Mealey's Patents
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May 31, 2024
Netflix Motion To Join Litigation Fund Manager To Failed Patent Case Denied
SAN FRANCISCO — Netflix Inc. was dealt dual blows by a federal judge in California, who denied the streaming service’s motion for an order to show cause, as well as its unopposed request to join a litigation fund manager to the case, in connection with a Netflix counterclaim for violations of state law against a former patent infringement plaintiff.
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May 31, 2024
Terminal Disclaimer By Patentee Yields Partial Dismissal In Oklahoma
OKLAHOMA CITY — Litigation over wireless control and distribution technology will proceed with two fewer patents, following voluntary dismissal of one patent from the case and findings by an Oklahoma federal judge that another patent was rendered unenforceable by representations of common ownership in a terminal disclaimer.
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May 31, 2024
Federal Circuit Agrees: Charge-Back Patents Lack Inventive Concept
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A panel of the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld findings by a federal judge in Georgia that five patents “essentially” cover the abstract idea of underwriting, rejecting the patent owner’s position at recent oral arguments that the “unconventional data flow” recited in the claims is sufficiently inventive to overcome a patent eligibility challenge.
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May 30, 2024
Petitioner Seeks PTO Director Review Of Split Decision By Patent Board
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A recent denial of institution of inter partes review (IPR) by a divided Patent Trial and Appeal Board came under fire on May 29, with the petitioner asserting that “the record contains no evidence on which the majority could rationally base its decision.”
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May 29, 2024
Hoverboard Design Patent Row Back At Federal Circuit For 2nd Time
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The decision by a hoverboard maker and its U.S.-based distributor to continue to press design patent infringement litigation despite an earlier appellate ruling that questioned their likelihood of success is evidence of anticompetitive intent, various China-based appellees maintain in a filing with the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
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May 29, 2024
Patent Owner Wins More Time To Reply To Novartis Appellee Brief
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on May 28 granted a patent owner a 14-day extension of its deadline to reply to claims by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. that the doctrine of collateral estoppel bars review of a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board that canceled a patented form of polymorphic fingolimod hydrochloride.
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May 29, 2024
Tech Firm Asks High Court To Address Impact Of Patent Term Adjustment On Validity
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A cellular and mobile technology company filed a petition for certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to determine that a patent that has had its expiration extended under patent term adjustment (PTA), due to application delays by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), should not then be susceptible to findings of obviousness and invalidity.
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May 28, 2024
High Court Passes On Another Challenge To Federal Circuit Rule 36 Judgments
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The owner of a patent canceled by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) as anticipated by prior art failed May 28 to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ practice of affirming without an opinion when certain conditions exist and the panel determines an opinion will have no precedential value.
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May 28, 2024
Board Institutes Google Petitions For Review Of Encryption Patents
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A method of securing data that relies on repeatedly parsing and splitting data will be the subject of inter partes review (IPR), the Patent Trial and Appeal Board has announced in a preliminary win for petitioner Google LLC.
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May 24, 2024
Federal Circuit Undoes Patent Priority Determination, Endorses 2-Way Test
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A motion by the owner of a junior patent for a finding that a senior patent application was time-barred was wrongly rejected by the Patent Trial and Appeals Board in an interference proceeding, the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held May 23, vacating and remanding the board’s subsequent decision to award priority to the patent applicants.
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May 23, 2024
Squabble Over Subpoena In Semiconductor Substrate Patent Row Sent To Texas
BOSTON — A federal magistrate judge in Massachusetts on May 22 did not reach the merits of a motion to quash a subpoena served on a wafer manufacturer, instead transferring the request to the Texas federal court where an infringement action over semiconductor products incorporating the wafers is already under way.
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May 22, 2024
DISH Can Amend Patent Complaint; FuboTV Denied Dismissal In Delaware
WILMINGTON, Del. — Litigation over a series of adaptive bitrate streaming patents will proceed in Delaware, a federal judge there ruled May 21, granting a motion by the patent owner and exclusive licensee to amend their complaint to add more than 100 patent claims allegedly infringed by the sports streaming service fuboTV Media Inc.
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May 21, 2024
En Banc Court Overrules Rosen-Durling, Endorses Graham For Design Patents
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a May 21 en banc holding, the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said the “same conditions for patentability that apply to utility patents apply to design patents” and declared their decades-old approach to determining design patent obviousness “improperly rigid” and no longer good law.
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May 21, 2024
Board Distinguishes Dell Patent Application From AI Example In Revised Guidance
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — An examiner’s determination that a machine learning model for providing improved forecasting of market behavior is unpatentable will not be disturbed, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board said May 20, rejecting reliance by real party-in-interest Dell Products L.P. on a neural network-based example in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s updated guidance on patent eligibility.
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May 21, 2024
Divided Panel: ‘Own Time’ Language In Patent Invention Agreement Is Ambiguous
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Findings by a federal judge in California that a 2011 assignment by an inventor to his company of rights to a bandwidth optimization patent was ineffective because of an invention agreement he signed with a former employer more than two decades earlier must be revisited, a divided Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals concluded May 21.
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May 20, 2024
Divided Panel Clarifies Scope Of Recoverable Fees Under Section 285
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Four years after reversing a determination that defendants DISH Network L.L.C. and Sirius XM Radio Inc. (SXM) did not qualify as prevailing parties in a patent infringement action, a divided Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on May 20 affirmed a Delaware federal judge’s finding on remand that DISH and SXM cannot recoup the attorney fees they incurred during a “voluntary” and “parallel” proceeding before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).
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May 20, 2024
Defamation Claims Over Infringement Warnings Preempted By Patent Law
MIAMI — A patent owner should be awarded summary judgment on counterclaims of defamation and tortious interference leveled by an infringement defendant that alleged, among other things, that the defamatory statements caused it to lose out on profits it could have made in Russia’s war on Ukraine, a federal magistrate judge in Florida ruled May 17.
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May 17, 2024
In Win For Invisalign Maker, ‘Showdown’ Remote Dentistry Patent Claims Held Ineligible
SAN FRANCISCO — When “stripped of excess verbiage and techno-jargon,” two “showdown” patent claims directed to a deep learning device for monitoring the progress and performance of an orthodontic aligner recite abstract ideas, and their introduction of “generic neural networks” to the field of remote dentistry, “without more,” is not enough to transform the ideas into patent eligible subject matter, a federal judge in California concluded May 16.
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May 17, 2024
Illinois Federal Judge: Fix For ‘Technological Hiccup’ Satisfies Alice Step 2
CHICAGO — Although agreeing with an infringement defendant that four web chat patents recite the abstract idea of organizing conversations, a federal judge in Illinois on May 16 said that because the patents are directed to a sufficiently inventive solution to the “technological hiccup” of statelessness when communicating in a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) web browser, they survive an early patent eligibility challenge.
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May 16, 2024
Fees, Sanctions Wrongly Awarded, Patent Owner Tells Federal Circuit
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal judge in California, assigned to a patent case after it had already been closed, erred in granting a Google LLC request for attorney fees to the tune of $191,302.18 and in subsequently sanctioning counsel for the patent owner $63,525.30, the patent owner tells the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
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May 15, 2024
PUMA Design Patent Claim Survives Early Challenge In Washington
SEATTLE — A motion for judgment on the pleadings by Brooks Sports Inc. was partly granted May 14 when a federal judge in Washington ordered a purported trademark licensor to be joined to an infringement action initiated by a rival athletic footwear company.
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May 15, 2024
Planned Hearing In Review Of Dissolvable Magnesium Patent Canceled
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Patent Trial and Appeal Board will consider the patentability of dissolvable magnesium alloy technology used in the fracking industry without the benefit of oral argument, canceling a hearing that had been planned for May 31 in a contentious inter partes review (IPR) that has yielded threats of sanctions in connection with an expunged motion and invocation by a patent owner of an Executive Order signed by President Donald Trump.
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May 14, 2024
PREP Act Immunity In Swab Patent Row Not Ripe For Appeal, Federal Circuit Says
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Denial by a federal judge in Maine of a swab maker’s motion to dismiss patent infringement allegations on grounds that it is immune from suit as part of the federal coronavirus response will not be reviewed, the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said May 14.
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May 13, 2024
Patent Board Upholds Rejection By Examiner Of Regeneron Application
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — An effort by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. to undo a final rejection of an application to patent a method of characterizing proteins failed May 13 when the Patent Trial and Appeal Board said it found no error in a determination by an examiner that substituting prior art neonatal fragment crystallizable receptor (FcRn) resins with Regeneron’s claimed protein A resins would have been obvious.
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May 13, 2024
Eligibility Of ‘Charge-Back’ Patents Debated At Federal Circuit Oral Arguments
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Counsel for an appellant told the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on May 10 that five patents were wrongly declared ineligible for patenting by a Georgia federal judge, calling the “point of the invention” an “unconventional data flow” that provides merchants cost savings and other benefits.