Posts Tagged: "Univ. of Utah v. Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Zur Foerderung der Wissenschaften e.V."

The Federal Circuit heard the case on Univ. of Utah v. Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Zur Foerderung der Wissenschaften e.V. At issue is whether the district court abused its discretion in declining to award attorney fees to Max Planck. The case involved an inventorship dispute over the “Tuschl II patents,” for certain RNAi discoveries, and owned by Max Planck. March 2000, the Max Planck inventors published an article describing certain RNAi discoveries. A month later, Dr. Bass of the University of Utah published a review article discussing the Max Planck article and offering some hypotheses regarding RNAi. The Tuschl II patents were filed on subject matter that was influenced by testing Dr. Bass’ hypotheses. The University of Utah sued Max Planck, alleging that Dr. Bass is either a sole or joint inventor of the Tuschl II patents… The Court will not second-guess a district court’s finding that a case was not “exceptional” so long as the Court reasonably explained why the case does not stand out from other patent cases. A district court is not constrained to a specific or formulaic approach proposed in cases like Octane Fitness.