Before Moore, Taranto, and Stoll. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
Summary: (1) Terms of degree, including “minimal,” may render claims indefinite if the specification fails to provide “objective boundaries” for the term; and (2) while patent eligibility is ultimately a question of law, the underlying question of whether something is “well-understood, routine, and conventional” is a factual issue.
Before Moore, Taranto, and Stoll. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
Summary: In a product-by-process claim, terms that can be equally understood as structural or process limitations should generally be construed as structural limitations.
Before Moore, Mayer, and Hughes. Appeal from U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.
Summary: The Federal Circuit lacked jurisdiction over a Walker-Process antitrust claim because patent law was not a necessary element of one of the well-pleaded claims.
Before Dyk, Wallach, and Hughes. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware.
Summary: A distribution agreement qualifies as an invalidating “offer for sale” under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) when the terms of the agreement demonstrate the commercial character of an offer to sell the patented product.
Before Moore, Wallach, and Stoll. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
Summary: The PTAB is entitled to weigh the credibility of expert witnesses, and attorney argument cannot be used as evidence to rebut actual admitted evidence.
Before Prost, Dyk and Chen. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Summary: A party may not seek a declaratory judgment to obtain piecemeal adjudication of an issue that would not resolve the entire case or controversy.
Akili Interactive recently announced results of a trial on the company’s digital medicine product, AKL-T01.
In December, the Second Circuit ruled that My Other Bag (MOB) was not liable for infringing Louis Vuitton’s trademarks and copyrights because MOB’s bags were a parody of the luxury giant.
It has been a few years since the Supreme Court decision in the case B&B Hardware, Inc. v. Hargis Industries, Inc., and we are beginning to see the aftermath in the district courts. In B&B Hardware, the Supreme Court held that decisions of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”) regarding whether a trademark should be entitled to federal registration can have a preclusive effect in trademark infringement actions in district court. Specifically, the Supreme Court held that “[s]o long as the other ordinary elements of issue preclusion are met, when the usages adjudicated by the TTAB are materially the same as those before the district court, issue preclusion should apply.” See B&B Hardware, Inc. v. Hargis Industries, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 1293, 1310 (2015).
The FDA recently issued a draft guidance document intended to “to ensure that least burdensome principles are implemented for all device-related applications and interactions with FDA.”
