Appeals

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Today, in In Re Nintendo involving an infringement complaint against Nintendo and eleven retailer’s of the Nintendo DS video game device, the Federal Circuit (Newman, Rader and Hughes) granted mandamus and ordered Judge Gilstrap of E.D. Texas to (1) sever the claims against Nintendo the manufacturer from the claims against the video game…

Today the Supreme Court in Alice v. CLS Bank applied § 101 patentable subject matter requirements to invalidate patent claims directed to using a generic computer to implement the abstract idea of a conventional business practice that uses a third-party intermediary (e.g., clearing house or escrow agent) to mitigate the “settlement risk” that only one…

Today the Supreme Court issued its decision in Limelight v. Akamai, ruling that there is no liability for induced infringement under §271(b) induced infringement “when no one has directly infringed the patent under §271(a) or any other statutory provision,” thus reversing the Federal Circuit’s prior and more permissive standard that simply required that all…

Today the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Nautilus v. BioSig that adopts a “reasonable certainty” standard for determining whether a patent claim is invalid because it is indefinite, and  rejected the Federal Circuit’s “amenable to construction” and not “insolubly ambiguous” standard that had made indefiniteness challenges harder to establish.  The unanimous Supreme Court…

Last Friday, Apple and Google reportedly agreed to dismiss all current lawsuits between them, including standard essential patent cases involving Motorola Mobility that Google recently sold to Lenovo.  The three-sentence joint statement by Apple and Google indicates that their agreement does not include any cross license (to SEPs or otherwise), stating:

Apple and Google have

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Yesterday the Federal Circuit issued a blank Rule 36 summary affirmance of the U.S. International Trade Commission’s (ITC) determination that Apple did not infringe a Samsung patent alleged to cover a UMTS standard.  Recall that last year the ITC entered an exclusion order against Apple products found to infringe a Samsung standard essential patent, but…

Today the Federal Circuit (Lourie, Dyk and Reyna) granted Microsoft’s motion to transfer Motorola’s appeal of Judge Robart’s RAND ruling to the Ninth Circuit, settling the parties dispute whether the Federal Circuit or Ninth Circuit has appellate jurisdiction over this particular appeal (see our Dec. 16, 2013 post and prior posts summarizing transfer…

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued two opinions (Octane Fitness and Highmark) that create a more flexible, deferential standard for determining what constitutes an “exceptional” patent case in which a district court has discretion to award reasonable attorney’s fees to the prevailing party.  The Court rejected the Federal Circuit’s rigid test that required…

Today the Federal Circuit issued its long-awaited decision in the appeal from Judge Posner’s ruling that denied both Motorola and Apple damages and injunctive relief in Apple v. Motorola.  Among other things, the Federal Circuit ruled that there is no per se rule that prohibits a party from seeking injunctive relief on a standard essential…

Today, in Teva Pharmaceuticals v. Sandoz, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court granted the petition seeking review of the Federal Circuit’s de novo standard of review of a district court’s claim construction ruling.  Teva phrased the question presented as follows:

QUESTION PRESENTED
Rule 52(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that in matters

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