Justia U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Elevated LDL cholesterol is linked to heart disease. LDL receptors remove LDL cholesterol from the bloodstream; the PCSK9 enzyme regulates LDL receptor degradation. Amgen’s 165 and 741 patents describe antibodies that purportedly bind to the PCSK9 protein and lower LDL levels by blocking PCSK9 from binding to LDL receptors. Amgen sued Sanofi, alleging infringement of multiple patents, including the 165 and 741 patents. Amgen and Sanofi stipulated to infringement of selected claims and tried issues of validity to a jury.The court granted judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) of nonobviousness and of no willful infringement. Following remand, a jury again found that Sanofi failed to prove that the asserted claims were invalid for lack of written description and enablement. The district court granted Sanofi’s Motion for JMOL for lack of enablement and denied the motion for lack of written description. The Federal Circuit affirmed. Undue experimentation would be required to practice the full scope of these claims, which encompasses millions of candidates claimed with respect to multiple specific functions. It would be necessary to first generate and then screen each candidate antibody to determine whether it meets the double-function claim limitations. View "Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi, Aventisub LLC" on Justia Law

Crocs's Design Patent 789, titled “Footwear,” has a single claim for the “ornamental design for footwear.” Crocs sued Dawgs for infringement, Dawgs sought inter partes reexamination (IPE) under 35 U.S.C. 311. The district court stayed its proceedings. The examiner rejected the claim as anticipated, 35 U.S.C. 102(b). While an appeal to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board was pending, Dawgs filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The bankruptcy court approved the sale of all of its assets to a new entity, Holdings, “not free and clear of any Claims Crocs . . . may hold for patent infringement occurring post-Closing Date by any person ... or any defenses Crocs may have in respect of any litigation claims that are sold.” The bankruptcy court authorized the distribution of the net sale proceeds and dismissed Dawgs’s bankruptcy case. Holdings assigned all rights, including explicitly the claims asserted by Dawgs in the infringement action and the IPE, to Mojave. Dawgs dissolved but continued to exist for limited purposes, including “prosecuting and defending suits" and "claims of any kind.”The Board declined to change the real-party-in-interest from the IPE requestor to Mojave, then reversed the examiner’s rejection of the patent’s claim. The Federal Circuit granted the motion to substitute. The assignments indicate that Mojave is Dawgs's successor-in-interest; as such, Mojave has standing. If the Board precludes substitution on the basis of a transfer in interest because of a late filing, it would defeat the important interest in having the proper party before the Board. View "Mojave Desert Holdings, LLC v. Crocs, Inc." on Justia Law

The Infinity patents share a specification and involve using a fax machine as a printer or scanner for a personal computer. The indefiniteness issues revolve around the connection between the fax machine and the computer, termed a “passive link.” In a suit alleging that Oki infringed the patents, the district court found the patent claims indefinite.The Federal Circuit affirmed. Infinity has taken materially inconsistent positions regarding the extent of the claimed “passive link”— specifically, whether it ends at the I/O bus inside the computer or merely at the computer’s port; the endpoint of “passive link” is not reasonably certain and the term is indefinite. Because there is no reasonable certainty about where the “passive link” ends, there also cannot be reasonable certainty about where the “computer” begins. View "Infinity Computer Products, Inc. v. Oki Data Americas, Inc." on Justia Law

Dr. Chudik applied to the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) for a patent on his “Guide for Shoulder Surgery” in 2006. The PTO examiner issued a second rejection in 2010. Rather than taking an appeal to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (35 U.S.C. 134(a)), Chudik requested continued examination (section 132(b)). In 2014, the examiner again rejected his claims. Chudik appealed to the Board. Instead of filing an answer, the examiner reopened prosecution and rejected the claims as unpatentable on a different ground; that process repeated in 2016. In 2017, while Chudik’s fourth notice of appeal from an examiner rejection was pending, the examiner issued another rejection, which led to a notice of allowance after Chudik altered his claims. Chudik’s patent issued in 2018.The PTO awarded Chudik a patent term adjustment of 2,066 days (35 U.S.C. 154(b)) but rejected Chudik’s claim for an additional 655 days of “C-delay,” for the time his four notices of appeal were pending in the PTO. C-delay covers appellate review by the Board or a federal court in a case in which the patent was issued under a decision in the review reversing an adverse determination of patentability. The PTO concluded that, in light of the reopening of prosecution, the Board’s jurisdiction never attached and there was no Board or reviewing court reversal. The district court and Federal Circuit affirmed. C-delay for “appellate review” requires a reversal by the Board or a court. View "Chudik v. Hirshfeld" on Justia Law

Customer loyalty programs issue points that customers can redeem for goods and services. Maritz’s patent relates to a system and method for permitting a customer to redeem loyalty points without human intervention. A graphical user interface provides allows the participant to communicate with a web-based vendor system, such as an airline reservation system. An application programming interface interfaces with the GUI and the vendor system to facilitate information transfer between them.cxLoyalty petitioned for a covered business method (CBM) review of claims 1–15 of the patent. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board concluded that original claims 1–15 are ineligible for patenting under 35 U.S.C. 101 but that proposed substitute claims 16–23 are patent-eligible. cxLoyalty appealed as to the substitute claims; Maritz cross-appealed both the determination that the patent is eligible for CBM review and the ruling as to the original claims.The Federal Circuit dismissed Maritz’s challenge to CBM eligibility and held that both the original and substitute claims are directed to patent-ineligible subject matter. The threshold determination that a patent qualifies for CBM review is non-appealable under 35 U.S.C. 324(e). Representative claim 1 is directed to transfers of information relating to a longstanding commercial practice and is directed to an abstract idea. The claims amount to nothing more than applying an abstract idea using techniques that are, individually or as an ordered combination, well-understood, routine, and conventional. View "cxLoyalty, Inc. v. Maritz Holdings Inc." on Justia Law

The patent at issue is directed to an efficient method for compressing video files; its claims generally concern “a method of decoding a moving picture in inter prediction mode,” in which “one or more reference pictures are used to estimate motion of a current block” over the time of the video. In inter partes review, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board found all claims unpatentable.The Federal Circuit affirmed in part and vacated with respect to claim 3. The court rejected an argument that the Board erred by relying on references that do not qualify as prior art printed publications under 35 U.S.C. 102. Substantial evidence supports the Board’s finding that persons of ordinary skill in video-coding technology could have accessed the references with reasonable diligence; those references constitute printed publications within the meaning of 35 U.S.C. 102. The Board erred by finding claim 3 anticipated when the petition for inter partes review asserted only obviousness as to that claim. View "M & K Holdings, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd." on Justia Law

In separate district court proceedings, several plaintiffs sued ABS and others for infringement of claims of six patents, including Cytonome’s 161 patent. Four months later, ABS sought inter partes review (IPR) of the 161 patent. The Patent Board invalidated certain claims of that patent while finding that ABS had failed to demonstrate that the remaining claims were unpatentable. Two weeks after the Board’s final IPR decision, the district court granted ABS partial summary judgment, concluding that ABS’s accused products did not infringe any of the 161 claims. Two months after that summary judgment decision, ABS appealed the IPR decision. The district court held a trial covering the patents remaining in the infringement case in September 2019. ABS filed its opening brief challenging the IPR decision in the Federal Circuit in November 2019. Cytonome “elected not to pursue an appeal of the district court’s finding of non-infringement,” then argued that, because it disavowed its ability to challenge that judgment, ABS lacked the requisite injury-in-fact required for Article III standing to appeal the IPR decision. Four months later, the district court entered a final judgment of noninfringement as to the patent claims. The district court has not yet ruled on ABS’s post-trial motions. The Federal Circuit then dismissed ABS’s appeal of the IPR decision as moot. Cytonome cannot reasonably be expected to assert the patent against ABS in the future. View "ABS Global, Inc. v. Cytonome/ST, LLC." on Justia Law

SIMO’s patent deals with roaming charges on cellular networks and describes apparatuses and methods that allow individuals to reduce roaming charges on cellular networks when traveling outside their home territory. SIMO sued uCloudlink)for infringement, alleging that four uCloudlink products came within claim 8 of the patent. The district court granted SIMO summary judgment, concluding that claim 8 does not require a “non-local calls database.” and entered a final judgment of $8,230,654 for SIMO.The Federal Circuit reversed, rejecting the district court’s claim construction and holding that claim 8 requires two or more nonlocal calls databases. A “plurality of memory, processors, programs, communication circuitry, authentication data stored on a subscribed identify module (SIM) card and/or in memory and non-local calls database” requires “a plurality of” each component in the list, including “non-local calls database.” In responding to uCloudlink’s summary-judgment motion, SIMO did not identify a triable issue on the factual question of whether, as uCloudlink asserted, the accused products lack a nonlocal calls database; uCloudlink is entitled to summary judgment of noninfringement. View "SIMO Holdings Inc. v. Hong Kong uCloudlink Network Technology, Ltd." on Justia Law

Simio’s patent, entitled “System and Method for Creating Intelligent Simulation Objects Using Graphical Process Descriptions,” describes different types of simulations, including those that are event-oriented, process-oriented, and object-oriented. In Simio’s infringement suit, the district court held that certain claims were ineligible for patenting under 35 U.S.C. 101. The Federal Circuit affirmed, applying the two-step “Alice” analysis. The claims are closely aligned to the decades-old computer programming practice of substituting text-based coding with graphical processing; the focus of the claimed advance remains the abstract idea. Considering the claim elements both individually and as an ordered combination, FlexSim “met its burden of showing no inventive concept or alteration of computer functionality sufficient to transform the system into a patent-eligible application.” View "Simio, LLC v. FlexSim Software Products, Inc." on Justia Law

Raytheon and GE compete in the market to supply propulsion engines to the commercial aviation industry. Raytheon’s patent, entitled “Gas Turbine Engine with Low Stage Count Low-Pressure Turbine,” claims a two-stage high-pressure turbine engine for commercial airplanes. The patent issued in 2014. In 2016, GE petitioned the Patent Trial and Appeal Board for inter partes review, asserting that certain claims were unpatentable as obvious based on the combination of two prior art references. The Board found five claims nonobvious. GE filed an unsuccessful request for rehearing challenging the Board’s application of the legal standard for both teaching away and motivation to combine. Raytheon moved to dismiss GE’s appeal for lack of standing.The Federal Circuit vacated. Having alleged sufficient facts to establish that it is engaging in an activity that creates a substantial risk of future infringement, GE has standing to bring its appeal. The Board lacked substantial evidence for its conclusions that prior art teaches away from using a two-stage high-pressure turbine and that GE did not establish a motivation to combine prior art. View "General Electric Co. v. Raytheon Technologies Corp." on Justia Law