The Third Circuit affirmed denial of J&J’s preliminary injunction against Samsung’s sublicensing of a Stelara biosimilar to a Cigna subsidiary, holding that loss of market share in the biologics market does not categorically constitute irreparable harm in breach-of-contract cases.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that U.S. Patent No. 8,458,689 — covering methods and apparatus for reprogramming automotive engine controllers — was invalid under the pre-AIA on-sale bar, holding that source code commands are not hearsay and that selling a device embodying a patented method triggers the bar even if the device’s inner workings were not publicly disclosed.
Japan’s Intellectual Property High Court overturned the JPO’s invalidation of a key Broad Institute CRISPR patent, ruling that the institutions could validly claim priority from earlier U.S. filings despite a dispute over ownership of those priority rights.
The Northern District of California granted summary judgment of noninfringement, holding that ‘and’ in a patent claim is unambiguously conjunctive — both the metallic contact plugs and the front metal must exceed aluminum’s thermal conductivity.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s finding that Universal Electronics’ voice-input remote control patent claims were unpatentable as obvious, in the latest chapter of the long-running patent battle between the two consumer electronics companies.
A Massachusetts federal court denied Abiomed’s motion for summary judgment of no infringement under the doctrine of equivalents, finding genuine disputes over whether differential and optical pressure sensors are equivalent to the fluid-column sensor claimed in Maquet’s intravascular blood pump patent.
The Federal Circuit dismissed ironSource’s appeal of a PTAB post-grant review decision, holding that ironSource failed to demonstrate Article III standing because its evidence did not address the substitute claims actually at issue.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the ITC’s finding that imported marine air conditioning systems did not violate Section 337, holding that the asserted patent claims were anticipated by prior art and the accused products did not infringe remaining claims.
In a case of first impression, the Federal Circuit held that patents listing incorrect inventors are invalid when the omitted coinventor cannot be found to receive the notice and hearing required by 35 U.S.C. Section 256(b).
A federal court denied Krisp Technologies’ motion for judgment on the pleadings, finding that Sanas.AI’s patents on real-time accent conversion using machine learning claim specific technical improvements rather than abstract ideas, distinguishing them from mere digital format conversion.
A federal jury in Seattle returned a $152,093 verdict for Valve and against inventor Leigh Rothschild and his patent-licensing entities — finding violations of the Washington Patent Troll Prevention Act, the Washington Consumer Protection Act, and a 2016 patent licensing settlement. It is, according to the IP bar, the first jury verdict under a state anti-troll statute.
The UK Supreme Court unanimously overturned the Court of Appeal and held that an artificial neural network for recommending media files based on emotional characteristics is patentable, abandoning the Aerotel four-step test in favor of the EPO’s broader COMVIK approach — the most significant shift in UK computer-patent law in two decades.
An Eastern District of New York judge denied Bemmo’s motion to dismiss Ridge Wallet’s patent infringement and trade dress claims, holding that claim construction disputes are premature at the pleading stage and that Ridge Wallet adequately alleged secondary meaning and non-functionality of its distinctive ‘Forged Ember’ design.
In a same-day companion ruling to Meril v. Edwards, the UPC Court of Appeal articulated a comprehensive inventive-step framework: identify the objective problem from the perspective of the skilled person, choose a realistic starting point in the prior art, and assess whether the skilled person ‘would’ (not merely ‘could’) have arrived at the claimed solution. The decision also clarifies medical-use claim format, sufficiency, added matter, and burden of proof.
Same-day companion to Amgen v. Sanofi/Regeneron, the UPC Court of Appeal in Meril v. Edwards held that the ‘same parties’ test under Art. 33(4) UPCA looks to identity of interests; that disclosed embodiments are generally covered by the patent claims unless the specification clearly teaches otherwise; and importantly that an inventive step may be found even where the claimed solution is merely a ‘non-obvious alternative’ to known prior-art solutions.
The UPC Court of Appeal set out a workable test for when a generic pharmaceutical’s pre-launch activity creates an imminent threat of infringement supporting provisional measures: a bare marketing authorisation does not, but completion of national health-technology-assessment, pricing, and reimbursement procedures can — depending on the regulatory and commercial context.
The Japan Intellectual Property High Court reversed the Tokyo District Court and held that a generic narlfrafen hydrochloride (nalfurafine) anti-itch product infringes Toray’s term-extended pharmaceutical use patent on Remitch, awarding the patentee approximately ¥21.7 billion (~US$140 million) in damages. The decision expansively defines the scope of extended Japanese pharmaceutical patents — covering generics with substantively identical active ingredient, dosage, usage, and indication, not merely formally identical products.
Korea’s Supreme Court affirmed dismissal of indirect patent-infringement claims against a domestic manufacturer that produced 13 individual conjugate substrates in Korea but exported them for final mixing into a 13-valent pneumococcal vaccine abroad, holding that under the territoriality principle of Korean Patent Act § 127(1), “production” must occur within Korean territory and a foreign-completed final assembly does not trigger Korean indirect-infringement liability.
The UPC Düsseldorf Local Division articulated the substantive framework for second medical-use claim infringement: the alleged infringer must offer or place the medicinal product on the market in a way that leads or may lead to the claimed therapeutic use, with knowledge or constructive knowledge that it does. Procedurally, the panel rejected “pleading ignorance” as a recognized form of defense, holding that the UPC Rules of Procedure do not acknowledge that pleading style.
The Supreme People’s Court IP Tribunal reversed a first-instance finding of patent infringement in a power-management chip dispute, holding that pulse-signal generation circuit features in the accused chip differed from the patented features in means, function, and effect — and therefore neither identically infringed nor were equivalent. The decision is the SPC’s most prominent 2025 elaboration of the doctrine of equivalents in logic-circuit patents.
The CJEU Grand Chamber held that Article 4(1) of Regulation 1215/2012 entitles a court of a defendant’s domicile member state to hear infringement claims regarding a European patent’s national parts validated in other member states (and even in non-EU states), notwithstanding invalidity defenses raised under Article 24(4). The decision dramatically expands cross-border patent litigation in the EU and is the doctrinal foundation for the UPC’s long-arm jurisdiction over non-UPC-state patent rights.
The Federal Circuit reversed the PTAB’s obviousness finding against Virtek’s laser-alignment patent, holding that showing a skilled artisan had the knowledge to make a combination is insufficient for motivation to combine — there must also be a reason why they would have done so.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that importing patented medical devices for a U.S. conference fell within the 35 U.S.C. § 271(e)(1) safe harbor because the importation bore a reasonable relationship to obtaining FDA approval, even if the conference also served commercial purposes.
The Federal Circuit reversed a district court’s indefiniteness ruling on a lithium-ion battery patent, holding that two claim limitations are not contradictory—and therefore not indefinite—if they can both be satisfied simultaneously, even if one limitation makes an element optional while a narrowing limitation in the same claim makes that element mandatory.
The Federal Circuit affirmed obviousness of Pfizer’s pneumococcal vaccine patent, clarifying that the result-effective variable doctrine applies to optimize claim ranges even when the prior art does not disclose an overlapping range — expanding the scope of when routine optimization can render a claim obvious.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that Amazon failed to prove inequitable conduct against Freshub’s voice-processing patents, reiterating that the clear-and-convincing evidence standard requires proving both the materiality of a misrepresentation and specific intent to deceive the USPTO.
The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded a district court judgment in a voice-recognition/cable-TV patent dispute, holding that the district court improperly narrowed several claim terms—including ‘back channel’ and ‘centralized processing station’—to specific features described in the specification rather than construing them according to their plain and ordinary meaning as understood by a skilled artisan.
The Federal Circuit vacated the PTAB’s written description rejection of e-cigarette patent claims directed to a heater-length range, holding that in predictable arts a narrower claimed range can be adequately supported by a broader disclosed range without requiring explicit disclosure of the specific narrower range—and that prior art statements made for unrelated purposes do not automatically establish motivation to combine.
The Federal Circuit reversed the PTAB, holding that operating manuals distributed to a limited number of customers with confidentiality notices still qualify as ‘printed publications’ and prior art under § 102, because the relevant inquiry is whether interested members of the public could locate the document through reasonable diligence—not whether the document was widely distributed.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the ITC’s finding that Universal Electronics satisfied the domestic industry requirement under Section 337 based on its investments in QuickSet technology — a patented component integrated into televisions — even though those investments did not cover the entire television product.
The Federal Circuit held that the statutory prohibition barring time-barred, joined IPR parties from introducing new issues into a proceeding does not apply when a patent owner files a motion to amend its claims—a joined party may oppose such a motion even if it could not have raised new issues in the merits phase, because the patent owner itself opened the door to new issues by proposing amended claims.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that a settlement agreement’s forum selection clause requiring patent disputes to be filed in Delaware federal court did not bar Abbott from filing inter partes review petitions after the agreement’s covenant-not-to-challenge period expired—because the agreement had expressly permitted IPRs during the covenant period in certain circumstances, indicating the parties understood IPR as a distinct proceeding.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s claim construction of ‘storage element’ based on inventor lexicography in an incorporated-by-reference patent, holding that the PTAB is not bound by a conflicting district court construction and that Intel’s reply arguments were proper because they responded to a new claim construction first raised in the patent owner’s response.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that generic drug manufacturers who carve out patented indications from their drug labels—the so-called ‘skinny label’ strategy—do not infringe method-of-use patents covering those omitted indications under the Hatch-Waxman Act, and that brand-name companies cannot use narrow method patents to extend exclusivity beyond an approved indication.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that the PTAB retains authority to issue a final written decision in an IPR or PGR even after the statutory one-year (plus extension) deadline has passed, provided no clear contrary congressional intent bars the late decision.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s ruling that Medtronic failed to prove Teleflex’s guide extension catheter patents unpatentable, finding that the claimed invention was conceived and reduced to practice before the critical date of the asserted prior art.
The Federal Circuit dismissed Allgenesis’s appeal from an adverse IPR decision for lack of Article III standing, holding that vague future product plans and non-appealable priority rulings do not constitute a concrete injury sufficient to invoke federal court jurisdiction.
The Federal Circuit vacated an infringement judgment in an ANDA case involving pulmonary hypertension drug patents, holding that the district court erred by construing ‘a pH of 13’ based solely on intrinsic evidence when the parties submitted competing extrinsic evidence—including textbooks explaining how chemists understand significant figures in pH values—that the court was required to consider.
The Federal Circuit upheld attorneys’ fee awards against PersonalWeb, affirming that the Kessler doctrine barred it from suing Amazon’s customers after PersonalWeb had stipulated to dismissal with prejudice of its earlier case against Amazon itself.
In a split decision, the Federal Circuit affirmed PTAB’s patentability finding for DivX’s media streaming patents, holding that Netflix forfeited its arguments by failing to present them with sufficient clarity in the IPR petition.
The Federal Circuit partially affirmed and partially vacated PTAB’s obviousness rulings on Corephotonics dual-aperture camera patents, holding that one prior art reference was analogous on substantial evidence but remanding for the Board to explain whether a second reference meets the analogous art standard.
The Federal Circuit vacated a multi-million dollar patent damages award against Chilisin Electronics, holding that the district court abused its discretion by admitting a damages expert opinion that failed to differentiate between infringing and non-infringing products in the royalty base calculation.
The Federal Circuit vacated an invalidity judgment against Finjan’s cybersecurity patents that had been based on collateral estoppel from a since-vacated case, while affirming non-infringement on claim construction grounds and excluding Finjan’s damages expert for inadequate apportionment.
The Federal Circuit held that the PTAB erred in categorically excluding expert testimony on the structure of computer-implemented means-plus-function claim limitations when the specification identifies named software protocols, clarifying a two-track framework for evaluating such claims.
The Federal Circuit affirmed PTAB’s obviousness finding for radiosurgery patents, clarifying that a reasonable expectation of success does not require an explicit separate finding and may be implicit in a well-supported motivation-to-combine analysis.
The Federal Circuit held that the PTAB applied an unduly strict standard when it rejected Netflix’s analogous art argument in an IPR, ruling that petitioners need not perfectly articulate the ‘field of endeavor’ in magic words—what matters is whether the prior art reference and the challenged patent share the same substantive technical field.
The Federal Circuit affirmed PTAB’s denial of a motion to amend patent claims in IPR, holding that proposed substitute claims were broader than original claims in at least some respects, and that claims broader in any respect cannot be substituted regardless of narrowing in others.
In a precedent-setting decision, the Federal Circuit held that patent term adjustments granted due to USPTO prosecution delays do not protect a later-expiring patent from obviousness-type double patenting challenges based on an earlier-expiring family member.
The Federal Circuit vacated the PTAB’s finding that Volvo Penta’s stern drive patent was obvious, holding that the Board improperly dismissed evidence of secondary considerations—including copying, commercial success, and industry praise—when competitors’ own recognition that the product’s success came from the unique patented features established the required nexus.
The Federal Circuit affirmed that IPR petitioner reply arguments expanding on cost and time savings as a motivation to combine were not impermissibly new—they properly responded to the patent owner’s opposition and were a fair extension of the efficiency rationale raised in the original petition—and held that a patent owner waives a ‘new theories’ objection by making only a general objection without identifying which theories are allegedly new.