The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has resurrected a previous policy that requires parties to a proceeding at the Patent Trial and Appeals Board to disclose all the parties of interest in the proceeding. PTO said this shift is driven in part by national security considerations, but the reversal forces participants in PTAB proceedings to disclose the identity of any affiliates that may have an interest in the outcome lest the petition for an administrative hearing be denied.
While the final word has yet to be written, Stryker Corp. came out the biggest winner in a dispute involving four related patents owned by Osteomed LLC, part of Colson Associates’ Acumed.
The med tech patent wars opened a new front in the region of screening tests for colorectal cancer, pitting Exact Sciences Corp., of Madison, Wisc., against St. Louis-based Geneoscopy Inc.
Absent extraordinary circumstances, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board “should never cancel claims it has not determined to be unpatentable as a sanction” for misconduct during a board proceeding, according to the acting director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
The doctrine of inherent disclosure is not one of the more common methods for invalidating patent claims, but this doctrine led the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to declare that several claims found in a patent held by Carl Zeiss X-Ray Microscopy Inc. are invalid.
The renal denervation patent wars are now in full swing, with subsidiaries of Medtronic plc and Recor Medical LLC, landing the first blow in this chapter of the med tech patent struggles.
Ravgen Inc. prevailed in a hearing at the Federal Circuit over Labcorp Inc., seemingly bringing a close to a long-running dispute over patents for non-invasive prenatal tests. Ravgen has won damages that will likely exceed $400 million over alleged infringement of its patents for these tests, proof once again that a solid understanding of prior art is essential to avoid costly litigation.
Sometimes a court cites long-standing precedent in deciding how to handle a case, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit leveraged a decision it rendered only last year in deciding a patent case between Apple Inc., and Omni Medsci Inc.
Instead of inter partes review (IPR) being a streamlined alternative to costly patent litigation as intended, a precedential decision by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit could make appeals of IPR decisions, regardless of their merits, another way to delay competition.
The history of med-tech patent litigation is replete with long-running conflicts that test the willpower of the participants, which increasingly seems to be the case in a series of lawsuits between Masimo Corp. and Apple Inc.
