Federal Circuit patent decisions
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 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 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.
In a precedential decision, the Federal Circuit reversed district court estoppel orders that had blocked Valve from using two prior-art grounds at trial, holding that classification searches returning 26,333 results do not establish discovery and that hindsight-infected forward citation searches cannot prove what a 2016 petitioner reasonably could have raised.
The Federal Circuit affirmed denial of a preliminary injunction sought by Boston Scientific to block Stryker’s OptaBlate BVN spine pain device, finding substantial questions about whether Stryker’s product meets the patent’s introducer placement requirements.
The Federal Circuit affirmed a PTAB inter partes review finding that claims of Medmix’s fluid-mixing patent (U.S. 9,010,578) are obvious, rejecting the patent owner’s narrow claim construction for ‘at least two ramps’ and upholding the Board’s motivation-to-combine analysis.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the dismissal of DynaPass’s infringement claim against Bank of America, holding that the claim term ‘receiving the password’ requires the user to submit a pre-combined passcode-and-token password — not submit the two components separately as BofA’s mobile banking app does.
The Federal Circuit reversed PTAB’s finding that Sonos’s IPR challenge anticipated Google’s hotword-detection coordination patents, holding the Board’s key factual finding lacked substantial evidence.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s obviousness rejection of a pro se inventor’s patent application for an automated kitchen system, holding that substantial evidence supported the motivation to combine the cited prior art references.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that claim 18 of Purdue Pharma’s patent on abuse-deterrent OxyContin — covering tablets heated in a coating pan — was obvious in light of prior German pharmaceutical art, ending a litigation effort by Purdue’s successor Knoa Pharma.
In a nonprecedential ruling, the Federal Circuit affirmed that copyright infringement claims against the U.S. government must proceed exclusively under 28 U.S.C. §1498(b) and cannot be recast as Tucker Act ‘takings’ claims — a ruling arising from a pro se plaintiff’s allegation that the government used his AI dissertation without compensation.
The Federal Circuit affirmed PTAB decisions finding all challenged claims of three patents related to lost-computer recovery screens unpatentable as obvious, rejecting challenges to IPR institution and claim construction.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that Nexus Pharmaceuticals’ generic minocycline product infringes Melinta’s patent covering a magnesium-containing antibiotic formulation that reduces injection-site hemolysis.
The Federal Circuit vacated an $11.5 million patent infringement verdict against ecobee, holding that a single-question verdict form covering four patents was improper and that the jury was not properly instructed on the abstract idea under Alice step two.
The Federal Circuit reversed a PTAB decision that had upheld claims of a spinal implant patent, finding the Board misconstrued the term ‘complementary with one another’ and that the claims are obvious under the correct construction.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that all four Arendi patents directed to identifying information in a document and searching external databases are patent-ineligible under Section 101, ending a decade-long litigation against Google and Oath (Yahoo).
The Federal Circuit affirmed that patents claiming automated farming data collection using generic computer components are directed to patent-ineligible abstract ideas under Alice, but vacated the district court’s unexplained denial of attorney’s fees and remanded for further proceedings.
The Federal Circuit reversed a $452 million jury verdict, holding that Insulet’s trade secret misappropriation claim under the Defend Trade Secrets Act was time-barred because Insulet knew or should have known of the alleged misappropriation more than three years before filing suit.
The Federal Circuit vacated the PTAB’s decision upholding an e-learning patent, finding the Board improperly dismissed expert testimony on obviousness as ‘conclusory’ when it addressed a simple design choice of reordering two steps.
The Federal Circuit affirmed judgment as a matter of law that DISH Network’s AutoHop commercial-skipping feature does not infringe ClearPlay’s content-filtering patents, finding that AutoHop uses categorical on/off settings rather than directly disabling individual navigation objects.
The Federal Circuit reversed a district court’s reduction of an $82 million jury verdict for breach of contract to just $3, and held that trade secret plaintiffs have a statutory right to pursue unjust enrichment damages under both the DTSA and Michigan’s trade secrets act.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s finding that all 17 claims of Pictometry’s patent on measuring roofs from aerial imagery are unpatentable as obvious over prior art combining roof-measurement and marker-locking references.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s finding that all claims of a synchronized-browsing patent were unpatentable as obvious, rejecting the patent holder’s bid to narrowly construe the key claim term “web browsing interaction data.”
The Federal Circuit affirmed that Lupin’s generic tolvaptan manufacturing process does not infringe Otsuka’s patents and that certain synthesis method claims are obvious, clearing the way for a generic version of the kidney disease drug JYNARQUE®.
The Federal Circuit reversed a dismissal for lack of standing, holding that a patent owner who grants an exclusive license but retains the right to sue, a sublicensing veto, and royalty interests retains a sufficient exclusionary right for Article III standing.
In a companion case to ALM Holding v. Zydex, the Federal Circuit held that Medtronic Ireland retained Article III standing to assert patent infringement counterclaims despite licensing exclusive rights to an affiliate, because it kept the right to sue, sublicensing veto, and royalty interests.
In a precedential opinion, the Federal Circuit reversed a Delaware district court’s dismissal for lack of standing, holding that patent owners who retain the right to sue for infringement, a sublicensing veto, and royalty interests maintain Article III standing even after granting a broad exclusive license.
The full Federal Circuit denied en banc rehearing of its February 2026 panel decision affirming a $71.4 million verdict for infringement of Willis Electric’s pre-lit Christmas tree connector patent, rejecting Polygroup’s challenge to the damages expert methodology.
The Federal Circuit affirmed dismissal of a patent infringement case involving a unified electronic banking system, finding surviving claims obvious in light of an IPR outcome, but reversed both the exceptional-case attorney fee award and sanctions against counsel, holding that mere invalidity is insufficient for Section 285 fees.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that Actelion’s patent claims requiring a bulk solution with ‘a pH of 13 or higher’ refer to pH measured at standard temperature (25±2°C), not at the solution’s actual operating temperature, finding no literal or equivalent infringement by Mylan’s generic epoprostenol drug.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that Samsung’s 2012 sales agreement with Finelite unambiguously incorporated a full contract of sale that limited Samsung’s indemnification obligations to Hong Kong — where title to LED chips passed — leaving Finelite without indemnity coverage for U.S. patent infringement claims brought by Seoul Semiconductor.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s finding that claims of Universal Electronics’ remote control codeset patent (U.S. Patent No. 9,847,083) are unpatentable as obvious, agreeing with the Board’s broad construction of ‘protocol and formatting information’ as ‘information needed to transmit a signal from one device to another in a way that the receiving device can make sense of and use the signal.’
The Federal Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a pro se challenge to the PTO’s denial of micro-entity status, holding that inventors who admit they are obligated to assign their patent application lack Article III standing to contest the associated fee determination.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the ITC’s finding that Tineco’s redesigned wet-dry vacuum cleaners do not infringe BISSELL’s patents, while also establishing that ITC experts may rely on source code produced in discovery but never formally admitted as a hearing exhibit under FRE 703.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the ITC’s final determination that Tineco’s redesigned wet-dry surface cleaning devices do not infringe Bissell’s patents, while upholding infringement findings against the original products.
The Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s exceptional-case finding and attorney fee award to Nextremity after an IPR invalidated Extremity Medical’s orthopedic implant patent, but denied fees for the IPR proceedings themselves.
In a split decision, the Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s finding that most claims of Metrom Rail’s collision-avoidance patents are obvious, and reversed the Board’s ruling that had saved four remaining claims — holding that the Board applied an incorrect claim construction.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s decision not to consider a new prior art reference raised for the first time in the petitioner’s reply brief, leaving one claim of a networked-gaming patent standing.
The Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s finding that a patent infringement case was ‘exceptional’ under 35 U.S.C. § 285, upholding an attorney fee award where the plaintiff never pursued discovery or demonstrated any evidence of infringement.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that a patent for automatically silencing a mobile phone when it pairs with a vehicle is directed to the abstract idea of screening notifications and lacks an inventive concept under Alice.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that Enviro Tech’s poultry-processing patent was invalid because the term “about” in its pH range limitations failed to inform skilled artisans of the claim scope with reasonable certainty.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s finding that Wildseed Mobile’s targeted mobile advertising patent claims are unpatentable as obvious, rejecting the patent owner’s narrow construction of ‘information taken from a message.’
The Federal Circuit affirmed that Cisco’s products do not infringe three Centripetal network security patents, reaching the opposite result from the original bench trial that was vacated due to the judge’s failure to disclose his wife’s Cisco stock ownership.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that a patent for monitoring vehicles using RFID detection and operator identification is directed to the abstract idea of detecting, transmitting, and processing data, and lacks any inventive concept to survive Alice scrutiny.