Posts Tagged: "Teva v. Sandoz"

A group of six patent law professors filed an amicus brief with the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Cleveland Clinic v. True Health Diagnostics. The professors’ brief urges the Federal Circuit to reverse a finding by the lower court invalidating patents asserted by Cleveland Clinic covering diagnostic methods for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. According to the brief, the district court’s invalidation of Cleveland Clinic’s patents represents an improper application of 35 U.S.C. § 101, the basic threshold statute governing the patentability of inventions.

A review of amicus briefs filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in advance of oral arguments in Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC revealed that, by and large, the American tech ruling class wishes to see SCOTUS leave the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) intact in the face of the constitutional challenges facing the PTAB in the case. Today, we’ll review a series of briefs filed by amici representing many of the smaller players in the U.S. patent system who have by and large been railroaded at the PTAB, an agency which invalidates patents at an incredibly high rate, fails to follow Congressional statutes regulating its own activities and stacks administrative patent judge (APJ) panels to achieve policy objectives desired by the Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

It is that time once again when we look back on the previous year in preparation to close the final chapter in order move fresh into the year ahead. 2015 was a busy year in the patent world, although change was not as cataclysmic as it was in 2013 when the United States became a first to file country or in 2014 when the Supreme Court issued the Alice v. CLS Bank decision. It was still an interesting year nevertheless. As I close out 2015, I’ve reviewed my patent articles and have come up with my own top 10 patent moments for 2015. They appear in chronological order as they happened throughout the year.

Two independent errors warrant reversal, but to be fair, the district court did not have the benefit of the Supreme Court’s decision in Teva. Now, the Federal Circuit has the opportunity to address the interplay of Teva with claim construction in design patents. This is a much needed clarification.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has had a very long love affair with de novo review, a standard whereby the reviewing appellate court can simply do whatever they want without giving any deference to the district court judge or the jury. It isn’t much of an exaggeration to say that the Federal Circuit does what they want, when they want, how they want, and they have rarely let the standard of review get in the way. That was until today. Assuming the Federal Circuit follows the Teva decision as they are supposed to and as they have mindlessly followed other recent Supreme Court decisions in Myriad, Mayo and Alice, the Federal Circuit’s application of the de novo review standard to everything will come to an abrupt end.