Posts Tagged: "on-sale bar"

Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) further explained the “on-sale” bar in Junker v. Medical Components, Inc., Case No. 2021-1649 (Feb. 10, 2022). As previously reported here, the case hinged on whether a letter between Larry Junker’s business partner and Boston Scientific Corporation (BSC) was a “commercial offer for sale” before the one-year grace period took effect. The CAFC held that all necessary terms for a commercial offer were present in the letter, and therefore, the letter qualified as a commercial offer for sale invalidating Junker’s patent.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today reversed the U.S. District Court for the District of Pennsylvania’s summary judgment that a medical device design patent was not invalid under the on-sale bar. Junker v. Medical Components, Inc. The district court found the patent was infringed and awarded damages in the amount of $1,247,910. But the CAFC held that a letter sent by the inventor’s business partner to Boston Scientific Corporation in 1999 represented a commercial offer for sale of the claimed design.

On January 24, the Federal Circuit affirmed a jury’s finding that the defendant-appellant, Medtronic, induced surgeons to infringe two patents of plaintiff-appellee, Dr. Mark Barry, which were directed to methods of correcting spinal column anomalies, such as those due to scoliosis, by applying force to multiple vertebrae at the same time. Medtronic appealed on several grounds, “principally concerning the public-use and on-sale statutory bars, but also concerning prior invention, inequitable conduct, and induced infringement.” The majority of the panel rejected the appellant’s arguments, while Chief Judge Prost dissented and would have found that one of the patents was invalid due to either the public use or on sale bars of Section 102(b). Barry v. Medtronic, Inc., No. 2017-2463, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 2305 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 24, 2019) (Before Prost, Chief Judge, Moore and Taranto, Circuit Judges) (Opinion by Taranto) (Dissent by Prost).