Posts Tagged: "Judge Gajarsa"

Nothing in the appealed issues in Pressure Products (claim construction, denial of motion for JMOL, leave to amend answer) even remotely hints at or suggests the basis for this five judge panel. In fact, Pressure Products has all the markings of a fairly ordinary, garden variety patent infringement case. So why not the standard three judge panel? Not a word of explanation.

Coming as no surprise, a majority of the en banc Federal Circuit just ruled in Ariad Pharmaceuticals v. Eli Lilly &Co. that there is there is a separate and distinct “written description” requirement in the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112. Also not surprisingly, there were multiple concurring (and dissenting) opinions. Judge Lourie (writing the majority opinion) has now won the on-going debate that has raged between him and Judge Rader (who has strenuously argued there is no written description requirement separate and distinct from the “enablement” requirement) since the 1997 case of Regents of the University of California v. Eli Lilly & Co.

But what is refreshing and important in the Federal Circuit’s opinion is that mischaracterizations of references relied upon by the patent examiner (or the BPAI) for obviousness rulings are not to be simply glossed over as “harmless error.” Put differently, the Chapman decision gives patent applicant’s a viable legal basis to hold a patent examiner’s (as well as the BPAI’s) “feet to the fire” to challenge an obviousness (or anticipation) rejection based on one or more mischaracterizations of a reference.