On June 11, 2019, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted inter partes review (IPR) of U.S. Patent No. 6,306,141, assigned to Medtronic Vascular, Inc. The Decision instituted the IPR based on two obviousness grounds, including that “Petitioner has made an adequate showing at this stage that at least claim 1 would have been obvious over Cragg, Pops, and Tanaka.”
In July 2018, Citroën, the French car manufacturer, unveiled glasses that aid in alleviating motion sickness. The “Seetoën” glasses, developed by Boarding Ring, purports to eliminate motion sickness symptoms within about 10 minutes of putting them on. According to Boarding Ring, the Boarding Ring technology includes four rings filled with blue liquid.
ELBIT SYSTEMS LAND AND C4I LTD. v. HUGHES NETWORK SYSTEMS, LLC
Before Taranto, Mayer, and Chen. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
Summary: Neither 28 U.S.C. § 1295 nor 28 U.S.C. § 1292(c)(2) provide appellate jurisdiction to review an attorney fees award if the amount of attorney fees has not yet been quantified.
CELLSPIN SOFT, INC. V. FITBIT, INC. ET AL.
Before Lourie, O’Malley, and Taranto. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Summary: While not all factual allegations that are wholly divorced from the patent claims or specification would defeat a motion to dismiss under Section 101, plausible and specific allegations that certain aspects of the claims are inventive are sufficient. Additionally, a patent’s presumption of validity is also a presumption of eligibility under § 101.
UCB, INC. v. WATSON LABORATORIES INC.
Before Taranto, Schall, and Chen. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware.
Summary: Application of the doctrine of equivalents may not be barred by: (1) prosecution history estoppel where an election in response to a restriction requirement does not constitute a surrender of an asserted equivalent or (2) intentional narrow claiming where there is insufficient evidence that the asserted equivalent was foreseeable.
FOOD MARKETING INSTITUTE V. ARGUS LEADER MEDIA.
Before the Supreme Court with J. Gorsuch delivering the majority opinion.
Summary: Commercial or financial information is confidential under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) when it is (1) both customarily and actually treated as private by its owner and (2) provided to the government under an assurance of privacy.
Before the United States Supreme Court (Opinion by Justice Kagan) on Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Summary: The Lanham Act’s prohibition on registering immoral or scandalous trademarks violates the First Amendment because it discriminates on the basis of viewpoint.
GAME AND TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD. v. ACTIVISION BLIZZARD INC.
Before Prost, Lourie, and Wallach. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).
Summary: A single prior art reference can render a patent obvious if it would have been obvious to modify that reference to arrive at the claimed invention.
The Federal Circuit’s 2018 decision in Berkheimer v. HP Inc. was likely the most consequential development in patent eligibility since the Supreme Court introduced its two-part eligibility framework in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank and Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories. Alice and Mayo had a dramatic impact on patent law, paving the way for lower courts to invalidate thousands of claims from hundreds of patents for failure to claim patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Berkheimer tempers Alice and Mayo by imposing procedural requirements that may insulate patent claims from § 101 challenges.
A new bill introduced in Congress last week may limit the ability of branded pharmaceutical companies to extend the period of exclusivity products beyond the term of a single patent.
The bill, titled “Terminating the Extension of Rights Misappropriated Act of 2019” or “TERM Act of 2019,” places greater scrutiny on the practice of obtaining multiple patents with overlapping terms to cover a single drug product or biological product.
