Overview
Rhett Ramsey is an associate in the firm’s Orange County office. Rhett assists clients in a variety of intellectual property areas, with a focus on patent litigation.
Rhett attended the University of Alabama School of Law, where he served as a Senior Editor of the Alabama Law Review. Prior to attending law school, he worked as an aerospace engineer for a major defense contractor.
Rhett was a summer associate in 2021 and joined the firm as an associate in 2022.
Education
- University of Alabama (J.D., 2022), magna cum laude
- Utah State University (B.S. Mechanical Engineering, 2017), cum laude
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Latest Updates and News
District Court Finds the FDA Reasonably De-listed Eli Lilly’s Weight Loss Drug From Drug Shortage List
Congress authorized the FDA to determine whether a drug is “in shortage in the United States.” The FDA’s determination of a drug shortage triggers mechanisms designed to alleviate the shortage....
Novartis Loses Bid for Preliminary Injunction Against MSN Pharmaceuticals
Judge Andrews of the District of Delaware recently denied Novartis’s request for a preliminary injunction against MSN Pharmaceuticals. Novartis Pharm. Corp. v. MSN Pharm. Inc., Civil Action No. 20-md-2930-RGA, Dkt. No. 1456 (D. Del. Aug. 12, 2024). Novartis had requested a preliminary injunction to block MSN Pharmaceuticals from launching a generic version of Novartis’s top-selling oral heart failure drug Entresto®.
Obviousness Analysis Does Not Consider Unclaimed Limitations
JANSSEN PHARMACEUTICALS, INC. v. TEVA PHARMACEUTICALS USA, INC.
Before Prost, Dyk, and Hughes. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.
Summary: District court erred by adding unclaimed limitations to the claims in analyzing obviousness.
Janssen sued Teva for infringement of a patent claiming a dosing regimen for administering paliperidone to treat schizophrenia. Specifically, the patent claimed a long-acting dosing regimen, comprising a series of three intramuscular injections. Teva stipulated to infringement but challenged validity. After a bench trial, the district court found, among other things, that Teva had not proven that the claims were invalid as obvious.
USPTO Says Wands Still Controls Enablement Analysis Post-Amgen
On January 9, 2024, the USPTO published guidelines for its patent examiners when evaluating compliance with the enablement requirement in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Amgen Inc. et al. v. Sanofi et al., 143 S. Ct. 1243 (2023). In Amgen, the Supreme Court unanimously held that claims drawn to a genus of monoclonal antibodies, which were functionally claimed, were invalid due to a lack of enablement. Notably, the Supreme Court did not expressly cite the Wands factors in analyzing whether the specification at issue in Amgen enabled the claims, but the recently published USPTO guidelines underscore that “USPTO personnel will continue to use the In re Wands factors to ascertain whether the amount of experimentation required to enable the full scope of the claimed invention is reasonable.”
Prosecution History May Support a Motivation to Combine
Elekta Limited v. Zap Surgical Systems, Inc.
Before: Reyna, Stoll, and Stark. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
Summary: Patentee’s failure during prosecution to distinguish relevant art provided support for motivation to combine.
Analogous Art Must Be Compared to the Challenged Patent
In Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland GmbH v. Mylan Pharm. Inc., Case No. 2021-1981, the Federal Circuit reversed an obviousness determination by the PTAB. At issue was Sanofi’s reissued U.S. Patent No. RE47,614 (the ’614 patent), directed to a drug delivery device. The PTAB had found Sanofi’s drug delivery patent to be obvious in view of three prior art references: Burren, Venezia, and de Gennes.
