Posts Tagged: "induced infringement"

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Thursday reversed a district court’s denial of judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) to Amazon of no induced infringement and vacated a jury verdict finding that it had induced infringement of Vocalife LLC’s patent for a method of enhancing acoustics. Judge Hughes authored the opinion. The asserted patent was U.S. Patent No. RE 47,049, which covers “methods and systems for ‘enhancing acoustics of a target sound signal received from a target sound source, while suppressing ambient noise signals.’” Vocalife filed suit against Amazon, claiming certain Amazon Echo products infringed the ’049 patent–specifically, Claim 1’s reference to “providing a microphone array system comprising an array of sound sensors positioned in a linear, circular, or other configuration” and “determining a delay . . . wherein said determination of said delay enables beamforming for said array of sound sensors in a plurality of configurations.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Thursday underscored its October 2020 ruling that generic company, Teva Pharmaceuticals, was liable for induced infringement of GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK’s) patent directed to a method of treating Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) using carvedilol. The court clarified, however, that its ruling should apply only narrowly to the facts of this particular case. Judge Prost again dissented.

On October 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision in HZNP Medicines LLC v. Actavis Laboratories UT, Inc. affirming the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey’s findings of invalidity and noninfringement of certain claims of some of the asserted HZNP (Horizon) patents, as well as the district court’s finding of nonobviousness of one claim of another Horizon patent. The finding of nonobviousness means that Actavis, owned by generic drug maker Teva Pharmaceuticals, is enjoined from engaging in the commercial use, offer for sale, or sale of its product covered in its Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) until the expiration of U.S. Patent No. 9,066,913 (the ‘913 patent) in 2027.

On April 8, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Omega Patents, LLC v. CalAmp Corp. that reversed and vacated a district court’s ruling that CalAmp had directly infringed certain patent claims asserted by Omega. While the Federal Circuit did affirm that CalAmp directly infringed one of the asserted claims, it vacated and remanded on a number of the district court’s other findings. The decision was issued by a panel including Chief Judge Sharon Prost and Circuit Judges Timothy Dyk and Evan Wallach. Omega’s allegations of patent infringement centered on CalAmp’s sale of Location Messaging Unit (LMU) products that assist businesses and government entities by tracking fleets of vehicles and retrieving vehicle information such as battery health and speed for remote monitoring. A jury verdict in the Middle District of Florida held that all asserted claims were not invalid, were infringed, and that CalAmp had committed willful patent infringement. The jury awarded compensatory damages of $2.98 million and the judge trebled that damages award and added attorney’s fees, damages for sales subsequent to the jury verdict and pre-judgment interest, increasing the monetary award to about $15 million with an ongoing royalty rate of $12.76 per sale of infringing unit by CalAmp.

In Zup v. Nash Manufacturing, ZUP filed suit, alleging contributory infringement and induced infringement of the patent-at-issue, trade secret misappropriation under Virginia law, and breach of contract.  Nash counterclaimed, seeking declaratory judgment as to non-infringement and invalidity… Prior art references aiming to overcome problems similar to those addressed by a patent can support a motivation to combine invalidating references, and for evidence of a long-felt but unresolved need to be considered, the need must be solved by an invention that is more than minimally different from the prior art… Judge Newman dissented, finding that the majority applied an incorrect analysis of the obviousness factors. In her view, the prior art provides no suggestion to make the specific modifications made by the patent-at-issue, and the only source of those modifications is judicial hindsight.

But did Judge Reyna really fail to understand the importance that a web page and the page server are not the same thing as the Federal Circuit adjourned to deliberate? Did he and the other judges on the panel continue to have this important, yet fundamental misconception during deliberations? Did the reality that a web page and a page server are not the same thing become appreciated and understood by the Federal Circuit panel, or did this fundamental misconception perpetuate itself up to and through the decision making process? Did counsel for IBM managed to mislead the panel? Did the panel even realize that IBM had made the exact opposite argument about WebSphere technology at the district court? The sad, and rather inexplicable reality is it is impossible to know whether the Federal Circuit was mislead, simply didn’t understand the technology, or was even hoodwinked.

Proving inducement to infringe requires showing that the accused infringer possessed “specific intent” to infringe. In pharmaceutical cases, particularly those arising in the Hatch-Waxman framework, specific intent may be supplied by the wording of a drug label. Vanda sheds light on several issues relevant to inferring inducement to infringe based on a drug’s label. For example, can a label’s clear recommendations on ultimate dosage be negated by how a medical provider arrives at the dosage? Or, does finding specific intent require that every practitioner prescribe an infringing dose? Or, can evidence of substantial non-infringing use negate a finding of inducement when the drug’s label instructs performing the patented method?

Nalco asserted that the only difference between its patented method and the Chem-Mod Process was the location of the injection. The district court dismissed Nalco’s complaints for failure to state a claim, including its Fourth Amended Complaint (“4AC”) at issue in the present appeal… The Federal Circuit, in an opinion authored by Judge O’Malley, rejected Defendants’ argument that Nalco’s direct infringement claims were implausible and instead agreed with Nalco that the resolution of its claims depended on the construction of the terms “flue gas” and “injecting.” Resolution of this claim construction dispute was inappropriate at the Rule 12(b)(6) stage of the proceedings.

Lifetime Industries, Inc. v. Trim-Lok, Inc., 2017-1096, (Fed. Cir. Sept 7, 2017) is an appeal involving a dispute over the correct pleading standard in the context of allegation of infringement of a patented product.  The appeal resulted in the reversal of a district court’s final judgment granting Trim-Lok, Inc.’s motion to dismiss Lifetime’s complaint for failing to adequately allege that Trim-Lok either directly or indirectly infringed claims of its U.S. Patent 6,966,590 (’590 patent)… In sum, the Federal Circuit opinion in Lifetime is a good refresher on sufficiency of facts needed for filing a complaint alleging patent infringement. It is a refresher also on proving infringement resulting from assembly of components to make the claimed product when not all of the components are made by the same party.

A party need not prove its infringement case with detailed facts at the pleadings stage. For direct infringement, it is sufficient to identify where the alleged infringement occurred, when it occurred, who performed the allegedly infringing act, and why. For induced infringement, the pleadings must also allege an intent to infringe. For contributory infringement, it is sufficient to plead that the alleged infringer had knowledge, not necessarily intent, that its activities would lead to infringement.

The Cleveland Clinic’s diagnostic or “testing” patents at issue dealt with a process by which an enzyme was measured and correlated against known levels of the enzyme in patients who were healthy or had cardiovascular disease. The Federal Circuit applied the two step Alice analysis, affirming a finding of Section 101 ineligibility and a failure by plaintiff to state a claim of contributory or induced infringement.

The Federal Circuit’s decision in Akamai V broadened the circumstances in which the actions of others may be attributed to a single actor to support liability for direct infringement. Here, a patent that claims a method of administering treatment can be directly infringed if a physician performs some of the claimed steps and the patient performs the other steps under the physician’s direction and control. The infringement is induced by the drug manufacturer when it unambiguously encourages the performance of the infringing steps, as in its labeling for the drug.

This case concerns ongoing disputes between Power Integrations and Fairchild Semiconductors. The companies sued each other in Delaware, each asserting infringement of multiple patents by the other. At issue were power supply controller chips used ubiquitously in modern electronics, the patents related to those chips, and how power is supplied and regulated from the upstream source to the downstream electronic device… Induced infringement requires successful communication between the alleged inducer and the third-party infringer; it is not sufficient in itself that others directly infringed the asserted claims.

In light of Commil, the Supreme Court granted certiorari, vacated the judgment, and remanded the case to the Federal Circuit… First, the Court concluded that Warsaw’s non-infringement theory was objectively unreasonable. Second, the Court concluded that NuVasive had presented sufficient evidence such that a jury could conclude that Warsaw knew it was inducing doctors to infringe NuVasive’s patent. In a concurrence, Judge Reyna expressed several concerns about the court’s reasoning in reaching this conclusion.