Posts Tagged: "unclean hands"

Federal Circuit Affirms Inequitable Conduct Holding Against GS CleanTech

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed a ruling by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana finding CleanTech’s patents-in-suit unenforceable for inequitable conduct for making a pre-critical-date offer for sale.  The patents-in-suit, U.S. Patent Nos. 7,601,858 (“the ’858 patent”), 8,008,516 (“the ’516 patent”), 8,008,517 (“the ’517 patent”), and 8,283,484 (“the ’484 patent”), are directed to methods of recovering oil from a dry mill ethanol plant’s byproduct, i.e. “thin stillage.” 

Merck Hepatitis C Virus Treatment Patents Unenforceable due to Unclean Hands

On Wednesday, April 25th, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Gilead Sciences v. Merck & Co. et. al., which affirmed a lower court’s ruling that Merck could not assert claims from two patents against Gilead because Merck had unclean hands regarding the patents. The case, coming out of the Northern District of California, involves patents covering methods for effectively treating the hepatitis C virus (HCV)… Reviewing the facts of the case, the Federal Circuit panel found sufficient evidence supporting the district court’s findings of serious business misconduct by Merck, that Merck’s misconduct was related to the litigation and that litigation misconduct had occurred based on false testimony provided by Merck’s non-firewalled patent lawyer, who had originally testified that he was not a party to the March 2004 phone call with Pharmasset.

Rambus Suffers Loss at ITC, Destruction of Evidence Cited

On Thursday, July 25, 2012, the International Trade Commission (ITC) terminated an investigation into whether certain Rambus patents were being infringed by Garmin International, Cisco Systems, Seagate Technologies and others. It seems that Rambus cannot shake the mistakes of the past. The Barth patents being unenforceable due to the destruction of documents relates to the Rambus’ choice to destroy documents rather than have them discoverable during litigation proceedings.