Federal Circuit patent decisions
The Federal Circuit upheld key Smart Mobile wireless-patent claims and sent other claims back because the PTAB did not address evidence that Apple’s proposed prior-art combination would create a data bottleneck.
The Federal Circuit vacated part of a PTAB obviousness ruling because the patent’s provisioning and activation terms require adding a new service, not managing an existing one.
The Federal Circuit held that inventor-advocacy groups lacked organizational and associational standing to challenge the USPTO’s description of a patent’s right to exclude.
The Federal Circuit affirmed PTAB decisions invalidating claims from three single-cell nucleic-acid analysis patents as obvious over combined prior art.
The Federal Circuit held that a non-practicing patent owner must plausibly allege its licensees complied with patent-marking rules to seek pre-suit damages, and upheld an exceptional-case fee award.
The Federal Circuit affirmed PTAB decisions preserving Westport’s fuel-injector patent claims because substantial evidence showed the prior art’s flexible membrane did not disclose the claimed solid-like hydraulic link.
The Federal Circuit upheld a PTAB obviousness ruling, finding facial-analysis research reasonably pertinent to Nielsen’s audience-measurement image claims.
The Federal Circuit upheld denial of a design-patent preliminary injunction because the accused handbag hook was plainly dissimilar and irreparable harm was unsupported.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that all 24 claims of a multimedia content-flow patent were unpatentable as obvious over prior art.
The Federal Circuit held that patents for generating and sharing interactive charts claimed an abstract idea without an inventive concept.
The Federal Circuit vacated a PTAB obviousness ruling because an AIA reference needs written-description support for at least one published claim to claim its provisional filing date.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that an earlier streaming-media patent anticipated WAG Acquisition’s buffering claims.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that a crossbow patent claim was anticipated after construing “mounted to” to include direct and indirect connections bounded by the claim’s other limitations.
The Federal Circuit affirmed a PTAB decision finding Nike fitness-watch patent claims anticipated or obvious because the prior art supported the Board’s broad reading of fitness level and its combinations.
The Federal Circuit affirmed noninfringement because the claimed dissolving agent had to dissolve lidocaine as well as keep it from crystallizing.
The Federal Circuit vacated a patent preliminary injunction because the district court misconstrued “backplate” and “pin” and could not presume irreparable harm.
The Federal Circuit revived MPH Technologies’ mobile-security patent case, holding that the asserted claims were not limited to IPSec and that a challenged secure-connection limitation was not indefinite.
The Federal Circuit affirmed noninfringement because Leica’s microscopes use selected wavelengths rather than the claimed entire spectrum of white light.
The Federal Circuit held that substantial evidence supported the PTAB’s finding that Pfizer’s proposed vaccine claims would have been obvious.
The Federal Circuit held that measurable claim distances were not indefinite merely because the patent might not teach every design choice needed to build an operable magazine.
The Federal Circuit affirmed a PTAB ruling that an earlier wireless-communications patent anticipated G+’s challenged 5G signal-transmission claims.
The Federal Circuit reversed a patent verdict because prior art anticipated the asserted claims and the accused stent coating was not the claimed thread-like fiber.
The Federal Circuit upheld the PTAB’s obviousness ruling and denial of substitute claims for a railcar anomaly-monitoring patent.
The Federal Circuit revived a digital-picture-frame claim tied to a physically separate interface while affirming that broader functional display claims were patent-ineligible.
The Federal Circuit upheld denial and dissolution of preliminary relief where accused products practiced a later-issued, presumptively valid design patent.
The Federal Circuit affirmed because an IPR petition’s headings did not substitute for developed obviousness arguments for each challenged claim.
The Federal Circuit vacated noninfringement summary judgment because ambiguous prosecution statements were not a clear disclaimer.
The Federal Circuit affirmed PTAB obviousness rulings based on archived evidence of an arXiv publication and qualified machine-learning testimony.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that challenged inkjet-printhead patent claims were obvious over a combination of prior-art references.
The Federal Circuit vacated PTAB rulings because the Board required a skilled artisan personally to fabricate a claimed integrated circuit.
Federal Circuit affirms PTAB finding that claims in Woodway’s curved-running-belt manual treadmill patent are obvious over 1970s–1990s prior art, rejecting narrow claim construction and commercial success arguments.
The Federal Circuit vacated a $12.7 million copyright damages award against the government for unauthorized copying of healthcare interoperability software, holding that courts misapplied the ‘book of wisdom’ by considering unforeseeable events and that punitive willful-infringement damages are unavailable under 28 U.S.C. § 1498(b).
The Federal Circuit affirmed two PTAB inter partes review decisions invalidating all claims of Slingshot Printing’s inkjet-printer temperature-sensor patents as obvious over a combination of prior art references.
The Federal Circuit affirmed three PTAB decisions preserving CPC Patent Technologies’ biometric smart-lock patents, holding that ASSA ABLOY failed to prove obviousness under its own proposed claim construction and forfeited a Bianco-only invalidity theory by raising it too late.
The Federal Circuit vacated a PTAB decision upholding Parus Holdings’ voice-browsing patent against Google’s IPR challenge, holding that the Board improperly analyzed prior art in isolation rather than in combination, secretly construed a claim term without notice to Google, and failed to explain its inconsistency with earlier IPR rulings on related Parus patents.
The Federal Circuit reversed a preliminary injunction in a patent dispute over insulated truck cargo doors, holding that the accused ‘sandwich’ panel door raised substantial questions of non-infringement under three separate claim limitations and that the patentee failed to show irreparable harm.
The Federal Circuit affirmed PTAB’s finding that cloud-gaming method claims were obvious over prior art—while clarifying the scope of the mandate rule and confirming that a tribunal on remand may reach claim limitations left unaddressed in the original appeal.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s ex parte reexamination finding that claim 1 of Magnolia’s blood sequestration device patent is anticipated by a 1999 Brannon prior art reference, rejecting Magnolia’s arguments about timing and configuration requirements.
The Federal Circuit affirmed invalidity of Wyeth’s lung cancer treatment patents after holding that the specifications failed to enable skilled artisans to determine an appropriate daily dosage for patients without undue experimentation, erasing a $107.5 million jury verdict.
The Federal Circuit affirms invalidation of two Dental Monitoring patents covering deep-learning dental arch image analysis, holding that applying generic machine learning to a new domain — orthodontic imaging — does not supply the “inventive concept” required for patent eligibility under § 101.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that ClickFunnels’ sales-funnel website creation patents are invalid under § 101, holding that the abstract idea of “filtering information based on user preferences” cannot be rescued by conventional template-selection and sequential-webpage features, while also clarifying the burden-shifting framework for representative-claim analysis.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that “mounted on” in a video laryngoscope patent means fastened to the exterior of the blade — not merely positioned inside with an exposed lens — ending a 16-year patent infringement battle.
The Federal Circuit vacated a district court ruling that two “executable program code” limitations in TrackTime’s audio-synchronization patents were means-plus-function terms, remanding for fresh analysis under the intervening Dyfan precedent, while affirming invalidity of a related patent claim for anticipation.
The Federal Circuit affirms the TTAB’s refusal to register four ‘Mon Ami’ dog-treat marks, finding the Board’s likelihood-of-confusion analysis under DuPont factor one is supported by substantial evidence.
A split Federal Circuit affirms the patent claim construction that kept a generic Nuedexta competitor off the market, but vacates the bond waiver and orders the district court to set a proper security amount.
The Federal Circuit affirmed dismissal of a pro se inventor’s civil rights and tort claims against the USPTO, holding that disagreement with patent examination decisions cannot be recast as record falsification or a constitutional violation.
The Federal Circuit affirmed invalidation of Enanta’s Paxlovid-related patent because its 2020 provisional application disclosed ‘C2’ alkyl groups while the issued patent claimed ‘C1,’ a difference of one carbon atom that broke the priority chain and exposed the claims to anticipation by Pfizer’s prior disclosure of nirmatrelvir.
The Federal Circuit affirmed Intel’s summary judgment win, finding PACT XPP forfeited its capability-based infringement theory on the ‘301 patent and that prosecution statements during ex parte reexamination narrowed the ‘593 patent’s ‘physically dedicated connection’ claim to exclude Intel’s shared-bus architecture.
The Supreme Court declined to review the Federal Circuit’s ruling that an acquirer of common law trademark rights can cancel a later federal registration — even when those common law rights were acquired after the inter partes cancellation proceeding had already begun.
The Federal Circuit reversed and remanded a district court’s IPR estoppel ruling for the second time, holding that a classification search returning 26,333 results cannot show a prior art reference was “reasonably discoverable,” and that Cardinal IP’s search evidence for a second invalidity ground was tainted by hindsight bias throughout.