Latest News & Alerts

Patent Trial and Appeal Board Will Consider Patent Eligibility Challenges

We wrote recently about a legal theory being tested in federal court that an accused infringer may not have the right to challenge the validity of a patent in a lawsuit on the ground that the invention was not eligible for patent protection under 35 U.S.C. § 101. That would leave the district courts unable...

Only You Can Prevent Bad Patents

As one of the legacies of patent reform, third parties are now permitted to submit relevant materials to patent examiners in any given examination. As noted in the USPTO’s recent press release encouraging participation, “[s]ubmission of proposed prior art helps examiners determine whether the innovation in the application is patentable:” By introducing third party input...

Burden-Switching: Patent Licensee Must Prove Non–infringement

Patent disputes may feel never–ending. In some cases, such as this one, even a patent license isn’t the end of the story. Medical device manufacturer Medtronic entered a license agreement to resolve a dispute with the owner of a patent to a cardiac resynchronization therapy device. Under the terms of the agreement, Medtronic retained the right...

Pulling The Rug Out

We’re patently fascinated by Patently–O’s recent debate as to whether subject matter eligibility under Section 101 of the Patent Act (i.e. whether the subject matter of a proposed invention is even susceptible to patent protection or not) is a proper defense in patent litigation, since the Patent Act seems to omit it from the list...

One Rule for Plaintiffs, Another for Defendants in Patent Pleading

As we reported in June, the Federal Circuit decided in In re Bill of Lading Transmission and Processing Systems Patent Litigations that the bare­–bones patent complaint set out in Form 18 to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is enough to state a claim of direct patent infringement even though such a complaint wouldn’t pass...

Congressional Troll Study

The Congressional Research Service recently released a twenty–page report on patent assertion entities/non–practicing entities/patent trolls. Worth a more thorough analysis than this blog will offer, we note that the mere fact that Congress commissioned such a report demonstrates some not insignificant interest about this corner of the patent litigation world—and the fact that the report...

Can’t–Lose Apple

Billion–dollar verdict against Samsung—check. Stratospheric stock price—check. $600 million–dollar patent infringement verdict vacated by trial judge—check. That’s right, yesterday the Federal Circuit handed down a twenty-page opinion affirming a judgment as a matter of law in Apple’s favor in a case brought by Mirror Worlds, LLC on grounds that—notwithstanding that a jury had found infringement...

Akamai v. Limelight: Federal Circuit Induced to Look Elsewhere on Divided Infringement

In a long–awaited opinion, the en banc Federal Circuit decided Akamai v. Limelight today. Earlier, in ordering rehearing by the entire court, the Federal Circuit invited answers from the parties and friends of the court to this question: “If separate entities each perform separate steps of a method claim, under what circumstances would that claim...

Nowhere Else To Turn

We read with interest a recent post in Patently–O regarding one frustrated accused infringer’s attempt to seek relief through the only avenue available—by filing a lawsuit against the United States Patent & Trademark Office to force the agency to rescind its (allegedly improper) decision to revive an abandoned patent application. To make a long story...

Jury Awards Apple Samson–Sized Verdict Against Samsung

Our earlier post on the jury instructions and verdict form in the Apple–v.–Samsung mega–trial evidently understated the stakes between these two smart–phone behemoths. The San Jose jury made comparatively short work of the super–sized verdict form, and found Samsung guilty of willful infringement of a sufficient number of Apple’s asserted patents to support a more...