The Patent Trial and Appeal Board correctly determined that claims 1-8 of a patent for a method for drilling holes for dental implants, held by Sirona Dental Systems GmbH, were unpatentable as obvious in light of prior art, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled. Further, the petitioners, Institut Straumann AG…
As a follow-up to our previous post “The Federal Circuit Has Its Final Say On the “On-Sale” Bar Under the AIA,” the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in the Helsinn v. Teva case, which concerns whether the America Invents Act (“AIA”) changed the longstanding “on-sale bar” rule. This means that at least four of the nine…
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s conclusion following inter partes review that a cellular communications patent directed to frequency hopping owned by Intellectual Ventures I LLC was invalid and anticipated was not supported by substantial evidence, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had held. Among other things, the Board erred in invalidating…
In an interference proceeding, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board correctly determined that claims 65-67 of applicant General Hospital Corporation’s (GHC’s) U.S. Patent Application No. 13/789,575 for methods of removing hair by using nanoparticles to damage hair follicles lacked sufficient written description under § 112 of the Patent Act, the U.S. Court of Appeals for…
The federal district court in Chicago did not err in dismissing a patent infringement suit filed by Maxon, LLC against several smart television manufacturers on the ground that the asserted patents—describing an electronic means of increasing user control over subscription entertainment content for smart TVs—were invalid as directed to an abstract idea that lacked an…
Two final decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board—each finding that certain apparatus claims of a wireless communication network owned by DSS Technology Management were invalid as obvious—have been reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, because the Board failed to provide a sufficient explanation for its findings, and a…
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board correctly determined that all 79 claims of a patent related to a computerized method for identifying and substituting information in an electronic document were invalid for obviousness, the Federal Circuit has held. Although the Board erred in its analysis by declining to apply a prosecution disclaimer limiting the patent’s…
Substantial evidence supported the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s finding that an inter partes review petitioner failed to show that a patent owned by Thales Visionix—claiming a method for tracking motion relative to a moving platform—was not obvious over a prior art patent combined with two additional references, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the…
Over the last few decades, the United States has been incrementally harmonizing its patent law with the rest of the world. Those efforts continued with the signing of the America Invents Act (“AIA”) in 2011. For example, the AIA created a first inventor-to-file patent system, while all but eliminating the best mode requirement. One area…
In a lawsuit involving the alleged infringement of an Exmark patent that described a lawn mower with improved flow-control baffles, a federal district court erroneously based its summary judgment finding of no invalidity solely on the fact that the patent claim at issue had survived multiple reexaminations, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal…
