Before Prost, Bryson, and Reyna. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
Summary: Retroactive application of IPR proceedings to pre-AIA patents is not an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment.
Before Chen, Hughes, and Stoll. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota
Summary: Method claims directed to performing conventional steps in a new order may be insufficient to render claims patent eligible under § 101.
A jury determined that Benton Energy Service Co. infringed a patent for improved drilling in offshore oil wells owned by Cajun Services Unlimited. The jury also determined that Benton breached its rental agreement for the patented tool, committed fraud on Cajun, and misappropriated Cajun’s trade secrets.
AUTOMOTIVE BODY PARTS ASS’N v. FORD GLOBAL TECHNOLOGIES, LLC
Before Hughes, Schall, and Stoll. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Summary: Aesthetic appeal is not an invalidating form of functionality for design patents; patent exhaustion and repair doctrines apply equally to utility patents and design patents.
SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. v. INFOBRIDGE PTE. LTD.
Before Newman, Schall, and O’Malley. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
Summary: A reference must be publicly accessible, not actually accessed, before the critical date to qualify as prior art.
On July 14, 2019, the USPTO published a second update to the AIA Trial Practice Guide with additional guidance about trial practice before the Board. This latest update, while lengthy, does not introduce many significant changes from established practice, but instead encapsulates decisions the Board has designated precedential or informative and other established developments since the last update. The procedures for addressing multiple challenges to a patent, however, are a new and noteworthy addition.
Before Reyna, Chen, and Hughes. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”).
Summary: A claimed method must be expressly described as a whole in order to satisfy the written description requirement.
CISCO SYSTEMS, INC. v. TQ DELTA, LLC
Before Newman, Linn, and Wallach. Appeal from Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
Summary: It is improper to read limitations from a preferred embodiment described in the specification into claims without any clear indication that the patentee intended the claims to be limited.
TQ Delta LLC v. Dish Network LLC
Before: Newman, Linn, and Wallach. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
Summary: The rights of parties in an IPR are not violated when the PTAB provides adequate notice of the PTAB’s understanding of the claim construction during the oral hearing.
Dish Network (“Dish”) petitioned for inter partes review of a patent owned by TQ Delta, LLC (“TQ Delta”) which describes a method to manage the power of a transceiver in sleep mode and to wake up the transceiver from sleep mode. The PTAB found the claims were obvious.
GENERAL ELECTRIC CO. V. UNITED TECHNOLOGIES CORP.
Before Reyna, Taranto, and Hughes. Appeal from the Patent and Trial Appeal Board.
Summary: A petitioner who loses an IPR must proffer specific evidence of competitive injury or economic loss to establish Article III standing to appeal to the Federal Circuit.
