U.S. Patent No. D822,755 S (‘755) issued on July 10, 2018, for “Eyeglasses.” It was issued to inventors Evan Spiegel of Venice, California, Lauryn Morris, of Los Angeles, California, David Meisenholder of Venice, California, and Qiaokun Huang of Venice, California. The applicant/assignee is Snap Inc., the parent company of the social media company Snapchat. Evan …
Category: patent
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: Nexus Required Between Attorney Fees Award and Misconduct
Another recently unsealed opinion from August 15, 2018 revealed a decision of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit involving inequitable conduct and fee award. In the opinion dated July 28, 2018, in In re Rembrandt Techs., LP Patent Litigation,[1] the Fed Circuit held that while the district court did not abuse its discretion, …
CannabIP: U.S. Patent No. 9,987,567 B1
U.S. Patent No. 9,987,567 B1 issued on June 5, 2018, to inventor Ryan Delmoral Ko, of Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada, and applicant/assignee NextLeaf Solutions Ltd., of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. NextLeaf is an extraction and distillation processing company of cannabis material. NextLeaf represents one of many cannabis-industry companies awaiting the country-wide legalization of cannabis in …
CannabIP: U.S. Patent No. 9,981,203 B2
U.S. Patent No. 9,981,203 B2 issued on May 29, 2018, entitled “Rapid drying extraction targeting oil resin plant extracts.” It was issued to applicant and inventor Ahmed Shuja of San Francisco, California. Ahmed Shuja is the co-founder of OGZ Holdings, a cannabis extraction research company, and lvl Analytics, a tech analytics startup; Dr. Shuja is …
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: Enabling Scope of Design Patent Claims Expands – Greatly
In a potentially ground-breaking decision in design patent prosecution, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit handed down In re Maatita,[1] on August 20, 2018. The facts are as follows. Ron Maatita filed a design patent application with the USPTO, Serial No. 29/404,677, claiming an athletic shoe sole design. As with all design patent …
Fed Circuit Watch: USPTO’s §315(b) “Real Party in Interest” Definition Too Narrow
Inter partes reviews (IPRs) (37 C.F.R. §42.100 et seq.) may be instituted by the USPTO, at its discretion, but there are some defined statutory requirements. On August 17, 2018, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit unsealed an opinion that was originally written on July 9, 2018, Applications in Internet Time, LLC v. RPX Corp.,[1] which …
Fed Circuit Watch: Indexing Database Lacks Patent-Eligible Subject Matter Under §101
On August 15, 2018, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued BSG Tech LLC v. Buyseasons, Inc.,[1] which represents one additional case in the §101 jurisprudence. This particular case bears striking resemblance to the Enfish case,[2] where the Fed Circuit upheld software claims directed to a self-referential table in a database, and therefore, …
Monsanto Hit with $289M Glyphosate Jury Verdict
On August 10, 2018, a California state jury for the first time found Monsanto’s blockbuster herbicide, ROUNDUP®, was the cause of cancer, finding the weed killer caused a plaintiff’s terminal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and delivered to Monsanto a liability bill in the amount of $289 million. Although this blog does not normally analyze trial court decisions, …