules) valid and infringed in a Hatch-Waxman challenge, affirming the district court’s analysis of the complex obviousness record and reinforcing the significance of FDA-required labeling disclosures in constructive notice and § 101 analysis for pharmaceutical patents.
The Supreme Court held that the machine-or-transformation test is a useful but not exclusive test for patent eligibility under §101, and affirmed rejection of Bilski’s risk-hedging claims as unpatentable abstract ideas.
The Federal Circuit affirmed an ITC exclusion order barring importation of GPS chip products that infringed Broadcom’s GPS patents, holding that the claimed methods were patent-eligible under the machine-or-transformation test and rejecting a divided-infringement defense based on user interaction.
The Second Circuit held that eBay was not liable for contributory trademark infringement arising from third-party sellers listing counterfeit Tiffany jewelry, because eBay’s general knowledge that counterfeit goods were present on its platform — without specific knowledge of particular infringing listings — was insufficient to establish contributory infringement liability.
The Federal Circuit sitting en banc held that 35 U.S.C. § 112 contains a written description requirement that is distinct from the enablement requirement, and invalidated a broad genus patent covering all substances that inhibit NF-κB activity because the patent described the goal but not the means.
The Federal Circuit affirmed a $200 million jury verdict and permanent injunction against Microsoft for infringing i4i’s patent on a method for editing custom XML in word processing documents, rejecting Microsoft’s invalidity defense premised on a prior-sold product and upholding the clear-and-convincing evidence standard for patent invalidity claims.
The Supreme Court unanimously held that the Copyright Act’s registration requirement is a claim-processing rule, not a jurisdictional prerequisite — meaning courts can hear copyright cases even when registration has not occurred, if neither party objects.
The Federal Circuit vacated a patent damages award and held that a reasonable royalty calculation must rely on licenses that are technologically and economically comparable to the patent at issue — rejecting a royalty rate derived from re-bundling agreements that had no connection to the claimed invention.
The Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment of invalidity of a patent on a method for bulk email delivery, holding the claims obvious under post-KSR standards where the claimed process involved only routine, predictable steps well within the common sense of a person with ordinary skill in email marketing.
The Federal Circuit upheld Prometheus Laboratories’ patents on methods of optimizing thiopurine drug dosage by measuring metabolite levels in patients, finding the diagnostic methods patent-eligible under § 101 because the claimed steps transformed an article — a patient’s blood — by detecting specific metabolite concentrations.
The Federal Circuit largely affirmed that Roche’s pegylated erythropoietin product Mircera infringed four of Amgen’s EPO patents, but vacated the district court’s double-patenting rulings and remanded for additional analysis — a significant ruling in the long-running battle over the blockbuster anemia-treatment drug market.
The Federal Circuit vacated a $1.5 billion patent damages award against Microsoft, holding that the jury’s royalty base improperly relied on the entire market value of Microsoft’s products — including features unrelated to the patented invention — without proof that the patented feature drove demand for the whole product.
The Federal Circuit en banc held that the traditional four-factor preliminary injunction test applies in Hatch-Waxman patent cases — eliminating the prior practice under which a showing of validity and infringement created a presumption of irreparable harm — and remanded the preliminary injunction against generic clarithromycin for reconsideration under the corrected standard.
The Federal Circuit addressed the joint infringement problem in method patent claims — holding that when multiple parties each perform different steps of a claimed method, infringement requires that one party direct or control the actions of the other parties performing the remaining steps, setting an important standard for software and service patents with distributed functionality.