Today, the Supreme Court in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank unanimously held that all of Alice’s asserted claims were drawn to patent-ineligible abstract ideas. The Court reaffirmed the framework established in Mayo v. Prometheus for determining whether a claim contains one of the implicit exceptions to patent-eligible subject matter: laws of nature, natural phenomena, and […]
Much has been written about what the Supreme Court decided in Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Technologies, Inc. However, the case is more important for what the Court did not decide, than for what was actually decided. On June 2, the Supreme Court reversed a Federal Circuit decision concerning what constitutes indirect infringement of a patent. […]
A patent must be “definite”: it must particularly point out and distinctly claim the invention. 35 U.S.C. § 112 ¶ 2. Otherwise, the patent is not valid. 35 U.S.C. § 282 ¶ 2(3). On June 2, 2014, the Supreme Court in Nautilus v. Biosig Instruments unanimously decided the appropriate standard for determining whether a patent claim […]
The Patent Act provides, in 35 U.S.C. § 285, that “[t]he court in exceptional cases may award reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party.” In 2005, and the Federal Circuit restrictively interpreted the statute in Brooks Furniture Mfg., Inc. v. Dutailier Int’l, Inc., holding that a case is “exceptional” only where (1) “there has been […]
On February 21, 2014, the Federal Circuit, sitting en banc, issued its opinion in the closely-watched case Lighting Ballast Control LLC v. Philips Electronics North America Corp., ___ F.3d ___, Case No. 2012-1014 (Fed. Cir., Feb. 21, 2014). In a 6-4 decision, the court declined to overrule or modify the de novo standard of review […]
When a patent owner sues another for infringement, the patent owner must prove infringement. The Supreme Court ruled on January 22, 2014, in Medtronic, Inc. v. Mirowski Family Ventures, LLC, that this burden of proof still applies when a patent licensee sues the patent owner for a declaratory judgment that certain products do not infringe […]
On September 27, 2013, the Federal Trade Commission announced its intention to conduct a study of “patent assertion entities” (“PAEs”). The FTC’s press release is here, the Federal Register notice is here, and the online public comment form is here. According to the FTC, “PAEs are firms with a business model based primarily on purchasing […]
The Federal Circuit has ruled that Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.’s financial and internal market research information may remain protected and need not be disclosed to the public. As we have noted separately, U.S. District Court Judge Koh had denied both parties’ motions to seal financial and other commercial information that the parties considered […]
On June 17, 2013, in FTC v. Actavis, the Supreme Court resolved a long-brewing battle between the FTC and the antitrust and patent defense bar over whether reverse-payment patent settlements between patentees and alleged infringers violate federal antitrust laws. These settlements are categorized as reverse-payments because the settlement arises in the following circumstance: Alleged infringer […]
On June 13, 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously held that 1) naturally-occurring DNA sequences are not patentable, even if they have been isolated from their natural environment, and 2) sequences of complimentary DNA (cDNA) are patentable. The Court’s recent decision in Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 569 U.S. ____ […]
