The Seagate two-part test for enhanced patent infringement damages under 35 U.S.C. § 284 — (1) objectively, infringement was not a close call, and (2) subjectively, the defendant knew or obviously should have known that — is gone. So too is the patentee’s burden to prove entitlement to enhanced damages by clear and convincing evidence. The […]
Monday the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear cases on patent laches, SCA Hygiene Products Aktiebolag et al. v. First Quality Baby Products, LLC et al., and copyright protection for clothing, Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands, Inc. In SCA Hygiene, the Supreme Court will review the Federal Circuit’s decision that laches remains a viable […]
The Supreme Court will continue to shape patent law in 2016, addressing critical components of the widely-popular Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and examining the standard for willful patent infringement in district court actions. IPR proceedings provide a streamlined avenue for invalidating issued patents. In the first two […]
In 1964, the Supreme Court held, in Brulotte v. Thys Co., that a patent owner may not receive royalties on a patent after the patent expires. Today, in Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, the Supreme Court declined to overturn Brulotte, relying on stare decisis, which “carries enhanced force when a decision, like Brulotte, interprets a statute.” […]
The Supreme Court decided today in Commil USA, LLC v. Cisco Systems, Inc. that an accused infringer’s good-faith belief that a patent is invalid, standing alone, is not a defense to induced infringement. As discussed in greater detail in our earlier post, the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s ruling that prohibited Cisco from presenting […]
Applying the Supreme Court’s new “reasonable certainty” standard for patent definiteness in Biosig Instruments, Inc. v. Nautilus, Inc. (2015) (Nautilus III), the Federal Circuit again held that Biosig’s patent for a heart rate monitor is not indefinite. In Nautilus II (2014), the Supreme Court rejected the Federal Circuit’s “insolubly ambiguous” standard for indefiniteness, but did not determine whether Biosig’s […]
Today, the Supreme Court held in B&B Hardware v. Hargis Industries that likelihood-of-confusion decisions by the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”) can have preclusive effect in federal court. Hargis applied to register the mark SEALTITE and B&B opposed, based on its registration for SEALTIGHT. The TTAB sustained B&B’s […]
On January 20, 2015, in Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., the Supreme Court reallocated power between federal district courts and the Federal Circuit in the patent claim construction process. For many years, the Federal Circuit has reviewed all district court claim constructions de novo, without deference to the district court. Today, the Court held […]
On December 5, 2014, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Commil USA, LLC, v. Cisco Systems, Inc., to decide whether a defendant’s good-faith belief that a patent is invalid is a defense to induced infringement. Previously, a divided panel of the Federal Circuit held that a Texas district court should have allowed evidence that Cisco believed […]
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 […]
