A catalog published at a trade conference by one of the inventors of U.S. Patent 8,714,977 (the “’977 patent) was publicly accessible to the dental industry in March 2003, and therefore was prior art, with properly corroborated evidence, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a precedential opinion. The Federal…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a Texas district court’s ruling that Verizon Wireless did not infringe on Barkan Wireless’ patent despite disagreeing with the lower court’s construction of a term recited in each independent claim of the patent. Barkan Wireless had appealed the district court’s construction of the term “Access…

The federal district court in Tampa did not err in deciding on summary judgment that fishing boat manufacturer Yellowfin Yachts failed to establish that a former executive and his company were liable for trade dress infringement, unfair competition, or trade secret misappropriation, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta has held, affirming summary judgment in…

In a challenge to Facebook’s patent application for a method for arranging images contiguously in an array, a prior art reference—a patent application filed by Perrodin that related to placing images on a grid and did not require contiguity in response to resizing or rearranging in all cases—could not have disclosed the limitation of Facebook’s…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has granted BioDelivery Sciences International, Inc.’s motion to remand to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board a consolidated appeal of the Board’s final decisions upholding the patentability of three Aquestive Therapeutics patents for water-soluble drug-dosage films incorporating anti-tacking agents. On remand, the Board was directed to…

In a previous post here, we described constitutional and procedural challenges to inter partes review (“IPR”) in the Oil States and SAS Institute cases taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court.  We also posted here on Allergan’s attempt to avoid an IPR by assigning its challenged patents to an American Indian tribe that claims tribal…

Substantial evidence supported a jury’s finding that Raytheon Company failed to show that infrared imaging equipment manufacturers Indigo Systems and FLIR Systems Incorporated (collectively, “Indigo”) misappropriated trade secrets relating to sequential vacuum baking procedure and in situ solder sealing package assemblies, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled, because a reasonable…

The federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia, properly dismissed an inventor’s appeal of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s decisions rejecting six patent applications on the grounds of lack of utility and collateral estoppel, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held. The applications were directed to unproven cold fusion technology. One…

The federal district court in San Juan, Puerto Rico, erred in dismissing copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and state law claims brought by a music contestant against pop recording artist Enrique Martin-Morales (aka Ricky Martin) on the ground that the contest rules compelled arbitration of the claims, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston has ruled….