IP lawyers need to keep current with the growing body of case law from the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court. Decisions from these courts affect a company’s IP portfolio strategy on many levels — in significant, and sometimes subtle ways. Some decisions have particular importance and deserve a closer look.
Federal Circuit case law is in a state of flux in certain areas, and the changes can affect a company’s strategy with regard to building and maintaining its patent portfolio, licensing, and litigation. Please join our panelists as they discuss two recent Federal Circuit decisions relating to the issue of obviousness. These decisions challenge some long-held notions about well-established precedent. The panel will examine and discuss the impact these cases may have on practice before the USPTO and in court:
Vringo v. AOL (Fed. Cir. 2014)
The majority reversed a jury verdict, finding “common sense” would have suggested the technique in the claim, retaining a query for use in filtering. The dissent, by Judge Chen, disputed the use of “common sense,” when there was nothing in the prior art to suggest its use.
Allergan v. Apotex (Fed. Cir. 2014)
In a pharmaceutical case involving questions of structural obviousness, the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s decision for clear error regarding the lower court’s determination that the claimed invention was non-obvious in view of the prior art. The Federal Circuit concluded that the district court missed the probative facts pointing to motivation and the reasonable expectation of success in making compounds of similar structure and activity as those in the art. The court also found that the evidence of commercial success did not on its own remedy the lower court’s errors that led to its conclusion of non-obviousness.
Moderator:
Esther H. Lim
Date:
Thursday, October 16, 2014
1:00-2:00 p.m. EDT
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