Two cases decided recently by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit discuss the oft-problematic area of 35 U.S.C. §103, or the nonobviousness requirement. This is the second case, Realtime Data, LLC v. Iancu,[1] decided January 10, 2019. Realtime Data, LLC, owns U.S. Patent No. 6,597,812 (‘812), directed to system and method of providing …
Category: obviousness
Fed Circuit Watch: No Error in Reconsideration of Non-Instituted Ground of Unpatentability
Two cases decided recently by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit discuss the oft-problematic area of 35 U.S.C. §103, or the nonobviousness requirement. AC Technologies S.A. v. Amazon.com, Inc.,[1] decided on January 9, 2019, is the first case. AC Technologies S.A. owns U.S. Patent No. 7,904,680 (‘680), directed to data access management, in …
Fed Circuit Watch: PTAB Messed Up Obviousness Analysis (Again)
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) seems to have bungled an obviousness analysis (again), and was dinged by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in E.I. DuPont de Nemours v. Synvina C.V.,[1] decided on September 17, 2018. The case is a good primer on the law of obviousness related to overlapping ranges. …
Fed Circuit Watch: Opioid Addiction Drug Patent Not Obvious
On September 10, 2018, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided Orexo AB v. Actavis Elizabeth LLC,[1] in what turns out to be a fairly straightforward analysis of an obviousness case under 35 U.S.C. §103. The facts are as follows. Orexo owns U.S. Patent No. 8,940,330 (‘330), which describes opioid treatment generally, and …
Fed Circuit Watch: Broad Wins Latest CRISPR Court Battle
On September 10, 2018, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided Regents of the Univ. of Calif. v. Broad Inst., Inc.,[1] in the latest court battle in the CRISPR patent challenge pitting three of the nation’s largest research universities against each other. CRISPR, or “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats,” is a family …
Fed Circuit Watch: PTAB Error to Not Consider Arguments in Reply Brief
On August 27, 2018, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit handed down Ericsson Inc. v. Intellectual Ventures I LLC,[1] in which the rules played an important role in decisions made in the case. The facts are as follows. Intellectual Ventures I owns U.S. Patent No. 5,602,831 (‘831), entitled “Optimizing packet size to eliminate …
Fed Circuit Watch: Hyperlinked Material in Federal Register Notice is Prior Art
What constitutes prior art is not as easy as it may seem. While it may be uncontroverted that a Federal Register notice is prior art, the hyperlinked materials in that notice is what was at issue in Jazz Pharm., Inc. v. Amneal Pharm., Inc.,[1] decided by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on …
Fed Circuit Watch: PTAB Decisions Questioned in Light of SAS and Aqua Products
On June 19, 2018, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued Sirona Dental Systs. GmbH v. Institut Straumann AG.[1] The case is important because two other recent court decisions – SAS and Aqua Products – affected certain details of this case that ultimately affected how the Fed Circuit ruled. In SAS, the U.S. …
Fed Circuit Watch: No Challenge to Partial Institution Raises No SAS Issue
On June 7, 2018, the Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit handed down PGS Geophysical AS v. Iancu,[1] which has a tangential relationship to the WesternGeco LLC, of the recent WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical Corp. [2] recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. This case is one of several transition cases pending with the …
SCOTUS Watch: Supreme Court Vacates CBM Scope Definition
On May 14, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court granted PNC Bank National Assoc.’s petition for writ of certiorari and vacated the Fed Circuit’s ruling limiting the scope of a covered business method (CBM), in PNC Bank Nat’l Ass’n v. Secure Axcess, LLC.[1] The Supreme Court, in its orders, wrote: The petition for writ of certiorari …