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

Amdocs's patents concern parts of a system designed to solve an accounting and billing problem faced by network service providers. Each written description describes the same system, which allows providers to account for and bill for internet protocol network communications. The system's components are arrayed in a distributed architecture that minimizes the impact on network and system resources. Each patent explains that this is an advantage over prior art systems that stored information in one location, making it difficult to keep up with massive record flows from the network devices and which required huge databases. The court granted Openet summary judgment of non-infringement and no inequitable conduct and made claim constructions. The Federal Circuit affirmed two constructions, but vacated a third. On remand, following the Supreme Court decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International (2014), the district court invalidated all four patents as ineligible under 35 U.S.C. 101. The Federal Circuit reversed and remanded. While noting each abstract idea that the district court found to be disqualifying, the court reasoned that the claims at issue, understood in light of their written descriptions, could be eligible for patenting. The claims are not necessarily valid, having not yet been tested for novelty, non-obvious subject matter, and written description and enablement. View "Amdocs (Israel) Limited v. Openet Telecom, Inc." on Justia Law

Bosch sued Cardiocom, alleging infringement of two patents. Cardiocom petitioned for inter partes review of those patents. The petitions were denied because Cardiocom failed to show a reasonable likelihood that any of the challenged claims was unpatentable. Medtronic (Cardiocom’s parent company) then filed petitions seeking inter partes review of the same patents, listing Medtronic as the sole real party in interest. Bosch argued that Medtronic had failed to name Cardiocom as a real party in interest as required by 35 U.S.C. 312(a)(2). The Patent Board granted additional discovery regarding Cardiocom’s status, then dismissed, “persuaded … that Medtronic [was] acting as a proxy for Cardiocom.” The Board cited evidence that Cardiocom was the defendant in the infringement suits, that Cardiocom had filed its own petitions for inter partes review, that Cardiocom communicated with Medtronic while Medtronic’s petitions were being prepared, and that Cardiocom paid some of the fees for preparing Medtronic’s petitions. In November 2015, the Federal Circuit dismissed Medtronic’s appeals for lack of jurisdiction and denied mandamus relief, but later recalled the mandate, following the Supreme Court’s 2016 Cuozzo decision. The court subsequently reaffirmed. The Board’s vacatur of its institution decisions and termination of the proceedings constitute decisions whether to institute inter partes review and are “final and nonappealable” under section 314(d). Nothing in Cuozzo is to the contrary. View "Medtronic, Inc. v. Robert Bosch Healthcare Sys., Inc." on Justia Law

The 141 application relates to methods of treating or preventing influenza by administering the drug zanamivir by oral inhalation. The examiner rejected the pending claims as obvious over Australian Patent No. AU-A1-27242/92 (Von Itzstein I), in view of WIPO Publication WO 91/16320 (Von Itzstein II) and other references. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board agreed, finding that Von Itzstein II’s disclosure of “inhalation” for treating influenza with its compounds “is reasonably understood to disclose inhalation by either the nose alone, mouth alone, or both” and concluded that Von Itzstein II ,in view of Von Itzstein I’s disclosure of zanamivir, rendered the claims obvious. The Board also considered the applicant’s evidence of secondary considerations—namely of unexpected results—but found it to be unpersuasive. The Federal Circuit affirmed the rejection as supported by substantial evidence. View "In re: Efthymiopoulos" on Justia Law

Synopsys’s “Gregory Patents” relate to the logic circuit design process. In the early days, a designer was required to prepare a detailed schematic diagram that identified individual hardware components and the interconnections between them or a set of Boolean logic equations that specified the precise functionality of the design. A fabrication facility would then build the corresponding physical circuit. Over time, logic circuits became more complex; designers began to focus on the higher-level functionality of their designs and became less concerned with the detailed schematics or Boolean logic equations necessary to implement that functionality. The Gregory Patents describe “control flow graphs,” and “assignment conditions,” that provide a scheme to translate functional descriptions of logic circuits into hardware component descriptions of those circuits without requiring the designer to instantiate individual hardware components. In an infringement suit, the court invalidated certain claims under 35 U.S.C. 101, as directed to ineligible subject matter. The Federal Circuit affirmed. The claims are directed to the abstract idea of translating a functional description of a logic circuit into a hardware component description. This idea can be, and was, performed mentally or on paper by one of ordinary skill in the art. The claims do not require the involvement of a computer and cannot be characterized as an improvement in a computer as a tool. View "Synopsys, Inc. v. Mentor Graphics Corp." on Justia Law

The specification and prosecution history of Poly-America’s patent contain clear and unequivocal statements that the inventor intended to limit the claimed invention to a trash bag with “short seals” at its upper corners that extend inwardly to narrow the bag’s upper opening. Poly-America sued API for infringement. Poly-America proposed that “short seal” be construed as “a seal that inseparably welds or joins the first and second elastic drawstrings and the first and second panels of the bag.” The district court instead adopted API’s proposed construction: “A seal for securing the elastic drawstring, which seal is located adjacent to a side seal, and that is not substantially aligned with the side seal, but extends inwardly from the interior edge of the side seal,” as consistent with the specification and the prosecution history. Under that construction of short seal, the accused device would not infringe because API’s accused bags are conventional drawstring trash bags with short seals that are substantially aligned with the side seal—i.e., the short seals do not extend inwardly, so the width of the relaxed upper opening is equal to the bag proper width. The Federal Circuit affirmed. Given the inventor’s disavowal, the district court correctly construed the term “short seal” to require that such seals extend inwardly. View "Poly-America, L.P. v. API Indus., Inc." on Justia Law

Massachusetts Institute of Technology sued Shire Pharmaceuticals, for infringement of patents that are directed to three-dimensional scaffolding for growing cells in vitro to produce organ tissue in vivo. Following the district court’s construction of the terms “vascularized organ tissue” and “cells derived from a vascularized tissue” and its determination that the term “three-dimensional scaffold” was not indefinite, the parties stipulated to a final judgment of validity and infringement. The Federal Circuit affirmed, finding no error in the district court’s claim construction. View "Mass. Inst. of Tech. v. Shire Pharma., Inc." on Justia Law

In 2013, Cleaton, a Correctional Officer at the Federal Correctional Complex in Petersburg, Virginia, was indicted in Virginia state court on a felony charge for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. He pled no contest to the felony charge pursuant to a plea deal. The court deferred the imposition of the sentence “upon the condition that defendant cooperate fully with the requests for information made by the Probation Officer, who is directed to conduct a thorough investigation and to file a long-form presentence report with the Court.” Weeks later, the Bureau of Prisons proposed to remove Cleaton from his position pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 7371(b). The Merit System Protection Board upheld the removal, rejecting Cleaton’s claim that he had not been convicted of a felony. After Cleaton was removed, he obtained new counsel and entered into a revised plea agreement. The court clarified that, upon successful completion of the probation period, the charges against Cleaton will be dismissed. The Federal Circuit affirmed. An individual can be “convicted” for purposes of section 7371(b) “once guilt has been established whether by plea or by verdict and nothing remains to be done except pass sentence.” View "Cleaton v. Dept. of Justice" on Justia Law

The U.S. Department of Commerce reconducted a fourth administrative review of the antidumping duty order on certain frozen warm-water shrimp from Vietnam. The Trade Court upheld Commerce’s decision to refuse Grobest’s request to terminate the individual examination of Grobest and Commerce’s decision to assign a 25.76% antidumping duty rate using adverse facts available after Grobest failed to cooperate with the examination. The Federal Circuit affirmed. Given Grobest’s failure to cooperate in the examination and the lack of any specific challenge to Commerce’s corroboration analysis, the application of the Vietnam-wide rate was amply supported by the record. Commerce was reasonable in treating Grobest as a mandatory respondent with no right to escape review once it was selected for individual examination pursuant to the Trade Court’s Final Judgment. Nor was Commerce required by any statutory or regulatory authority to rescind the court-ordered individual examination simply because Grobest no longer wished to proceed, regardless of the timing of its rescission request. View "Viet I-Mei Frozen Foods Co. v. United States" on Justia Law

FairWarning sued Iatric Systems for infringing claims of the 500 patent, which is titled “System and Method of Fraud and Misuse Detection” and discloses ways to detect fraud and misuse by identifying unusual patterns in users’ access of sensitive data. The specification describes systems and methods to detect fraud by an otherwise-authorized user of a patient’s protected health information (PHI). According to the specification, pre-existing systems were able to record audit log data concerning user access of digitally stored PHI. The claimed systems and methods record this data, analyze it against a rule, and provide a notification if the analysis detects misuse. The Federal Circuit affirmed dismissal of the suit. The patent claims patent-ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101. The claims were directed to a “basic and well-established” abstract idea: analyzing records of human activity to detect suspicious behavior. They contained nothing to transform the abstract idea into a patentable concept, but only contain an instruction to apply the abstract idea “using some unspecified, generic computer.” View "Fairwarning IP, LLC v. Iatric Sys, Inc." on Justia Law

Apple alleged infringement of five patents that cover various aspects of the operation of smartphones. The district court granted summary judgment that Samsung’s accused devices infringed the 172 patent; a jury found the 647 and 721 patents infringed, infringed and not invalid. The court awarded Apple $119,625,000 in damages and ongoing royalties. The jury found that Samsung had not infringed two other patents. Samsung’s countersuit alleged infringement of its patents. The jury found Apple had infringed one patent and awarded $158,400 in damages but found that Apple had not infringed the other. A Federal Circuit panel reversed in part, finding that Apple failed to prove that the accused Samsung products use an “analyzer server” as the Federal Circuit has previously construed that term with respect to one Apple patent and that the asserted claims of two Apple patents would have been obvious based on the prior art. The court affirmed the judgment of non-infringement of two Apple patents, affirmed the judgment of infringement of Samsung’s patent, and affirmed the judgment of noninfringement of Samsung’s other patent. On rehearing, en banc, the court vacated its panel decision and reinstated the district court’s judgment as to the 647, 721, and 172 patents as supported by substantial evidence. View "Apple, Inc. v. Samsung Elec. Co., Ltd." on Justia Law