Source: http://patents.hdp.com/?m=201711
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 16:18:35+00:00

Document:
Presidio Components, Inc. v. American Technical Ceramics Corp., [2016-2607, 2016-2650] (November 21, 2017) the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s holdings that the claims are not indefinite and that ATC is entitled to absolute intervening rights because a substantive amendment was made during reexamination, but reversed the award of lost profits and remanded for determination of a reasonable royalty.
The case involved U.S. Patent No. 6,816,356 on a multilayer capacitor.
known in the art. The Federal Circuit noted that if a skilled person would choose an established method of measurement, that may be sufficient to defeat a claim of indefiniteness, even if that method is not set forth in haec verba in the patent itself.
the original claims based on normal claim construction analysis, articulated in Phillips. To determine whether an amended claim is narrower in scope, one determines whether there is any product or process that would infringe the original claim, but not infringe the amended claim. The Federal Circuit found that while the construction of the prior claim required that the fringe capacitance be determined, it did not specify it be determined by testing, as the amended claim required, so the claims did in fact have different scopes.
capacitors. However the correct inquiry under Panduit is whether a non-infringing alternative would be acceptable compared to the patent owner’s product, not whether it is a substitute for the infringing product. Thus while defendant’s 560L product was not a an adequate substitute for the accused 550 product, it might be an adequate non-infringing substitute for Presidio’s BB. The Federal Circuit found that Presidio failed to prove that the 560L was not an acceptable substitute for its BB product, and reversed the award of lost profits, and remanded for a determination of a reasonable royalty.
The Federal Circuit found no abuse of discretion in the district court’s refusal to award increased damages despite the finding of willfulness. The Federal Circuit also vacated the injunction in view of its reversal of the lost profits award, and remanded the case for the district court to redetermine the propriety of a permanent injunction.
which describes and claims systems for performing catalytic conversion of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in an exhaust gas stream, and remanded.
from the system. The claims require a “composition . . . effective to catalyze” or a “composition . . . effective for catalyzing.” The accused infringer argued, and the district court agreed, that the phrases are indefinite, because the “effective to catalyze” language used to identify the claim compositions is functional, and there are no objective boundaries on (1) what amount of effectiveness is required, or (2) how to measure the effectiveness.
The Federal Circuit framed the issue of indefiniteness after Nautilus as: would the “composition . . . effective to catalyze” language, understood in light of the rest of the patent and the knowledge of the ordinary skilled artisan, have given a person of ordinary skill in the art a reasonably certain understanding of what compositions are covered? The Federal Circuit found that the district court’s analysis supplied no basis to answer this question in Johnson’s favor.
While the district court focused on the functional nature of the language, Federal Circuit noted that the Nautilus standard of “reasonable certainty” does not exclude claim language that identifies a product by what it does. The Federal Circuit said that nothing inherent in the standard of “reasonable certainty” precludes a relevant skilled artisan from understanding with reasonable certainty what compositions perform a particular function, and noted that it has held that nothing in the law precludes, for indefiniteness, “defining a particular claim term by its function.” Rather, what is needed is a context-specific inquiry into whether particular functional language actually provides the required reasonable certainty.
The district court also noted that the claims did not recite a minimum level of function needed to meet the “effective” limitation nor a particular measurement method for determining effectiveness. However the Federal Circuit said that the mere observation of information not recited did not answer the question of whether a person of ordinary skill in the art would need to be given the level and measurement information to understand, with reasonable certainty, whether a composition is “effective to catalyze” the SCR (of NOx) or AMOx reactions.
While the district court said that without this information a person of ordinary skill in the art could not determine which materials are within the limitations and which are not, the Federal Circuit said this conclusion was “entirely unsupported”. The Federal Circuit said that the district court did not consider that the specification makes clear that it is the arrangement of the catalysts, rather than the selection of particular catalysts, that purportedly renders the inventions claimed in the ’185 patent a patentable advance over the prior art. The Federal Circuit found that the claims and specification let the public know that any known catalysts can be used as long as they play their claimed role in the claimed architecture.
are “effective to catalyze” the reactions at issue.
The Federal Circuit concluded that the record did not contain intrinsic or extrinsic evidence that would support a judgment of indefiniteness.
Promega failed to prove its infringement case under 35 U.S.C. § 271(a), affirmed the district court, and on reexamination of its vacatur of the district court’s denial of Promega’s motion for a new trial on damages and infringement, the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court.
Life filed a renewed motion for JMOL pursuant to FRCP 50(b), arguing that Promega “failed to prove the applicable damages for patent infringement” and was therefore entitled to no damages, which the district court granted because Promega evidence could not support a finding that all of the accused products were sold or imported into the United States, even when all reasonable inferences were drawn in Promega’s favor. The Federal Circuit originally reversed, based upon its construction of §271(a) that all of Life’s products infringed. On remand, the Federal Circuit, after noting that Promega waived reasonable royalty damages and sought only lost profits damages, found that Promega failed to meet its burden of proof.
When a plaintiff deliberately takes a risk by relying at trial exclusively on a damages theory that ultimately proves unsuccessful, and, when challenged, does not dispute that it failed to present an alternative case for damages, a district court does not abuse its discretion by declining to give that plaintiff multiple chances to correct deficiencies in its arguments or the record.
In BayerPharma AG v. Watson Laboratories, Inc., [2016-2169] (November 1, 2017), the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s holding that claims 9 and 11 of U.S. Patent No. 8,613,950 would not have been obvious.
found it supported its conclusion that Watson failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that claims 9 and 11 would have been obvious.
The district court determined that Watson failed to meet its burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that there would have been a motivation to formulate vardenafil as an ODT formulation largely on the court’s finding the testimony of Bayer’s expert, Dr. Wicks, more persuasive than the testimony of Watson’s expert, Dr. Jacobs. The Federal Circuit said that the clear error in the district court fact finding that there was no motivation to formulate ED drugs in ODTs, is that it concluded that the record did not contain an indication that ED drugs would be good candidates for ODT formulations. The Federal Circuit noted that the district court’s opinion did not discuss any of the references that Watson cited to show that ED drugs would be good candidates for ODT formulations.
It is well within the district court’s discretion to credit one expert’s competing testimony over another. The Federal Circuit said it must give due regard to the trial court’s opportunity to judge the witnesses’ credibility. However, a district court cannot, through a credibility determination, ignore the wealth of evidence, especially as in this case where the expert did not even address it.
The Federal Circuit also faulted the district court’s focus on the fact that no ODT ED drug had gained FDA approval as of ’950 patent’s priority date. The Federal Circuit said that the motivation to combine inquiry is not limited to what products are forthcoming or currently available on the market. The Federal Circuit said that any motivation, “whether articulated in the references themselves or supported by evidence of the knowledge of a skilled artisan, is sufficient.
The Federal Circuit was left with the definite and firm conviction that the district court clearly erred when it found there would not have been a motivation to formulate vardenafil ODT.
The district court also found a person of ordinary skill in the art would not have been motivated to use mannitol and sorbitol in an ODT formulation, again finding Dr. Wicks’ testimony on this limitation more credible than Dr. Jacobs’. The Federal Circuit did not question the district court’s credibility determinations. However, the district court’s analysis for the sorbitol and mannitol limitation focused on the commercial availability of products while failing to address relevant prior art. Upon consideration of the entire record and under a proper analysis, we conclude that the district court clearly erred in finding a person of ordinary skill in the art would not have been motivated to formulate an ODT with sorbitol and mannitol.
skill in the art would have merely favored one disclosed option over another disclosed option. In assessing whether prior art teaches away, that better alternatives exist in the prior art does not mean that an inferior combination is inapt for obviousness purposes.
claims 9 and 11 of the ’950 patent would have been obvious. The repeated suggestion in the prior art to make an ODT formulation of an ED drug and the suggestion to use the combination of sorbitol and mannitol as excipients were strong evidence of a motivation to make the claimed combination.
to patent ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
At issue were claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 5,778,187, 5,983,005, 6,434,622, and 7,266,686 on a “Multicasting Method and Apparatus,” and generally relate to a system for streaming audio/visual data over a communications system like the internet. The district court denied the patent owner’s request to take judicial notice of materials from prior procedings relating to the novelty and non-obviousness of the invention, saying that the novelty and nonobviousness of the claims under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102 and 103 does not bear on whether the claims are directed to patent-eligible subject matter under §101.
Regarding the ’187 and ’005 patents, the Federal Circuit said that under Alice Step I the claims are considered in their entirety to ascertain whether their character as a whole is directed to excluded subject matter. The Federal Circuit added that claims directed to generalized steps to be performed on a computer using conventional computer activity are not patent eligible. The Federal Circuit disagreed with Two-Way Media argument that the district court erred by oversimplifying the claim and ignoring claim limitations present in its proposed constructions. The Federal Circuit said that the claims required the functional results of “converting,” “routing,” “controlling,” “monitoring,” and “accumulating records,” but did not sufficiently describe how to achieve these results in a non-abstract way. The Federal Circuit further found Two-Way’s constructions merely propose the use of generic computer components to carry out the recited abstract idea.
invention. To save the patent at Step II, an inventive concept must be evident in the claims, and the Federal Circuit said that Two-Way Media could not overcome that the claim — as opposed to something purportedly described in the specification — is missing an inventive concept.
Regarding the ’622 and ’686 patents, at Step I the Federal Circuit rejected Two-way’s argument that the district court erred by oversimplifying the claims down to merely their preamble and failing to recognize the claims solve technical problems. The Federal Circuit saw no error here in the district court citing to the preamble in its review of whether the claims are directed to an abstract idea, citing BASCOM and Elec. Power Grp. The Federal Circuit further agreed that the claims suffered from the same infirmities as the claims of the first two patents.
At Step II, the Federal Circuit agreed with the district court that nothing in these claims requires anything other than conventional computer and network components operating according to their ordinary functions. The Federal Circuit further did not find any inventive concept in the ordered combination of these steps.

References: v. 
 § 271
 §271
 v. 
 § 101
 §101