Posts Tagged: "CAFC"

The Federal Circuit held that the Board’s changed claim construction of “data flow,” violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), even if it was correct. In particular, it deprived the petitioner of the procedural protections of the APA, which prohibits an agency from changing legal theories during a proceeding without giving respondents notice of the change and the opportunity respond to the new theory. Because the Board changed its construction of the term “data flow” absent any suggestion from the parties, and without any notice, there was no meaningful opportunity to respond to the unanticipated change. Therefore, the Court vacated the decision of the Board to afford the parties an opportunity to present arguments on the Board’s newly-adopted construction of “data flow.”

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.

The Court agreed with Facebook in that these claim terms had no accepted meaning in the art, which meant that they cannot be construed broader than the specification disclosuses. The Court noted that the prosecution history also provided support for the district court’s construction. Further, because the other evidence was persuasive, there was no need to determine whether certain statements made by the patentees during prosecution rose to clear and unmistakable disclaimer, which is what Facebook argued in the alternative.

The Court found that “fractionation” referred only to distillation-based techniques. The specification’s use of the term “fractionation” controlled even if the definition was idiosyncratic. By that standard, the Court found that “fractionation” did not encompass solubility-based techniques. The specification identified the limits of “conventional fractionation” which were only limits of “conventional distillation,” and no other fractionation techniques known in the art were mentioned. Therefore, the specification equated “conventional fractionation” and “conventional distillation.” More broadly, this demonstrated that the specification equated the terms “fractionation” and “distillation.” This finding was further supported by the repeated and consistent use of the term “fractionation” in discussion of processes to separate mixtures by distillation.

The Federal Circuit found that the specification explicitly supported the district court’s claim construction, which precluded a finding of infringement. Two passages specified the meaning of, and provided context for, a claim term that referred to the relative location among certain claim elements. A “relative location” claim term is often read in light of, and by relying on, the written description. Because the district court’s claim construction was proper, the Court found the grant of summary judgment of non infringement was proper.

Days before this Federal Circuit decision, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued its decision for Informatica Corp. v. Protegrity Corp. The patent at issue in this case – U.S. Patent No. 8,402,281 – is directed to a database management system that includes an operative database and an information assets manager database. It is conceivable that the Board erred by pushing past the initial Mayo/Alice question and finding that these claims, which cover a data storage innovation of the kind found in Enfish, may have been erroneous. In other other words, when the Board determined that the combination of the methods did not add significantly more than the already determined abstract idea, that question might have never been properly reached in the first place.

I represent MCM Portfolio LLC, which is seeking Supreme Court review of a recent decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upholding the constitutionality of the inter partes review (IPR) procedures created by the America Invents Act (AIA). The petition is available here. Amicus briefs in support of the petition are being filed May 31. We argue that IPR violates Article III of the Constitution, which vests the judicial power in the federal courts, and also the Seventh Amendment, which guarantees a right to a jury in civil litigation.

The district court held that the patent was not invalid because those communications did not constitute an offer for sale that would trigger the on-sale bar. Watson appealed. The Federal Circuit reversed, holding that the communications did constitute an offer to sell. Applying basic tenets of contract law, the Court held that an offer must be complete, such that acceptance creates a binding contract. Merck’s communications were a complete offer because they were solicited and contained prices, terms of payment, and terms of delivery.

The Federal Circuit held that it is not the case that a patent must spell out a claim element’s function, way, and result, for the doctrine of equivalents to apply. It looked to what the claim element’s function in the claimed composition is to one of skill in the art, which it held may be determined by looking at extrinsic evidence. The Court found no error in the district court’s finding of infringement under the doctrine of equivalents. In applying the two part test (constructing a hypothetical claim that covers the accused device and comparing that claim to the prior art), the district court correctly determined that the hypothetical claim properly included the disputed excipients, i.e. Glenmark’s excipient.

Where the claims are directed to an improvement to computer functionality, they are not abstract under the first step of Alice, and thus no step-two analysis is necessary. Here, the Federal Circuit found that Enfish’s self-referential table was directed to a specific improvement in computer capabilities, unlike Alice, where the claimed technology only added a computer to a traditional business practice. For this reason, the Court held that Enfish’s claims were not abstract under the first step of Alice, and therefore did not warrant the application of step two.

From there the Federal Circuit said: ”We do not read Alice to broadly hold that all improvements in computer-related technology are inherently abstract and, therefore, must be considered at step two. Indeed, some improvements in computer-related technology when appropriately claimed are undoubtedly not abstract, such as a chip architecture, an LED display, and the like. Nor do we think that claims directed to software, as opposed to hardware, are inherently abstract and therefore only properly analyzed at the second step of the Alice analysis. Software can make non-abstract improvements to computer technology just as hardware improvements can, and sometimes the improvements can be accomplished through either route.”

The Court vacated the judgment against Mankes and remanded the case for further consideration. Because the law was in a state of flux, the Plaintiff pled facts that arguably would have supported an infringement theory under the law applicable when it was filed. The plaintiff could not have known the facts necessary to support a complaint under the law as it exists now. Because of this, the Court declined to affirm or reverse, and instead remanded the case to the district court for reconsideration under the new standards. Presumably, this would also give the Plaintiff an opportunity to amend the complaint.

The Federal Circuit held that Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (“Mylan”), a generic drug manufacturer, was subject to specific personal jurisdiction in Delaware because Mylan had filed an abbreviated new drug application (“ANDA”) and “contemplate[d] plans to engage in marketing of the proposed generic drugs” in the state.[1] The ruling affirmed two different decisions by judges in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware that Mylan was subject to specific jurisdiction in Delaware.[2] However, as noted below, it looks like Mylan intends to seek panel or en banc rehearing and possibly pursue a petition for certiorari if the Federal Circuit does not grant the rehearing or re-hears the case and continues to find personal jurisdiction.

The Court held that the district court must review the design disclosed in the patent as a whole, and consider whether functional elements contributed to the ornamentation of the design. Although a design patent protects ornamental features rather than functional features, the claims are not limited solely to ornamental elements. The combination of form and function to achieve an ornamental result is within the scope of a design patent. This is particularly true given that design patents are statutorily permitted to cover “articles of manufacture” which almost always serve a functional purpose. Because design patents “protect the overall ornamentation of a design, not an aggregation of separable elements,” eliminating individual elements of the design from consideration was found to be improper, and the Court remanded for further proceedings.

The Court affirmed the obviousness rejection, noting that even under the proper claim construction, substantial evidence supported the Board’s factual findings underlying its obviousness determination. The examiner properly relied on evidence from the request for reexamination showing a motivation to combine prior art, by combining a base system combined with a known improvement. , Man Machine did not introduce any objective indicia of nonobviousness. Thus, the Court affirmed the finding of obviousness.