Patent Law Blog

In Fujitsu Ltd. v. Netgear Inc., 620 F.3d 1321 (Fed. Cir. 2010), plaintiff, and patent holder Philips Corporation, asked the Federal Circuit to find Netgear infringed on Philips' patent covering a portion of the 802.11 wireless standard given the fact that Netgear's products are 802.11 compliant. The Federal Circuit held that industry standards such as the 802.11 wireless standard may be used to show direct infringement stating, Read more...

In Golden Hour Data Systems, Inc. v. emsCharts, Inc., and Softtech, LLC, 614 F.3d 1367 (Fed. Cir. 2010), the Federal Circuit issued a decision regarding two topics in patent law:  (1) inequitable conduct and (2) joint infringement.  First, the court vacated and remanded the district court’s finding of Golden Hour’s inequitable conduct because of insufficient evidence of deceptive intent.  Second, the court affirmed the decision that emsCharts and Softtech did not jointly infringe Golden Hour’s patent related to emergency medical transport services.   Read more...

In Sun Pharmaceutical Indus., Ltd., v. Eli Lilly and Co, 611 F.3d 1381 (Fed. Cir. 2010), the Federal Circuit held that a patent that claims a method of use for a given pharmaceutical product, where the drug itself was claimed in a prior patent, has the effect of an impermissible extension of the term of the prior patent. The holding affirms prior law on the issue of obviousness-type double patenting. Read more...

In re Giacomini, 2010 WL 2674461 (Fed. Cir. 2010), considers whether an application that claims priority to a previous provisional application anticipates under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as to its non-provisional filing date, or as to the provisional application's filing date. Affirming the decision by the PTO's Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (the "Board"), the Federal Circuit held that the rejected claims of the Giacomini application were anticipated by a later-filed non-provisional application claiming priority to a previously-filed provisional application. Read more...

In June 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its much anticipated decision in Bilski v. Kappos, 130 S.Ct. 3218 (2010), regarding the patent eligibility of a process under 35 U.S.C. § 101. In the two months since the Bilski decision, not many courts have issued decisions regarding subject matter eligibility under Section 101. Two recent decisions, however, suggest that lower courts may continue to apply the machine-or-transformation test as the primary test (although not the exclusive test) for determining the subject matter eligibility of a process. Read more...