Posts Tagged: "Judge Timothy Dyk"

In the second reexamination, OWW’s representations about a lack of corroborating evidence constituted inequitable conduct, because OWW was aware that such corroborating evidence existed. Specifically, James Colvin, OWW’s director of R&D, was in possession of two letters from Michael Scalise (Scalise Letters), an attorney for Silipos, which clearly stated that the Silosheath product line included gel only on one side. Further, Mr. Colvin was also aware of three declarations filed with Alps’s summary judgment motion which likewise corroborated Comtesse’s testimony. Nevertheless, Mr. Colvin took no action to correct the representations of OWW’s counsel to PTAB. The district court thus found that OWW had committed inequitable conduct because of the inaction of Mr. Colvin, and it declared the patents to be unenforceable.

On February 10, 2016, a divided Federal Circuit panel reaffirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) authority to institute trial and provide a final written decision on only a subset of the challenged claims in an AIA post-grant proceeding. At issue on appeal was the PTAB’s final decision not to address all claims that were challenged in the underlying inter partes review (IPR) Petition.

Nuance originally asserted over 140 claims from eight different patents against defendant ABBYY. The case was quickly referred to a special master for scheduling following Markman. The master followed Nuance’s proposal to limit the patents asserted at trial to four, and the total claims to fifteen. The district court agreed, and Nuance thereafter narrowed its case further: to seven claims from three patents. The jury found non-infringement on all claims. Eight months later, in a motion by ABBYY to compel costs, Nuance responded that the costs award should be stayed until its remaining patents had been tried. Nuance argued that the completed trial was only the “initial” trial and it had reserved its right to try the other patents in a subsequent trial.

The Federal Circuit took the case en banc to review the applicability of the patent exhaustion doctrine under Mallinckrodt and Jazz Photo, in view of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Quanta and Kirtsaeng. The Federal Circuit affirmed the holdings in Mallinckrodt and Jazz Photo, and distinguished them from the Supreme Court’s decisions. In Quanta, the Supreme Court was reviewing whether a patentee’s rights in a product were exhausted by a licensee’s sale of a product.

In a painfully long decision that at one point analyzed a 1628 statement of Lord Coke as relating to British common-law principles and what light that might shed on modern day patent exhaustion, the Federal Circuit held that when a patentee sells a patented article under otherwise-proper restrictions on resale and reuse communicated to the buyer at the time of sale, the patentee does not confer authority on the buyer to engage in the prohibited resale or reuse. The patentee does not exhaust its rights to charge the buyer who engages in those acts—or downstream buyers having knowledge of the restrictions—with patent infringement. The Federal Circuit also held that a foreign sale of a U.S. patented article, when made by or with the approval of the U.S. patentee, does not exhaust the patentee’s U.S. patent rights in the article sold, even when no reservation of rights accompanies the sale. Loss of U.S. patent rights based on a foreign sale remains a matter of express or implied license.

Pfizer argued that the original restriction requirement, because it was incomplete, created a delay by failing to provide Pfizer with adequate notice of the basis for rejecting its claims. The District Court ruled that the initial restriction requirement, while arguably incomplete, did in fact place Pfizer on notice of grounds for rejecting its claims, therefore satisfying § 132 and justifying denial of additional term adjustments. The Federal Circuit affirmed.

The Federal Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Dyk who was joined by Judge Taranto, first held that 35 U.S.C. § 314(d) did not preclude the Court from hearing Ethicon’s challenge to the authority of the Board to render a final decision. On the merits the panel held that neither the statute nor the Constitution precludes the same panel of the PTAB that made the decision to institute inter partes review from making the final determination. The Federal Circuit also found no error in the Board’s determination that the ’070 patent claims would have been obvious over the prior art. Judge Newman dissented, concluding that in order to restore confidence in the reliability of patents as “investment incentives” the USPTO must conform the inter partes review process to the statute.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (Board) cancelled the claims of the patent, finding them anticipated or obvious over several references. The Board construed “is connected” to mean that the computer be “active and online at registration,” even if the connection server’s database record was inaccurate, and the computer was no longer online. The Court reversed this construction, holding that the plain and ordinary meaning of the term “is connected” requires that the computer be connected to the network at the time the query is sent. The term “is” has a plain meaning, which requires concurrency. Where the claim language has a plain meaning that leaves no uncertainty, the specification generally cannot be used to infer a different meaning, absent clear redefinition or disavowal.

The law of patent eligibility is created by the nine least qualified people to make such a determination; the Justices of Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court arbitrarily chooses which of its own prior decisions to follow and ignore, refuses to read and enforce the laws passed by Congress even when the statue is but a single sentence (as is 101), and they openly legislates from the bench by creating judicial exceptions to patent eligibility where no such statutory prerogative exists. If the Federal Circuit will not step up and do the right thing and limit the lawless Mayo decision, which instructs lower courts to ignore the patent statute and drive 100% of the analysis into 101, the U.S. will forfeit our lead in the biotechnology and medical device industries. That will be bad for the economy, but far worse for public health.

In a November 10 ruling, the Federal Circuit held that routine quality control testing of each batch of a generic drug as part of the commercial production process, after FDA approval, is not protected by the Hatch-Waxman safe harbor provision of 35 U.S.C. § 271(e)(1). However, infringement only occurs under 35 U.S.C. § 271(g), as a result of “making” a product, which does not include quality control testing.

The issue on appeal was whether Applicants antedated the ‘560 reference in accordance with Rule 131. A patent applicant bears the burden of establishing “reduction to practice prior to the effective date of the reference, or conception of the invention prior to the effective date of the reference coupled with due diligence from prior to said date to a subsequent reduction to practice or to the filing of the application.” 37 C.F.R. 1.131(b). The Court concluded that substantial evidence supported a finding that Applicants failed to establish conception and continuing diligence, or actual reduction to practice, before the effective date of the ‘560 reference.

Despite the Supreme Court ruling that laches is no defense to a copyright infringement action brought during the statute of limitations, the Federal Circuit ruled laches can bar recovery of legal remedies in patent infringement. The Federal Circuit explained that the 1952 Patent Act codified the common law rule, meaning that laches was codified as a defense under 35 U.S.C. 282.
The Federal Circuit, sitting en banc, followed the common law principle that, ”[w]hen a statute covers an issue previously governed by the common law, [the Court] must presume that Congress intended to retain the substance of the common law.” The Federal Circuit also ruled that laches does not preclude an ongoing royalty.

Since the preferred embodiment did not have patentable characteristics that are distinct from other disclosed embodiments, the Court held that “the patentee [was] entitled to claim scope commensurate with the invention that [was] described in the specification.” The Court also held that the doctrine of claim differentiation was applicable here, since the “two severable score lines” limitation only appeared in a dependent claim but not in any independent claims. In other words, the presence of the “two severable score lines” limitation in a dependent claim gave rise to a presumption that such a limitation was not present in the independent claim.

JVC is a member of two licensing pools for optical disc technology, one for DVD and one for Blu-ray. The asserted patents are included in both pools. The district court adopted JVC’s position that the asserted patents are essential to the licensed DVD and Blu-ray optical discs. Given the patent pool and licensing program, which covers any and all optical disc structures and uses that are essential under the patents, only the use of unlicensed optical discs would be an infringement – regardless of any third-party software used to manipulate the discs. JVC did not argue, and no evidence of record established, that unlicensed discs should be attributed to Nero, or the patent pool license should not encompass discs and end-users that implemented the Nero software.

The issue was whether the disputed prior art is sufficiently “analogous” to the art of marking interface plates for it to be applied in a proper obviousness analysis. The Court held that even though an inventor may be aware of rock carving, engraved signage, or Prussian Blue methods, this does not mean that he would look to these methods when trying to improve markings for circuit board testers. The Court also found that the jury’s determination of validity, which tacitly concluded the disputed prior art was non-analogous, was supported by substantial evidence in the record.