Posts Tagged: "District Court of Deleware"

2017 Saw Fewest Patent Lawsuits Filed Since 2011

Q4 2017 saw a total of 981 patent infringement cases filed in district courts, the second-lowest total for any quarter in 2017 and the third-lowest total for any quarter dating to the third quarter of 2011. The 4,057 patent suits filed in district court through 2017 was the lowest total for an entire year since 2011… A week-by-week graph of patent filings shows that, while Eastern Texas saw a much greater share of patent filings than Delaware in the months leading up to the TC Heartland decision, Delaware filings have topped Eastern Texas filings in almost every week since the SCOTUS decision.

Supreme Court Reverses Federal Circuit on Venue for Patent Infringement Suits

In the U.S. Supreme Court case of TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Grp. Brands LLC, venue in patent infringement cases are governed by 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b), which states that patent infringement suits can be brought in the district where the defendant “resides” or where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.

Recent court rumblings about a narrow scope of IPR estoppel

An Inter Partes Review (IPR) is an important tool for companies that face frequent patent infringement challenges. An IPR is essentially a mini-litigation focusing solely on patent validity conducted before a panel of administrative patent judges sitting in the Patent Trial and Appeal board (PTAB). Once an IPR is initiated, a decision on validity is issued within one year. The narrow focus, fast timing, and lower cost of an IPR, along with certain legal advantages that make proving invalidity easier in an IPR than in a district court, make it an attractive alternative to district court litigation when good invalidity arguments are available.

What Petitioners and Patent Owners Need to Know About the Scope of IPR Estoppel

In the recent case of Intellectual Ventures v. Toshiba, Judge Robinson noted that “the Federal Circuit has construed the language quite literally” in the use of the word “during.” The term is spelled out as “any ground that the petitioner raised or reasonable could have raised during that inter partes review” in § 315(e)(1). The judge noted that while extending the logic of non-instituted grounds as not being able to be raised “during” an IPR proceeding to prior art references that were never presented to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board at all “confounds the very nature of this parallel administrative proceeding, the court cannot divine a way around the Federal Circuit’s interpretation in Shaw.” Thus, she did not estop Toshiba from presenting the grounds never presented to the PTAB in a pair of orders in December and January, and heavily implied that the Federal Circuit should weigh in to clarify the issue.

Amgen v. Regeneron: Will the permanent injunction against Regeneron’s new PCSK9-inhibitor hold up on appeal?

On January 5, 2017, the District of Delaware issued its long-awaited decision in the patent dispute pending between Amgen and Regeneron wherein the Court granted Amgen’s request for a permanent injunction against Regeneron’s new PCSK9-inhibitor cholesterol drug. Both Amgen and Regeneron each independently spent billions of dollars over the past decade-plus developing a new class of cholesterol drug. The drug itself comprises an antibody that binds to PCSK9 proteins… Whereas Regeneron managed to be the first to market, Amgen succeeded in getting to the Patent Office first. Amgen originally sued Regeneron, along with Sanofi, its European partner, in October 2014. Amgen asserted three patents directed to antibodies that bind to PCSK9. Over the next month, Amgen commenced additional lawsuits as new patents issued from the Patent Office. The cases were eventually consolidated, but Amgen eventually went to trial against Regeneron on only two of the originally asserted patents.