Two judges with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in a patent dispute between Oticon Medical and Cochlear, but the third judge, Pauline Newman took issue with the decision. Newman said the majority applied “an improper analytical technique” to determine that the preamble to a patent does not limit the related claims, despite that prior art cited to dispute the patent had been “disavowed by the preamble.”
Assignor estoppel doesn’t enjoy the glamour of subject matter eligibility in the U.S. patent system, but a case heard recently at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has resurrected this relatively arcane bit of patent doctrine. The outcome of the case of Hologic v. Minerva addressed the less-than-princely sum of roughly $5 million, but Judge Kara Stoll of the Federal Circuit said this issue calls for a deeper examination by a 12-judge panel.
In a decision that seems to have yet again roiled the patent subject matter eligibility question, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit determined that a district court had erred in determining the 7,941,207 patent held by Cardionet LLC, of Conshohocken, Pa., is not eligible for patent protection.
The case of Arthrex v. Smith & Nephew, Inc., has raised a host of questions about the appointment of judges to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), and witnesses at a congressional hearing said a Supreme Court review might be two years in coming. Any such resolution might not clear out the thicket of underlying legal questions, however, and thus the witnesses urged Congress to take action quickly even as the Federal Circuit considers an en banc hearing of the matter.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has decreed that the regulations governing appointment of judges to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) violate the U.S. Constitution – a decision that gives a medical device maker a new bite at patent litigation, but which also raises the question of whether a large number of PTAB decisions will have to be relitigated.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has decreed that the regulations governing appointment of judges to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) violate the U.S. Constitution – a decision that gives a medical device maker a new bite at patent litigation, but which also raises the question of whether a large number of PTAB decisions will have to be relitigated.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit this week sidestepped some of the concerns raised by the biopharma industry, choosing instead to simply vacate and remand two Patent Trial and Appeal Board's (PTAB) decisions that invalidated patent claims involving the securing of communications over the Internet.
23andme, of Mountain View, Calif., may appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to hear a patent dispute the company has with Ancestry.com of Lehi, Utah, without having to wait for the conclusion of a parallel dispute over trademarking. At risk is a gene profiling method for determining ancestry dubbed "identical-by-descent," but recent developments in case law suggest the patent has a tough road ahead of it.
