Intellectual Property

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued two important patent law opinions that relate to the inter partes review procedure introduced by the America Invents Act: Oil States Energy Servs., LLC v. Greene’s Energy Grp., LLC, which upholds the constitutionality of inter partes review, and SAS Institute, Inc. v. Iancu, which requires the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to adjudicate the validity all patent claims challenged in a petition for inter partes review if the Board decides to adjudicate the validity of any claim challenged in that petition.

On April 16, 2018 in a precedential opinion, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma v. Emcure Pharms., Nos. 2017-1798, -1799, -1800, affirmed the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey by construing the claimed chemical structure diagram to encompass at least the specific enantiomer depicted, refusing to limit the claim to only cover a racemic mixture of the (+) and (–) enantiomers, absent clear indication that the depicted enantiomer should be excluded from the claim.

The Federal Circuit provided a welcome boost for stakeholders in the field of personalized medicine with its recent decision in Vanda Pharm. Inc. v West-Ward Pharm. Intl. Ltd. (2016-2702, 2016-2708 April 13, 2018).

Led by Michael Renaud, Jim Wodarski, Mike McNamara, Bill Meunier, Aarti Shah, and Adam Rizk, the Mintz team secured an important victory for its client Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) at the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). The case was filed against LG, VIZIO, MediaTek, and Sigma Designs, and it involved complex graphics circuit technology.

Software patents are generally directed to a sequence of steps or rules, i.e., an algorithm, performed by a computer programmed to carry out the algorithm.  Because algorithms are inherently functional in nature, software patent claims are frequently written using functional, as opposed to structural, terms.

The term “blockchain” is everywhere, and it is likely that you will interact with blockchain technology every day in the years to come.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) anticipates issuing the 10 millionth utility patent at some point during the summer 2018.

The Eastern District of Pennsylvania recently granted immunity under the whistleblower provision of the Defend Trade Secret Act in what appears to be the first decision of its kind under the new federal trade secret statute.

Section 271 of Title 35 of the United States Code is the statute that codifies unlawful acts of patent infringement.  The most commonly asserted provisions are § 271(a) (direct infringement), § 271(b) (induced infringement), and § 271(c) (contributory infringement).

On March 20, 2018, the public version of Eastern District of Texas Magistrate Judge Roy Payne’s March 7, 2018 order tossing a $75 million jury verdict obtained by Ericsson against TCL Communication was released.

Further to our ongoing coverage of post-TC Heartland patent litigation, in a recent development from the Northern District of Illinois, the court granted counterclaim defendants’ motion to dismiss for improper venue.

Companies in many industries are integrating artificial intelligence into their products despite a decline in US AI patent filings driven by uncertainty about the patentability of software. Advances in machine learning are spurring the increased interest in AI.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in February that it was wrong for a judge to rule that a patent was ineligible under the Alice standard because there were underlying factual disputes that could not be resolved on summary judgement.

Automated Tracking Solutions, LLC, (“ATS”) appealed findings of invalidity for failing to claim patent-eligible subject matter by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s inter partes review decision declaring various claims of patent owner Thales’ U.S. Patent No. 6,474,159 (“the ‘159 patent”) nonobvious.

Struggling to keep case law relating to subject matter eligibility organized?  In February 2018, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released an improved Eligibility Quick Reference Sheet, providing patent practitioners with a useful tool for analyzing claims in view of 35 U.S.C. § 101 subject matter eligibility requirements.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is implementing eCommerce Modernization (eMod), as discussed at a USPTO Patent Quality Chat webinar on February 13, 2018.

In an application of 2017 U.S. Supreme Court precedent in Impressions Products, Inc. v. Lexmark Intern., Inc., the Northern District California in International Fruit Genetics LLC v. Orcharddepot.com, No. 4:17-cv-02905-JSW, recently denied a motion to dismiss a claim of patent infringement by holding that the patent exhaustion doctrine did not apply to a sale of a patented product that was outside the scope of the license granted by the patent owner. 

Recently, the District of Delaware held that a there was no work-product protection, and no common legal interest protection covering communications and documents shared between a patent owner and a third-party litigation financier, where the exchange occurred prior to any written agreement signed between the two parties and prior to the filing of any litigation.

On January 12, 2018 in Exmark Manufacturing Co. Inc., v. Briggs & Stratton Power Products Group, LLC, the Federal Circuit once again addressed the issue of apportioning damages, an area of the law that continues to evolve.  The parties in Exmark are competitors in the commercial lawn mower market.