A Florida judge recently entered a permanent injunction against a handful of Florida businesses and their owner, barring them from further infringing a patent covering biometric security for automobiles.
Before Wallach, Clevenger, and Stoll. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware.
Summary: Claims directed to a specific method of treatment for specific patients using a specific compound at specific doses to achieve a specific outcome may be patent eligible, despite using a natural law or phenomenon.
Before Judges Reyna, Taranto, and Chen. Appeal from the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
Summary: There may be no reasonable expectation of success in producing a specific polymorph of a compound when that compound is not known to be polymorphic, and existing synthesizing methods do not necessarily produce or provide specific guidance for producing the specific polymorph.
Before Prost, Dyk, and Wallach. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Summary: When the Federal Circuit holds that a combination of references does not teach a particular limitation, that does not foreclose all other obviousness theories based on the same combination of references.
Before Prost, Reyna, and Taranto. Appeal from the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
Summary: An abstract idea cannot be used to supply an inventive concept that renders a claim “significantly more” than an abstract idea.
In Natural Alternatives International, Inc. v. Creative Compounds, LLC., Appeal No. 2018-1295, a divided panel of the Federal Circuit reversed and remanded a decision by the District Court for the Southern District of California that granted a judgment on the pleading holding the asserted claims invalid as not patent eligibile.
Before Prost, Reyna, Taranto. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
Summary: Where the preamble of a claim merely identifies an intended use and does not impose a structural requirement, and only the body of the claim identifies an improvement, the applicant’s choice not to use the transitional phrase “wherein the improvement compromises” is also a “powerful reason” to deny the preamble any limiting effect. Further, lack of diligence in reducing an invention to practice cannot be inferred when the invention was put into someone else’s hands for needed testing and there was diligent oversight.
Before Lourie, O’Malley, and Stoll. Appeal from District of Delaware.
Summary: Under step one of Alice, a claim is not directed to an abstract idea when it recites a specific technique to solve a technological problem arising in computer networks and that improvement is bolstered by the specification.
On March 7, 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced a formal agreement, in the form of a memorandum of understanding (MOU), to jointly regulate the production of human food derived from cultured cells of livestock and poultry, including cell-based meat. [1], [2] The FDA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the FSIS is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The MOU follows a joint public meeting held in October 2018 at which the Agencies discussed the use of cell culture technology for human food production, including potential hazards, oversight, and labeling, with representatives of industry, consumer groups, and other stakeholders. [3] The October 2018 meeting resulted in a statement from USDA Secretary Perdue and FDA Commissioner Gottlieb on November 16, 2018, confirming that the Agencies had agreed to joint oversight of this emerging technology. [4]
Before Moore, Reyna, and Wallach. Appeal from the Southern District of California.
Summary: District court improperly held that claims were directed to a natural law where the claims recited a method of treatment requiring a specific and allegedly unconventional dosage of the naturally occurring ingredient.
