Posts Tagged: "presumption of validity"

Federal Circuit Affirms Preliminary Injunction for CPAP Company

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued a precedential decision affirming the grant of a narrowly-tailored preliminary injunction to SoClean, Inc., a medical device company that makes CPAP machines, based on trademark infringement claims against Sunset Healthcare Solutions, Inc. SoClean alleged in 2021 that Sunset infringed its U.S. Trademark Registration No. 6,080,195. The registration covers the configuration of replacement filters for its sanitizing devices.

From SEPs to Discovery, Colombia is Getting More Patent Friendly

Latin American countries are not usually seen as a first line option when building a strategy to deploy global litigation campaigns to enforce patent rights. However, in 2022, developments in Colombian law highlighted it as a country with administrative and judicial systems that favor patent rights and provide for effective assertion of local patent assets.

Finnavations v. Payoneer: A Case Study Into a Broken Patent System

If you innovate and invest more than $10,000 to obtain patent protection on your idea, do you trust a government-issued patent to be a valid one?  And if you believe you have a valid patent, would you trust that government’s judicial system to protect you from sanctions for believing in its validity? These underlying assumptions provide the foundation to any system. If you purchase and obtain title to a car, stock, or real estate, you expect that title to be valid. And you expect not to be penalized for believing in that title’s validity.     For patents, it’s quite the opposite. It has become so commonplace for government-issued patents to be invalidated after issuance, we hardly bat an eye. But with the development of Section 101 law, the patent system has turned down a twisted path—one that sanctions patent holders for believing their patent to be valid. In Finnavations LLC v. Payoneer, Inc., the U.S. District court for the District of Delaware unfortunately advanced our patent system down this path

Is the Presumption of Validity Dead in Substitute Claims Issued as a Result of Motions to Amend After PTAB Proceedings?

Since the Federal Circuit’s decision in Aqua Products, Inc. v. Matal confirmed that the burden of persuasion on a the patentability of amended claims in a motion to amend in an inter partes review proceeding (and presumably other post issuance PTAB proceedings) is placed on the petitioner, the theoretical rationale for Section 282(a)’s presumption of validity is no longer present for such amended claims.  872 F.3d 1290 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (en banc).  In particular, there is no government agency that is tasked with performing the inquisitorial examination that gave rise to the original presumption.  How can there be a presumption that the government agent charged with examining the patent claims did his or her job, when there is no such person assigned to perform that job?

Solicitor General Tells SCOTUS that Patents are Public Rights in Oil States Brief

The government’s brief argues that IPR proceedings at the PTAB are consistent with Article III because, in its view, patents are public rights and not private ones and the right for an inventor to seek a patent is a public right. In the government’s eyes, it is constitutionally permissible for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to reassess previously issued patents for revoking in order to “correct its own errors.” If the PTAB errs, then patent owners have legal recourse in appealing those cases to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the government argues.