Tag: IP

I admit it, I like lists, even completely subjective ones like this one, that is tilted toward patent law and prep/pros. So in no particular order, except for number one, here we go:

1.  Myriad [Add your pun title here!]. No story can top a unanimous Supreme Court opinion (Thomas writing even!) holding that a discrete chemical molecule is really a data storage device made for us all by Mother Nature, and so is a “natural product”. More troubling, I fear, are Judge Lourie’s two opinions below, holding that the broadly-claimed diagnostic methods were patent-ineligible as “abstract ideas.” Combine this with Mayo and PerkinElmer v. Intema and you get caught in a perfect storm that can sink almost any claim to a diagnostic method.
2. CLS Bank v. Alice. A big story indeed, as commentators tried, with little success, to unravel the threads in multiple opinions issued by the Fed. Cir. judges. Now the Supreme Court will try to define an abstract idea. Is C =pi(D) carved into a brick concrete enough for you?
3. Inequitable Conduct goes into IP hospice. While we still have a duty of candor and good faith in dealing with the PTO, Rule 1.56(b) is gone. A simple failure to submit even “material” information will seldom, if ever, lead to an IC holding. In 1st Media v Electronic Arts, Sony, a defendant in the suit, petitioned for cert., playing the “rigid test” card, but the Supreme Court stood pat and denied the petition. In Network Signatures v. State Farm, Judge Newman suggested that facially false petitions would not amount to “egregious misconduct” unless they involved statutory standards of patentability, as opposed to formal PTO filings. However, the Supreme Court also denied cert.  in Apotex v. Cephalon, in which the Cephalon attorney and scientist obtained a patent on an invention made by their supplier – both the D.C. and the Fed. Cir found IC. And where are the final PTO rules?
4. The rise of the Written Description Requirement as a patent-killer. I predicted this trend post-Ariad and the Fed. Cir. has ruled accordingly. It is much easier to invalidate a claim by finding that the specification does not demonstrate enough “possession” of the claimed invention that it is to have to sort through all those messy Wands factors for enablement. Even with a lot of structural data, Novozymes’ patent on its improved enzyme sank like a stone. And the Fed. Cir. has pretty much ignored patentee’s attempts to argue that a thin disclosure can be supplemented by information available to the art. See Wyeth v. Abbott Labs. Even “Gentry Gallery” –based decisions seem to be in vogue again (no support in specification for later claim amendment) – see Synthes v. Spinal Kinetics. However, possession did “rule” in Sanofi-Aventis v. Pfizer, so perhaps it is possible to turn this ocean liner around.
5. Section 112(b) Indefiniteness. Supreme Court may grant cert to resolve the question: “Does the Federal Circuit’s acceptance of ambiguous patent claims with multiple reasonable interpretations—so long as the ambiguity is not ‘insoluble’ by a court—defeat the statutory requirement of particular and distinct patent claiming.” Nautilus v Biosig Instruments. This is one of the few lines of Fed. Cir. decisions that favor patentees.
6. Who induced infringement, or did they? In Limelight Networks v. Akami Techs., the Supreme Court may well grant cert. to decide the question: “Whether the Fed. Cir. erred in holding that a defendant may be held liable for inducing patent infringement under [271(b)] even though no one has committed direct infringement under [271(a)]?” This somewhat muddled question could be clearer if “no one” was defined more completely, but the Solicitor General has recommended that the Court take this one up, so watch out.
7. The Rise of Secondary Considerations. In the wake of KSR’s termination of the teaching-suggestion-motivation test, the Fed. Cir. and the Board are increasingly looking for, and giving weight to, the oft neglected bag of secondary considerations. The court has noted that unexpected results are a secondary consideration (I don’t think that John Deere said that), and has put increased emphasis on long-felt need, failure of others, commercial success and the like. This does not mean that applicants or patentees will always “win”, but it significantly increases the number of patentability “chips” they have to play. For example, see Galderma v Tolmar, Appeal No. 2013-1034 ( Fed. Cir., December 11, 2013)in which a split panel of the Fed. Cir. found Galderma’s add-on patent for adapalene obvious, but spent a lot of space evaluating unexpected results and defining “teaching away.”
8. Has Cybor’s Time Finally Come? The Fed. Cir. en banc will soon decide whether or not Fed. Cir. panels should overrule its practice of reviewing claim construction de novo, as a matter of law. Cybor has been much reviled in recent years, but there are voices that feel Cybor comports with the mission of the Fed. Cir. to bring uniformity to patent law. If the court takes this step, some commentators think that the Supreme Court will be the final arbiter.
9. Stem Cell Research to Continue. The suit seeking to ban Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research was finally dismissed.
10. The Battle Against “Patent Trolls” continues. And continues to threaten a system that has worked to advance innovation for over 200 years. The biggest threat posed by attempts to limit suits by NPE’s against – mostly – high tech communications companies is that they tar patent holders as a group, particularly universities and individual inventors and start-ups, by making it more difficult/costly for them to enforce their patent rights against deep pocket infringers. H.R. 3309 is just one of the latest shotgun blasts fired at the patent system. Now the Office may have a new “Director” who believes that the patent system is broken and needs to be fixed. I don’t like legislative and administrative bodies cooperating to fix a problem that almost no one has clearly defined. The last time this happened, there was a bill passed to reduce the backlog by severely limiting application filing and prosecution in general.

Merry holidays (or year-end rushes) to us all and many happy allowances!

Article by:

Warren Woessner

Of:

Schwegman, Lundberg & Woessner, P.A.