Posts Tagged: "patentability requirements"

On day one of IPWatchdog’s Patent Litigation Masters program yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied two patent eligibility cases that the U.S. Solicitor General had recommended granting. The denials make it fairly clear that the High Court is not interested in helping to resolve the current problems with U.S. patent eligibility law, which generally have to do with a lack of clarity, arguably fostered by many of the Court’s own precedents. Following the last panel of the day on Monday, in which speakers discussed ways to improve and streamline patent enforcement in America, retired U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel told IPWatchdog he thinks the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up patent eligibility is self-serving. “I think the Court doesn’t want to admit they messed up the law in the four decisions – Bilski, Myriad, Mayo and Alice. They don’t even admit that it’s a big problem, but it is a huge problem, and everybody in the patent world knows it’s a huge problem,” Michel said.

Just like utility patents, design patents can be found obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103 by combining prior art references. But the test for obviousness for design patents differs from the more familiar standards for utility patents. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently reaffirmed this distinction, but the issue is far from resolved. A long line of Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) actions between LKQ and GM Global Technologies escalated to the Federal Circuit, where LKQ submitted an argument seeking to fundamentally change the obviousness analysis for design patents.

CareDx, Inc. and the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University earlier this week filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to review a 2022 decision holding certain claims of its patents directed to detection levels of donor cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in the blood of an organ transplant patient patent ineligible.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) held its East Coast Listening Session on AI Inventorship today, featuring both USPTO staff and patent stakeholder speakers contemplating possible approaches to patenting in a world in which generative artificial intelligence (AI) almost seems to have snuck up on everyone. While many speakers cautioned against moving too quickly to change the rules for AI-generated inventions, others warned that doing nothing could result in chaos for the USPTO and grave economic and innovation losses for the country.

Jeffrey Killian yesterday submitted a petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court asking the Court to provide clear guidance on or else throw out the Alice/Mayo test for patent eligibility. Killian is involved in an ongoing patent dispute in which the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) rejected claims of his  U.S. Patent Application No. 14/450,042 under Section 101. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed the ruling in August 2022. In the petition, Killian claims that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) violated Supreme Court precedent by ruling the patent application ineligible under the Alice/Mayo test.

One day before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is set to hold its first public listening session on AI inventorship, the U.S. Supreme Court today denied certiorari in the case of Thaler v. Vidal, which asked the Court to consider the question: “Does the Patent Act categorically restrict the statutory term ‘inventor’ to human beings alone?” Dr. Stephen Thaler lost his case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) last August, when the CAFC said the USPTO’s reading of the statute as clearly referring to inventors as natural person was “unambiguously” correct.

Yesterday, in a precedential decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed a district court ruling that upheld the validity of several claims in two Amgen patents and barred Sandoz and Zydus from producing generic versions of Amgen’s psoriasis drug Otezla until 2028. The CAFC ruling also upheld the district court’s ruling that three claims in Amgen’s U.S. Patent 10,092,541 were invalid. However, that did not stop Amgen from declaring victory in the case in a press release.

On April 17, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for writ of certiorari filed by pharmaceutical developer Novartis seeking to overturn a decision on rehearing by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that invalidated patent claims covering the blockbuster multiple sclerosis (MS) treatment, Gilenya. The cert denial leaves in place a CAFC decision derided by commentators as “procedural insanity” and increases the focus upon certain machinations at the appellate court bearing the fingerprints of Chief Judge Kimberly Moore.

On Wednesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) reversed a district court’s dismissal of a Florida vape company’s patent lawsuit against tobacco company Phillip Morris. Healthier Choices Management (HCM) filed the appeal to the CAFC after a district court ruled in Phillip Morris’s favor, dismissing the patent infringement case. HCM alleged that Phillip Morris infringed on its patent for an electronic pipe, U.S. Patent No. 10,561,170. The CAFC reversed the district court’s dismissal of the original complaint and its denial of HCM’s motion to amend the complaint. Additionally, the appeals court vacated the award of attorneys’ fees to Phillip Morris.

On Wednesday, April 5, the United States Solicitor General (SG) recommended that the U.S. Supreme Court grant certiorari in two patent eligibility cases in order to “clarify the proper reach and application of the abstract-idea exception to patent eligibility under Section 101.” The SG filed the same brief in each of the two cases, Interactive Wearables, LLC v. Polar Electric Oy and David A. Tropp v. Travel Sentry, Inc. et. al.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) in a precedential opinion today affirmed a district court’s judgment that AT&T Mobility LLC did not infringe an inventor’s wireless communications technology patent but held that AT&T had forfeited its chance to prove the patent is invalid on appeal. Joe Salazar’s U.S. Patent No. 5,802,467 is titled, “Wireless and Wired Communications, Command, Control and Sensing System for Sound And/or Data Transmission and Reception.” After unsuccessfully suing HTC Corp. for infringement in 2016, Salazar sued HTC’s customers, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, in 2019, alleging certain phones sold by the companies infringed his patent. A jury ultimately found that the companies did not infringe but that the patent was not invalid as anticipated.

Yesterday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed in part a district court ruling that found video game company Valve willfully infringed Ironburg’s U.S. Patent No. 8,641,525. However, the CAFC judges ruled that the district court erred when it estopped Valve from raising several grounds that were not the subject of its partially-instituted inter partes review (IPR) petition against Ironburg. Judge Clevenger dissented. A jury levied Valve with $4 million in damages, a sum that Ironburg argued should be enhanced. The district court did not grant enhanced damages, found that the two challenged claim terms were not indefinite, said the claims were willfully infringed, held that Valve was estopped from litigating the prior art grounds on which IPR was requested but not instituted, and also held that Valve was estopped from litigating later-discovered invalidity grounds. The CAFC affirmed all but the latter holding, explaining that the later-discovered prior art that was not part of the IPR petition must be held to a “skilled searcher” standard that it is the burden of the patent holder to prove is subject to IPR estoppel.

Yesterday’s oral argument in Amgen v. Sanofi was long-awaited and closely watched by many in the patent community. The Justices seemed skeptical that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC’s) decision was a significant departure from existing law, and they repeatedly questioned whether this particular case can be resolved on the facts and by employing current legal tests. During oral argument, Sanofi’s counsel, Paul Clement, admitted that the Court’s affirmance of the CAFC decision could result in the inability to functionally claim a genus in this particular area of antibody science, but said that’s ok because “functional genus claims are terrible. I think they retard the science.”

The U.S. Supreme Court heard three separate arguments today in Amgen v. Sanofi, a case that even Sanofi’s counsel agreed could effectively wipe out patents involving genus claims if the Court sides with Sanofi, or—as counsel for Sanofi and the Solicitor General’s Office suggested the Court could do—if it were to dismiss the case as improvidently granted.