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.
With little more than a month to go before a trial begins in a multidistrict litigation (MDL) against several opioid manufacturers, privately owned Purdue Pharma LP is continuing its efforts to settle with all the plaintiffs involved.
Depending on who's talking, the U.S. patent system may, or may not, be in dire need of reform. In a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing Wednesday on the bipartisan STRONGER Patents Act, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) stressed the need to undo the precedent set by the Supreme Court's 13-year-old eBay decision that weakened injunctive relief in infringement cases and to resolve some of the unintended consequences of the 2011 America Invents Act (AIA).
In the largest U.S. opioid-related settlement yet, Reckitt Benckiser Group plc agreed to pay a total of $1.4 billion to end federal civil and criminal investigations into its role in delaying generic competition to Suboxone, an opioid-addiction treatment drug.
Patent holders are wasting their resources when they ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for an en banc rehearing on diagnostic claims that have been declared ineligible because they cite a law of nature.
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.
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