Posts Tagged: "non-precedential"

District Court sua sponte raising dispositive issues not enough for case to be reassigned

While TecSec had urged the panel to reassign the case to a different judge on remand in part because the district court judge repeatedly held against TecSec, raised dispositive issues sua sponte, had been reversed on appeal for many of those issues, and had pre-judged a § 101 issue that has not yet been raised, reassignment is only appropriate in exceptional circumstances. “Here, reassignment is governed by Fourth Circuit law, which applies a three factor test for reassignment: 1) whether the judge would be reasonable expected to have substantial difficulty putting her views that were held to be incorrect out of her mind; 2) whether reassignment is necessary to preserve the appearance of justice; and 3) the degree of waste of judicial resources and duplication if the case were reassigned. See United States v. Guglielmi, 929 F.2d 1001, 1007 (4th Cir. 1991). Nothing in this case merits reassignment on remand.”

John M. Rogitz

October 25, 2016

In non-precedential decision, CAFC says prevailing party can challenge claim construction

what is particularly interesting about this case is that Smith, who had prevailed at the district court and was awarded about $322,500 in damages, thought he could not challenge the correctness of a claim construction made by the district court. While Smith could not have filed a cross appeal in this case concerning the claim construction, Smith could have asserted ‘alternative grounds in the record for affirming the judgment.’ Because Smith did not raise any such alternate grounds on appeal, the Federal Circuit could not address the correctness of the district court’s claim construction.

John M. Rogitz

October 11, 2016

In non-precedential decision CAFC reverses PTAB finding of obviousness in reexamination

In re: Natural Alternatives, LLC, 2015-1911 (opinion and errata) is a non-precedential but still notable case from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that finds the claims of a patent that was in reexamination to be patentable, despite the examiner and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board finding that the claims were obvious. While the examiner had cobbled together various references to make an obviousness rejection, the examiner failed to set forth “sufficient facts” supporting his position that the prior art disclosed the limitations of Natural’s claims in a manner that renders the claimed invention obvious.

John M. Rogitz

October 3, 2016