Utility Patent

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.

The Federal Circuit vacated two PTAB decisions, holding that when a patent owner introduces a new claim construction for the first time in its post-institution response, the petitioner must be given a fair opportunity to introduce new arguments and evidence under that construction in its reply.

The Federal Circuit affirmed that United Therapeutics’ patents covering inhaled treprostinil for pulmonary hypertension satisfy enablement and written description requirements, holding that method-of-treatment claims need not separately address every disease variant in the specification.

The Federal Circuit held that patents governed exclusively by the America Invents Act cannot be drawn into interference proceedings—a landmark ruling that clarifies the divide between the old first-to-invent system and the modern first-inventor-to-file regime.

The Federal Circuit affirmed rejection of a reissue patent application that tried to broaden claims beyond the original patent’s single disclosed embodiment, holding that reissue claims must be directed to the same invention explicitly described in the original patent—not to undisclosed alternatives to elements the inventor treated as necessary to the invention.

The Federal Circuit vacated the PTAB’s IPR decisions upholding Medtronic’s sacral nerve stimulation patents, finding the Board committed a fundamental error by limiting the motivation-to-combine inquiry to the specific application context of the primary reference rather than the full claimed invention.

The Federal Circuit reversed the dismissal of an induced patent infringement suit on res judicata grounds, holding that a prior judgment on direct infringement claims does not preclude a subsequent suit for induced infringement when the induced infringement claims are based on different operative facts and were not litigated in the first action.

The Federal Circuit affirmed PTAB’s holding that Medytox’s botulinum toxin patents were not enabled across their full claimed scope, and clarified that PTAB preliminary guidance under the motion-to-amend pilot program is non-binding.

The Federal Circuit affirmed rejection of a patent application covering a hypertension treatment method, holding that discovering an unexpected mechanism through which known drugs achieve a known result does not overcome a prima facie obviousness case rooted in inherency.

The Federal Circuit affirmed PTAB’s decision to disregard Parus Holdings’ evidence in IPR proceedings, holding that a patent owner’s attempt to incorporate arguments by reference through voluminous exhibits violates PTAB procedural rules and the APA does not require the Board to overlook that violation.

The Federal Circuit affirmed that a nonparty who shared key design elements for an expandable hose with the named inventor at a pre-filing meeting was a co-inventor who should have been listed on the patents, and that his testimony was adequately corroborated by physical prototypes and documentary evidence—requiring correction of inventorship on all asserted patents.

The Federal Circuit reversed the PTAB’s reliance on commercial success as a secondary consideration of nonobviousness for car floor mat patents, holding that evidence of commercial success must be linked to the claimed combination as a whole, not to a single feature that was already present in the prior art—otherwise there is no nexus and the secondary consideration carries no weight.

The Federal Circuit reversed the PTAB’s obviousness ruling on a drug delivery device patent, holding that the Board misapplied the analogous art test by comparing a prior art reference to another prior art reference rather than to the challenged patent—an IPR petitioner bears the burden of showing that each prior art reference is analogous to the patent being challenged, not to other references.

The Federal Circuit reversed a district court’s addition of a joint inventor to a bacon-precooking patent, holding that contributing a preheating concept—when that concept was already known and not the novel element of the claimed invention—is an ‘insignificant’ contribution that does not satisfy the requirements for joint inventorship under the Pannu factors.

The Federal Circuit affirmed invalidity of UCB’s transdermal rotigotine patch patent, holding that prior art ranges overlapping with claimed ranges create a presumption of obviousness that the patentee must rebut by showing criticality or unexpected results.

The Federal Circuit affirmed that Arbutus Biopharma’s patent on stable nucleic acid-lipid particles (SNALPs) with non-lamellar morphology was inherently anticipated by an earlier Arbutus patent, holding that when the same formulation process disclosed in both patents naturally produces the claimed morphological structure, anticipation is established even without an explicit description of that structure in the earlier patent.

The Federal Circuit affirmed willful infringement of Ironburg’s video game controller patent by Valve’s Steam Controller, while vacating and clarifying the standard for IPR estoppel — holding that the patent owner, not the petitioner, bears the burden of proving estoppel applies.

The Federal Circuit reversed the PTAB’s finding of no obviousness, holding that when two prior art references address the same technical problem and one provides a known technique for solving it, a skilled artisan would be motivated to combine them—the Board’s contrary conclusion contradicted the very logic of the KSR ‘known-technique’ rationale.

The Federal Circuit revived Apple’s Administrative Procedure Act challenge to the USPTO’s Fintiv policy, under which the PTAB discretionarily denies institution of inter partes reviews when parallel district court litigation is proceeding, allowing the challenge to be heard on its merits.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s ruling that the University of Minnesota’s antiviral drug patent—directed to phosphoramidate prodrugs of nucleoside derivatives—lacked adequate written description support for its broad genus claims, because the patent’s specification disclosed only a ‘laundry list’ of chemical moieties without adequately describing the full scope of the compounds being claimed.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the delisting of Jazz Pharmaceuticals’ REMS system patent from the FDA Orange Book, holding that a patent claiming a drug distribution and monitoring system — rather than the drug itself or a method of using it — is ineligible for Orange Book listing.

The Federal Circuit affirmed that Minerva Surgical’s demonstration of 15 fully functional endometrial ablation device prototypes at an industry trade show—more than a year before the patent’s priority date—triggered the public use bar of pre-AIA § 102(b) and invalidated the asserted patent claims, because the prototypes embodied every claim limitation and were demonstrated to sophisticated, unconstrained observers.

The Federal Circuit held that the USPTO Director’s authority to review PTAB decisions under the Arthrex remedy is not constrained by the IPR statutory deadlines, and that the Appointments Clause does not guarantee patent owners a right to timely Director rehearing.

The Federal Circuit affirmed that Personalized Media Communications’ patent covering digital rights management technology is unenforceable for prosecution laches, voiding a $308 million jury verdict against Apple, after finding PMC engaged in unreasonable and unexplained delays in prosecuting its patent application.

The Federal Circuit vacated a district court’s indefiniteness finding for a viscometer patent, holding that the intrinsic record — not dictionary definitions — governs claim construction, and that terms of degree are not indefinite when the specification provides adequate context for a skilled artisan.

The Federal Circuit granted mandamus, holding that a foreign defendant cannot defeat Rule 4(k)(2) personal jurisdiction in the plaintiff’s chosen forum by unilaterally consenting to jurisdiction in a different district after the lawsuit is filed.

The Federal Circuit affirmed that Sandoz’s generic pirfenidone label would not induce infringement of Genentech’s method-of-treatment patents, and also upheld invalidity of the liver function test patents as obvious, clarifying the inducement standard for drug labels in Hatch-Waxman litigation.

The Federal Circuit held that genuine disputes of material fact precluded summary judgment of patent invalidity for failure to name a co-inventor, reversing the district court’s ruling that the patents were invalid for nonjoinder.

The Federal Circuit held that collateral estoppel from a prior IPR proceeding can invalidate claims in a later IPR even when the claims use different language, as long as the differences do not materially alter the question of patentability.

The Federal Circuit upheld the exclusion of a patent owner’s expert witness whose infringement opinion rested on a claim construction that materially differed from the district court’s adopted construction, resulting in summary judgment of noninfringement.

The Federal Circuit held that a patent owner’s disclaimer made for the first time during an IPR proceeding does not bind the PTAB in that same proceeding, preventing patentees from narrowing claim scope through argument alone to avoid invalidity.

The Federal Circuit unanimously affirmed the district court’s holding that five patent claims covering ibrutinib (Imbruvica) — a breakthrough cancer drug — were not invalid for obviousness, lack of written description, or lack of enablement, underscoring appellate deference to trial court factual findings in ANDA cases.

The Federal Circuit held that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board may adopt claim constructions that differ from those entered by a district court in concurrent litigation, as the two proceedings are legally independent.

The Federal Circuit held that patent owners may amend claims during inter partes review to address issues beyond the specific grounds raised in the petition, provided the amendments do not enlarge claim scope or add new matter.

The Federal Circuit held that although an irrevocable patent license cannot be unilaterally revoked by the grantor, both parties may mutually agree to terminate it, and doing so restores the licensor’s standing to bring patent infringement suits against the former licensee.

The Federal Circuit reversed a district court’s ruling that the claim term “Downloadable” was indefinite in Finjan’s computer virus detection patents, holding that the term’s plain meaning — an executable or interpretable application program — was sufficiently definite.

The Federal Circuit reversed an indefiniteness ruling against patents covering geometric meshing methods used in computer-aided design, holding that the district court applied an incorrect ‘unanswered questions’ test rather than the proper ‘reasonable certainty’ standard from Nautilus.

The Federal Circuit affirmed infringement of Corcept Therapeutics’ method-of-treatment patents covering combination therapy using mifepristone with a strong CYP3A inhibitor — finding that Teva’s ANDA label induced infringement and rejecting Teva’s challenge to the skinny label carve-out strategy Corcept had prevented through its method claims.

The Federal Circuit affirmed that product-by-process claim language — which defines a product in terms of the process used to make it — does not impart patentable weight unless the claimed process produces a product that is structurally and functionally different from the prior art.

The Federal Circuit held that the reissue recapture doctrine bars an applicant from using a reissue application to reclaim claim scope that was deliberately surrendered during original prosecution to overcome a patent eligibility rejection under § 101.

The Federal Circuit held that the Patent Act requires inventors to be human beings, affirming the USPTO’s rejection of applications that named an artificial intelligence system called DABUS as the sole inventor.

The Federal Circuit affirmed an award of attorneys’ fees under the court’s inherent equitable powers, holding that a patent owner’s voluntary dismissal from one district followed immediately by refiling the same case in a different district constituted bad-faith forum shopping that warranted sanctions.

The Federal Circuit affirmed denial of a preliminary injunction, holding that speculative harms and generalized customer concerns about potential future harm do not constitute the concrete evidence of irreparable injury required to support preliminary patent injunctive relief.

The Federal Circuit held that prior art references containing obvious transcription errors — mistakes that a skilled artisan would immediately recognize as misstatements — cannot be used to establish unpatentability, because the erroneous content does not accurately disclose the state of the art.

The Federal Circuit vacated a $2.75 billion patent infringement judgment against Cisco, holding that the trial judge was disqualified from hearing the case after discovering his wife owned Cisco stock — placing the stock into a blind trust did not satisfy the federal recusal statute’s divestiture requirement.

The Federal Circuit held that a patent specification adequately supported a negative claim limitation — “absent an immediately preceding loading dose” — through clinical trial data showing efficacy without a loading dose, sustaining Novartis’s fingolimod patent.

The Federal Circuit addressed Teradata’s patent infringement claims against SAP in the context of the broader antitrust and interoperability dispute over enterprise database software, affirming the district court’s rulings on claim construction and damages methodology while the parallel antitrust claims were litigated separately.