Posts Tagged: "Federal Circuit"

Anyone reading this by now knows of the current situation with Judge Pauline Newman and the investigation initiated by Chief Judge Moore. As a former chief judge of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, I understand the challenges of overseeing smart, independent, and strong-willed judges, and I’ve gained a somewhat unique perspective on the ongoing saga, albeit as an outsider.

On the evening of July 5, inventor advocacy group US Inventor hosted a webinar to discuss the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) recently introduced into the U.S. Senate by Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE). The featured guest speaker was Retired U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel, who has been involved in the development of PERA’s draft legislative text and has personally supported PERA as an important step in “reviv[ing] the faltering U.S. innovation system” by abrogating the series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that greatly expanded judicial exceptions to patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today denied Apple’s June request that the court rehear a decision that effectively canceled the tech company’s application to register the trademark APPLE MUSIC. Apple had asked the court to rehear the case in order to direct the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) to narrow the services listed in the trademark application so that it could proceed to registration. The owner of the trademark for APPLE JAZZ, Charles Bertini, in April won his appeal to the CAFC from the TTAB, which had dismissed his opposition to Apple, Inc.’s application to register the mark APPLE MUSIC. The CAFC said the TTAB legally erred in allowing Apple to claim absolute priority for all of the services listed in its application based on a showing of priority for just one service.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit today issued a precedential opinion that said claim preclusion does not apply to allegations of induced infringement based on an earlier finding of direct infringement. The case involves U.S. Patent No. 8,206,987, owned by Inguran, LLC and directed to “a method for sorting bull sperm cells according to a specific DNA characteristic in order to preselect the gender of a domestic animal’s offspring,” according to the opinion. Inguran does business as STGenetics (ST). ST has been involved in litigation with “bull stud” company, ABS Global, Inc., since 2014.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has granted a rare en banc review of its January, 2023, decision in LKQ Corporation v. GM Global Technology Operations, which affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ruling that LKQ failed to show by a preponderance of the evidence that GM’s design patent was anticipated or would have been obvious. U.S. Patent D855,508 covers a “vehicle front skid bar.” In its January decision, the Federal Circuit explained that “applying the tests established in Rosen and Durling, the Board found that LKQ failed to identify a sufficient primary reference, and therefore failed to prove obviousness by a preponderance of the evidence.

As the readers of this blog know, the Special Committee of the Judicial Council of the Federal Circuit is investigating a complaint identified against Federal Circuit Judge Pauline Newman. The Complaint alleges that Judge Newman “is unable to discharge all the duties of office by reason of mental or physical disability.” As a result, the Complaint essentially alleges, Judge Newman has authored too few majority (including unanimous per curiam) opinions compared to her colleagues, ignoring altogether the disproportionately larger number of her authored dissenting opinions. But the available evidence does not support the Complaint’s contention that Judge Newman’s performance has adversely changed in any statistically-significant way compared to that of her colleagues on the court.

Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision in Medytox, Inc. v. Galderma S.A. affirming a final written decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) invalidating Medytox’s patent claims covering methods for treating patients with botulinum toxin and denying a revised motion to amend patent claims. On appeal, the Federal Circuit rebuffed several challenges, including an Administrative Procedures Act (APA) challenge to the PTAB’s motion to amend pilot program, holding that the PTAB’s change in claim construction was not arbitrary or capricious, nor did it prevent Medytox from litigating construction issues.

On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential opinion that vacated a Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) ruling that a trademark registration from GPS vehicle tracking company Spireon was likely to be confused with three trademarks from supply chain management company, Flex LTD. The appeals court found that the TTAB made several significant errors and thus vacated and remanded the case. Flex LTD opposed Spireon’s FL FLEX trademark due to likely confusion with three of its marks, FLEX, FLEX (stylized), and FLEX PULSE. The TTAB determined whether there was a likelihood of confusion using the Dupont factors. The Board found that Flex’s marks were inherently distinctive under the first factor, and using the second, third, and thirteenth Dupont factors concluded that there was overlap between the two companies’ marks and ruled that Spireon registered its mark in bad faith.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied the petitions for certiorari in a number of IP cases today, including three the U.S. Solicitor General had recommended rejecting. In Genius v. Google, ML Genius Holdings (Genius) attempted to sue Google for posting song lyrics from its website in Google search results. Genius’s petition asked the High Court to answer the question of whether the Copyright Act’s preemption clause allows a business “to invoke traditional state-law contract remedies to enforce a promise not to copy and use its content?”

On Wednesday, June 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruled in a nonprecedential opinion that a Florida district court correctly dismissed a UK-based patent owner’s infringement case after he willfully disobeyed the court and disrupted the enforcement of a court order. The ruling is the second time that the UK resident, Yoldas Askan, lost a patent infringement lawsuit against FARO Technologies. Askan first sued FARO, alleging that the firm’s 3D scanner product infringed on claims in three of his U.S. patents. In the first case, Askan was sanctioned twice by the court and failed to respond to a court order demanding that he show cause.

The Supreme Court’s reasoning in Amgen v. Sanofi upholds the Federal Circuit’s longstanding requirement to enable the full scope of a claimed invention. Since the Patent Act of 1790, patent law has required describing inventions with such clarity and specificity as to enable one skilled in the art to make and use the claimed invention. Moreover, the Court has consistently held that a patent fails to satisfy the enablement requirement if a person having ordinary skill must engage in undue experimentation to practice the claimed invention. The Federal Circuit has gone a step further, requiring that patents enable the full scope of a claimed invention. Amgen is a ratification of this aspect of the Federal Circuit’s enablement jurisprudence.

The Special Committee of the Judicial Council of the Federal Circuit that is investigating a complaint identified against Judge Pauline Newman filed an Order today clarifying the scope of its investigation. The Order was in response to a June 15 letter from Newman’s counsel asking for clarification of the narrowed scope of the investigation and also asking that the July 13 hearing be open to the public, which the Committee refused. The Order clarified that “no part of the investigation has been terminated” and that the investigation into whether Newman “suffers from a disability that impairs her ability to perform the duties of her office remains ongoing.” In separate orders issued June 1 and June 5, the Special Committee narrowed the focus of its investigation to whether Newman’s refusal to undergo medical examination and to provide medical records constitutes misconduct, and agreed to publicly release a number of documents at the request of Newman’s counsel, respectively.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruled in a precedential decision Wednesday that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) was correct to affirm a United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) examiner’s finding that the claims of U.S. Patent Application 15/131,442 were obvious in view of the prior art. The patent application was filed by John Couvaras and covers a method of reducing high blood pressure. The examiner rejected the claims as “not patentable because they naturally flowed from the claimed administration of the known antihypertensive agents,” specifically, a GABA-a agonist and an Angiotensin II Receptor Blocker (ARB). Couvaras conceded during prosecution that Couvaras that GABA-a agonists and ARBs “have been known as essential hypertension treatments for many, many decades” but appealed to the PTAB on the ground that the prostacyclin—a naturally occurring compound in the body that acts as an anticoagulant and vasodilator—increase was unexpected. Couvaras also argued that objective indicia overcame any existing prima facie case of obviousness.

Parus Holdings, Inc. was unsuccessful today in its bid to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) to reverse two Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions invalidating its patent claims for voice recognition technology. The CAFC in part said in a precedential decision authored by Judge Lourie that since Parus violated the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) regulation against arguments incorporated by reference, the PTAB did not have to consider evidence related to those arguments.