Posts Tagged: "Judge Ray Chen"

Merck Hepatitis C Virus Treatment Patents Unenforceable due to Unclean Hands

On Wednesday, April 25th, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Gilead Sciences v. Merck & Co. et. al., which affirmed a lower court’s ruling that Merck could not assert claims from two patents against Gilead because Merck had unclean hands regarding the patents. The case, coming out of the Northern District of California, involves patents covering methods for effectively treating the hepatitis C virus (HCV)… Reviewing the facts of the case, the Federal Circuit panel found sufficient evidence supporting the district court’s findings of serious business misconduct by Merck, that Merck’s misconduct was related to the litigation and that litigation misconduct had occurred based on false testimony provided by Merck’s non-firewalled patent lawyer, who had originally testified that he was not a party to the March 2004 phone call with Pharmasset.

Preclusion Applies Only If Scope of Patent Claims in Both Suits are Essentially the Same

In SimpleAir v. Google, The district court found claim preclusion applied because the patents at issue had the same title and specification as previously litigated patents, SimpleAir files a terminal disclaimer to overcome obviousness-type double patenting, and Simple Air could have included the newly asserted patents in its previous actions. However, the district court never compared the claims of the patent at issue to the claims of the previously litigated patents.

Federal Circuit Affirms PTAB’s Rejection of Claims Despite Earlier CAFC Validation

Although the majority opinion was silent with respect to a prior claim construction by the Federal Circuit relating to the patent, Judge Newman wrote in dissent that the majority’s failure to address the issue (which was briefed) allowed for a final claim construction by the Federal Circuit to for the first time lack preclusive effect.

Litigants May Not Use a DJ to Obtain Piecemeal Adjudication

The Federal circuit heard the case on AbbVie Inc. v. MedImmune Ltd. AbbVie and MedImmune entered a development and licensing agreement in 1995. The agreement stemmed from a research collaboration between the parties, resulting in the antibody adalimumab, the active ingredient in Humira… In general, parties may not seek a declaratory judgment to litigate one issue in a dispute that must await adjudication of other issues for complete resolution of the dispute. In limited circumstances, courts may permit this type of action where litigation is pending that would resolve the remaining questions.

Google Suffers IPR Defeat on Patent Asserted Against YouTube by Network-1

On Tuesday, January 23rd, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a ruling in Google LLC v. Network-1 Technologies, Inc. which affirmed a finding by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that a patent covering a method of identifying media linked over the Internet was valid. The Federal Circuit disagreed with Google that the PTAB erred in its claim construction during the validity trial, leaving in place a patent that has been asserted by Network-1 against Google’s major online media platform YouTube.