Source: https://newsletter.bpla.org/summer2017-supreme-court-summary
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 22:34:43+00:00

Document:
During its October 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017 Term, the Supreme Court handed down eight IP decisions, six in patent cases, one in a copyright case, and one in a trademark case. The eight are summarized below, in alphabetical order.
1.	Amgen v. Sandoz, and Sandoz v. Amgen.
1.	Whether a patentee that sells an item under an express restriction on the purchaser’s right to reuse or resell the product may enforce that restriction through an infringement lawsuit.
2.	Whether a patentee exhausts its patent rights by selling its product outside the United States, where American patent laws do not apply.
Under §262(l) of the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA), an applicant seeking FDA approval of a biosimilar must provide its application and manufacturing information to the manufacturer of the corresponding biologic within 20 days of the date the FDA notifies the applicant that it has accepted the application for review, and must give notice to the manufacturer at least 180 days before marketing the biosimilar commercially. These two cases raised the same two questions. One was whether the requirement that an applicant provide the information to the manufacturer of the biologic is enforceable by injunction. The Federal Circuit held that no injunction was authorized under either the BPCIA or state law. The Supreme Court agreed that there was no right to injunctive relief as a matter of federal law. But it disagreed with the Federal Circuit’s reasoning regarding a possible injunction under California state law, and remanded the case to the Federal Circuit to determine whether California law would treat noncompliance with the BPCIA as “unlawful,” and, if so, whether the BPCIA pre-empts any additional state-law remedy. The second question was whether an applicant must give notice to the manufacturer after, rather than before, obtaining a license from the FDA for its biosimilar. The Federal Circuit said that an applicant could provide effective notice of commercial marketing only after the FDA had licensed the biosimilar. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that an applicant may provide notice before obtaining a license.
We now hold that this provision violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. It offends a bedrock First Amendment principle: Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend.
2 In light of its decision in SCA Hygiene Products, the Supreme Court vacated Federal Circuit laches decisions in three other cases, Romag Fasteners, Inc. v. Fossil Inc., Endotach LLC v. Cook Medical LLC, and Medinol Ltd v. Cordis Corp., and remanded the three to the Federal Circuit.
a feature of the design of a useful article is eligible for copyright if, when identified and imagined apart from the useful article, it would qualify as a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work either on its own or when fixed in some other tangible medium. Applying this test to the surface decorations on the cheerleading uniforms is straightforward. First, one can identify the decorations as features having pictorial, graphic, or sculptural qualities. Second, if the arrangement of colors, shapes, stripes, and chevrons on the surface of the cheerleading uniforms were separated from the uniform and applied in another medium—for example, on a painter’s canvas—they would qualify as “two-dimensional . . . works of . . . art,” §101.
The Court left open whether the designs were sufficiently original to qualify for copyright protection.
defendant is subject to the court’s personal jurisdiction with respect to the civil action in question.” The question before both the Federal Circuit and Supreme Court was whether §1400(b) incorporates the general venue statute’s broader definition of where a corporation “resides.” The Federal Circuit held that it did. The Supreme Court said it did not, and reversed. Following its 1957 decision in Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Products Corp., and rejecting the argument that later amendments to §1391 changed the meaning of §1400(b) as interpreted by Fourco, the Supreme Court held that, as applied to domestic corporations, “resides” in Section 1400(b) refers only to the state of incorporation.
1 Justice Gorsuch took no part in this case.
1.	Whether inter partes review—an adversarial process used by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to analyze the validity of existing patents—violates the Constitution by extinguishing private property rights through a non-Article III forum without a jury.
2.	Whether the amendment process implemented by the PTO in inter partes review conflicts with this Court's decision in Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee, 136 S. Ct. 2131 (2016), and congressional direction.
3.	Whether the “broadest reasonable interpretation” of patent claims—upheld in Cuozzo for use in inter partes review—requires the application of traditional claim construction principles, including disclaimer by disparagement of prior art and reading claims in light of the patent's specification.
1.	Do this Court’s decisions in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), and KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), require a court to hold patents obvious as a matter of law under 35 U.S.C. § 103 where the patents make at most trivial advances over technologies well-known to a person of skill in the art?
2.	Does this Court's decision in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388 (2006), require application of the four-factor test for injunctions in accordance with traditional equitable principles, and therefore require more than merely “some connection” between an infringing feature and asserted irreparable harm to support issuance of an injunction for patent infringement?
3.	Does this Court’s decision in Warner-Jenkinson Co. v. Hilton Davis Chemical Co., 520 U.S. 17 (1997), require evidence that an accused product meets all elements of the relevant claim to support entry of a judgment of patent infringement?
One of the other two pending petitions, In re Celgard, was filed only a few days before the end of the 2016 term. The Court denied certiorari in the other, Arunachalam v. United States District Court for the District of Delaware, but the Petitioner filed a petition for rehearing on June 19, 2017.
Does 35 U.S.C. § 318(a), which provides that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in an inter partes review “shall issue a final written decision with respect to the patentability of any patent claim challenged by the petitioner,” require that the Board to issue a final written decision as to every claim challenged by the petitioner, or does it allow that Board to issue a final written decision with respect to the patentability of only some of the patent claims challenged by the petitioner, as the Federal Circuit held?

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