Posts Tagged: "Federal Circuit"

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruled today in a precedential opinion that Alarm.com, which was denied institution on three inter partes review (IPR) petitions it filed against patents owned by Vivint, Inc., could not simply “repackage” arguments raised in its IPR petition to challenge the same patent via ex parte reexamination. The opinion was authored by Chief Judge Moore. In so ruling, the CAFC said that it was “arbitrary and capricious” and an abuse of discretion for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to grant the reexamination request after it had denied the IPRs under 35 U.S.C. § 325(d).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued a precedential opinion reversing a district court’s denial of SRI International’s motion to reinstate the jury’s willfulness verdict against Cisco Systems, Inc., restoring the district court’s award of enhanced damages, and affirming an award of attorney fees for SRI. The CAFC specifically clarified that its reference to language in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Halo Elecs., Inc. v. Pulse Elecs., Inc., 136 S. Ct. 1923, 1934 (2016) on a first appeal in the case was not meant to create a heightened requirement for willful infringement. Judge Lourie authored the opinion.

On Friday, September 24, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) granted Juniper Networks, Inc.’s petition for a writ of mandamus directing Judge Alan Albright of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas (WD of TX) to transfer six actions to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, holding that denying the motion to transfer constituted a legal error. The Federal Circuit has repeatedly granted such mandamus petitions from the WD of TX, or ordered Albright to reconsider denials of motions to transfer, in recent months.

Two recent court decisions in the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively, have considered (i) the disclosure obligation pursuant to Clause 4.1 of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s (ETSI) Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy, and (ii) the impact this has on the enforceability of a patent subject to the Policy…. Both decisions were in the ongoing patent and fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) related litigations between Optis and Apple. In summary, the decisions confirmed that neither Optis nor its predecessors had breached their duty to disclose IPR to ETSI under clause 4.1, nor did the timing of their disclosures constitute egregious misconduct, so as to result in an implied waiver under U.S. law, or in the case of the UK, a proprietary estoppel, preventing or restricting enforcement of the patent.

On Day 2 of IPWatchdog LIVE, a lively morning panel was convened on the subject of “Is the Federal Circuit Killing Software Patents?” Though that question was answered in the first few seconds of the panel session, the following hour of discussion yielded various ideas on how disastrous jurisprudence on Section 101 subject matter eligibility could be addressed at the Federal Circuit. Speaking on this panel was Robert Stoll, Co-Chair of the IP Group at Faegre Drinker and Former Commissioner of Patents, USPTO; Russ Slifer, Principal at Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner and Former Deputy Director, USPTO; Raymond Millien, CEO at Harness Dickey; and Benjamin Cappel, Partner at AddyHart P.C.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued an order denying MaxPower Semiconductor, Inc.’s appeal and Petition for Writ of Mandamus with respect to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB’s) decisions to institute ROHM Semiconductor USA, Inc.’s petitions for four inter partes review (IPR) proceedings of MaxPower patents. The five-page Order was authored by Judge Reyna over a 17-page partial dissent by Judge O’Malley. The majority first explained that a decision to institute IPR is non-appealable under 35 U.S.C. §314(d), which plainly “confirms the unavailability of jurisdiction” for the CAFC to hear the direct appeals. Section 314(d) also presents a challenge to the mandamus petition, said the court, because MaxPower did not meet the criteria necessary to invoke the “collateral order doctrine.”

On September 1, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s (TTAB’s) cancellation of a trademark owned by Sweet 16 Musical Properties (Sweet 16), concluding that there is no Appointments Clause issue with the TTAB…. On appeal, Sweet 16 raised a constitutional challenge to the composition of the TTAB panel that decided their case. Sweet 16 argued that the administrative trademark judges (ATJs) who sat on the panel were appointed in violation of the Appointments Clause of Article II of the U.S. Constitution, and therefore the TTAB’s decision must be vacated. The acting Director of the USPTO, as intervenor, asserted that the ATJs were appointed lawfully.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), in a precedential opinion authored by Judge Dyk, partially reversed a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California that had awarded damages to Lubby Holdings LLC for patent infringement by Henry Chung. While the Federal Circuit agreed that Chung directly infringed, it held that the court erred in awarding damages for the sales of infringing products prior to commencement of the case, which represents the date Chung received actual notice of the ’284 patent under the patent marking requirement of 35 U.S.C. § 287. Judge Newman concurred in part and dissented in part.

In a precedential decision written by Judge Reyna, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday upheld a Delaware district court’s ruling that Belcher Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s Chief Science Officer engaged in inequitable conduct, making its U.S. Patent No. 9,283,197 unenforceable. Belcher brought the suit against Hospira, Inc. for infringement of the ‘197 patent under the Hatch-Waxman Act, but the district court found that the Belcher Chief Science Officer withheld material information from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) during patent prosecution, and the CAFC affirmed.

On August 26, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California’s decision in an interlocutory appeal brought by MLC Intellectual Property, LLC (MLC) regarding orders that precluded certain opinions of MLC’s damages expert in its infringement suit against Micron Technology, Inc. (Micron). The orders precluded the expert from 1) characterizing specific license agreements as reflecting a 0.25% royalty; 2) discussing a reasonable royalty rate when MLC failed to provide essential information and documents related to its damages theory when requested prior to expert discovery; and 3) discussing the royalty base and rate because the expert did not apportion for non-patented features.

On August 26, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed the decision of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, holding Google LLC did not infringe patents held by Data Engine Technologies LLC (DET). DET sued Google for infringing certain claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 5,590,259; 5,784,545; and 6,282,551 (the Tab Patents). The Tab Patents are directed to systems and methods for displaying and navigating three-dimensional electronic spreadsheets by use of user customizable “notebook tabs” on a spreadsheet interface. The prior art discussed in this trio of patents explained that “three-dimensionality, as presently implemented, is an advanced feature beyond the grasp of many spreadsheet users.” ‘259 patent col. 3 ll. 9-11. Accordingly, the Tab Patents explain, prior art spreadsheets require the user to manipulate each individual spreadsheet within a three-dimensional spreadsheet as an individual window in a graphical window environment. By contrast, the Tab Patents recite notebook tabs that allow the user to simply “flip through” several pages of the notebook to rapidly locate information.

On Thursday, August 26, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Universal Secure Registry LLC v. Apple Inc. in which the appellate court affirmed the District of Delaware’s grant of a motion to dismiss Universal Secure Registry’s (USR) patent infringement allegations. In a decision that will be discouraging to some, though unsurprising, the Federal Circuit okayed the district court’s invalidation of all asserted claims from USR’s four patents-in-suit, finding that each patent was properly gunned down after being placed on the firing line of Section 101 subject matter ineligibility. The opinion was authored by Judge Stoll.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today reversed a jury verdict for Juno Therapeutics and Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research (Juno), wiping out a $1.2 billion judgment for the entities. The CAFC found that the jury’s verdict with respect to written description was not supported by substantial evidence. The case relates to U.S. Patent No. 7,446,190, owned by Sloan Kettering, which is titled “Nucleic Acids Encoding Chimeric T Cell Receptors.” The patent generally covers cancer immunotherapy technology. Juno sued Kite Pharma, Inc. for infringement of the ‘190 patent through the sale of its YESCARTA product. Kite countersued, seeking declaratory judgments of noninfringement and invalidity. The jury ultimately found in Juno’s favor and, in post-trial briefs, Kite moved for judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) on several grounds, including that the claims were not supported by sufficient written description. The district court denied JMOL and Kite appealed.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), with Judge Stoll writing, earlier today reversed a denial of judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) of no infringement relating to U.S. Patent No. 9,031,521, which is assigned to Dali Wireless, Inc. The court also affirmed the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas on a number of other issues, including its denial of JMOL of invalidity of the ‘521 patent. The ‘521 patent is titled “System and Method for Digital Memorized Predistortion for Wireless Communication.” The patent solves the problem of unintended distortions to a signal caused by power amplifiers used to boost the signal on devices such as mobile phones. The patent does this through “through the use of a feedback loop and lookup tables.”

SAS Institute is a software company in North Carolina. Founded in 1976, it employs thousands of people in the United States and thousands more around the world. World Programming, Ltd. (WPL) is a British company that decided to build a clone of SAS’s popular analytics software and, as several courts have found, broke the law to do it. After a decade of litigation across two continents and an unpaid multi-million-dollar judgment, the parties are once again in court. This time, however, WPL’s arguments pose grave dangers to all owners of other copyrighted works. WPL did not try to compete with SAS by building a different or better product. Instead, it ordered copies of SAS’s products under the guise of an educational license, but with the true intent to reverse-engineer and copy key elements, including the selection and arrangement of its outputs, and even the manuals licensed users receive from SAS. The result is that WPL produced a clone, taking the exact same input and producing the exact same output that SAS does. Avoiding the years of investment and fine-tuning that SAS undertook to create its market-leading software, WPL undercut SAS’s price in the market and lured away SAS’s customers.