Skip to content

On March 21, 2017 the Supreme Court issued a monumental holding removing the availability of laches as a defense in a claim for damages under patent infringement. The case changes decades of legal precedent, and adopts reasoning similar to that used by the Court in a 2014 copyright case.

The PTAB weighed five factors in its discretionary denial of a second IPR petition filed by the same petitioner in Xactware Solutions, Inc. v. Eagle View Tech., Inc., IPR2017-00034, Paper 9 (P.T.A.B. April 13, 2017).

On April 6, 2017 the FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health formally approved 23andMe’s Personal Genome Services Test as a Class II Medical Device.

The Federal Circuit affirmed-in-part and reversed-in-part the PTAB’s final written decisions on Wasica’s tire pressure monitoring patents in Wasica Finance GmbH v. Continental Automotive Sys., Inc., No. 2015-2078 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 4, 2017).  The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s upatentability determinations based on certain claim constructions.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s final written decisions holding that claims directed to Novartis’s dementia drug Exelon were obvious in Novartis AG v. Noven Pharm. Inc., No. 2016-1679 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 4, 2017).

The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s final written decision holding that claims directed to Novartis’s multiple sclerosis drug Gilenya were obvious in Novartis AG v. Torrent Pharmaceuticals. Ltd., No. 2016-1352 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 12, 2017). Significantly, the Federal Circuit found that the PTAB’s use of a non-instituted reference in its final written decision was not improper.

On January 25, 2017, a panel of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) held that “Eleventh Amendment Immunity bars the institution of an inter partes review against an unconsenting state that has not waived sovereign immunity.”  Covidien LP v. Univ. of Florida Research Found. Inc., IPR2016-01274, IPR2016-01275, IPR2016-01276, Paper 21 at 27.

On March 24, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the term “red gold” may not be a generic term for jewelry and watches, and thus, may serve as a trademark.  Specifically, the Ninth Circuit found that there were questions of fact that needed to be decided by a jury as to whether the term was generic.

On March 28, 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of Ocrevus (ocrelizumab) in treating multiple sclerosis (MS). 

On March 27, 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor, Zejula (niraparib), for the maintenance treatment of recurrent ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer following complete or partial response to platinum-based chemotherapy.

Older posts
- Newer posts