Source: https://patentlyo.com/patent/patent-cases-2006
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 06:24:26+00:00

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New Circuit Court Judge Kimberly Moore’s first opinion is likely to be predictive of her future work — short, focused, and to-the-point.
This case involves a pretty neat invention of a tissue holder for an automobile visor. The BPAI had rejected the claims as anticipated, but the PTO later conceded that the cited reference (relating to a golf-tee holder that clips to a lapel) was not anticipatory.
The PTO is fully expected to present a new grounds of rejection. In all likelihood, the patent will never issue because another round of appeal would be prohibitively expensive for this type of invention.
This does not really count as Judge Moore’s first opinion because it is a non-precedential opinion. In a few weeks, we’ll get the real one.
Highway Equipment v. Feco (Fed. Cir. 2006).
The district court dismissed the case with prejudice after the plaintiff gave the defendant a covenant not to sue. Just before trial, the plaintiff gave up and granted a covenant not to sue. The district court dismissed the case, but retained jurisdiction to decide the issue of attorney fees (fees denied).
On appeal, the CAFC first decided the issue of Article III jurisdiction — holding that even after dismissing the case major, the lower court properly retained jurisdiction over the attorney fee issue. The appellate panel then agreed that attorney fees were not justified in this case.
PHG Tech v. St. John (Fed. Cir. 2006).
PHG’s design patents cover ornamental designs for medical label sheets. PHG sued St. John’s for infringement and was awarded a preliminary injunction based on the court’s belief that PHG had a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits.
St. John’s appealed the preliminary injunction (PI) to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC).
The first factor is a deal-breaker — if the plaintiff does not show a likelihood of eventually succeeding in the case then a PI should not be awarded. Here, St. John’s argued only the first factor based on its argument that PHG’s patents impermissibly cover designs that are primarily functional.
In this case, the lower court found that there were “a multitude of alternative designs,” but the lower court did not make specific findings as to whether or not those alternative designs altered the utility. St. John’s did, however present expert testimony that the “alternative” designs were not as useful. On appeal, the CAFC was swayed by St. John’s expert and found “clear error” because the lower court (1) did not make any “explicit findings” regarding utility of the alternatives and (2) failed to even mention St. John’s expert report.
“The evidence presented by St. John, in our view, was sufficient to raise a substantial question of invalidity.” Preliminary Injunction Vacated.
Optivus and Loma Linda v. Ion Beam Apps. (Fed. Cir. 2006).
Focused proton beam therapy offers real promise to cancer victims. Optivus and Loma Linda control rights to several relevant patents including a multi-room proton therapy apparatus. The pair sued IBA for patent infringement as well as various business torts (unfair competition) based on IBA’s marketing of its devices without FDA approval.
The district court granted summary judgment in the defendant IBA’s favor on invalidity, noninfringement, and unfair competition. Optivus and Loma Linda appealed.
Death Ray: On motivation to combine prior art, Loma Linda argued that modifying a UW Neutron therapy center by sending protons to the patient would create a “death ray” that would kill the patient. After defining “skill in the art” as familiarity with particle beam technology uses in medical treatment, the CAFC dismissed this “teaching-away” because our PHOSITA would know to turn down the intensity.
Unfair Competition: Marketing Non-Approved Device: The CAFC reversed the dismissal of the California unfair competition claims — holding that California law provides a right of action on unfair competition even where the claim is based on violation of a law and the law does not provide for a private right of action.
Depuy Spine v. Medtronic (Fed. Cir. 2006).
Claim Construction: Depuy tried to get the CAFC to buy into its argument that a the conical wall of the Vertex model was also a spherical wall. Although impressed with its novel argument, the CAFC did not bite at the elementary calculus or basketball analogy showing how, at the limit, cones and spheres are virtually indistinguishable.
Doctrine of Equivalents and Vitiation: This case seems right-on-point with Tronzo, and the patentee learned the appropriate lesson. In Tronzo, the theory of equivalence would have allowed any shape to be equivalent to “generally conical.” Here, however, the patentee argued that there was a special nexus between the claimed spherical shape and the alleged equivalent conical shape. The tailored argument made the difference, and the CAFC agreed that equivalents could apply without vitiating the term. The CAFC also found it important to the DOE analysis that the patent does not label other shapes as either prior art or inferior. [Practice Tip…].
Abraxis (AstraZeneca) v. Mayne (Fed. Cir. 2006).
Mayne attempted to around Abrxis’s anesthetic formulation patent covering DIPRIVAN. The district court, however, found that Mayne’s product still infringed, both directly and under the doctrine of equivalents, despite its replacement of EDTA (“edetate”) with DTPA.
On appeal, the CAFC reversed the direct infringement based on claim construction, but agreed that there was infringement under the DOE.
Infringement under the doctrine of equivalents is reviewed for clear error. To infringe under the DOE, the accused device must perform “substantially the same function in substantially the same way to obtain the same result” as the patented invention.
Even so, the defendant argued under the modern DOE exclusion principle that the patentee’s use of the “restrictive term edetate,” rather than a more generic term, precluded extension of equivalents coverage as a matter of law. The CAFC disagreed, finding that equivalents could be asserted because the inventors “did not clearly disavow” broader coverage.
There is no evidence that the patentees made a clear and unmistakable surrender of other polyaminocarboxylates, or calcium trisodium DTPA in particular, during prosecution.
Furthermore, because the use of DTPA was admittedly unforeseeable, it is proper to extend DOE.
The defendant also asserted that DOE should not be extended to cover DTPA because Mayne was able to obtain a patent to cover that modification. The CAFC did not buy that argument either. As noted above, the patent shows that the equivalent was unforeseeable at the time of the invention (weighing in favor of DOE). In addition, the district court’s fact finding of “substantial evidence of equivalence” withstood CAFC scrutiny.
the language of the ‘471 specification specifically states that the invention of the ‘471 patent is an athletic shoe with a detachable heel: “However, in a radical departure from conventional shoes, the shoe of the present invention incorporates a heel structure, including a detachable rear sole, that significantly alleviates heel wear problems associated with conventional soles and provides enhanced cushioning and/or spring.”.
As could be expected, the boilerplate language at the end of the specification was deemed worthless even though the language asserts that the specification is not limiting in any way.
Abbott Labs. v. Baxter Pharm. (Fed. Cir. 2006).
Way-back-when, Abbott went through a recall of its inhalation anesthetic sevoflurane because of excess Lewis acid buildup. Abbott’s scientists figured-out that mixing water in the solution would bind an deactivate Lewis acids, and stabilize the product. Abbott changed its product and also obtained patent protection.
When Baxter filed its Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) to begin selling its version of a sevoflurane inhaler, Abbott sued for infringement. After a bench trial, the patent was found valid, but not infringed. Abbott appealed.
Our cases have consistently held that a reference may anticipate even when the relevant properties of the thing disclosed were not appreciated at the time.
The CAFC went-on to find that a claim directed to the newly discovered property of the prior art cannot support a patent because it is inherently disclosed by the art.
an inventor may not obtain a patent on a process having the same steps as a prior art process, in which the new process merely identifies a new, advantageous property of the prior art process.
Go Medical v. Inmed (Fed. Cir. 2006).
Go Medical owns a patent on a urinary catheter with a specialized sheath designed to reduce the chance of bacterial contamination. The parties entered into a long-term licensing contract and the defendant began manufacturing and selling the device. In another lawsuit, Go’s patent was found invalid, but that finding was later reversed on appeal. Several months after the invalidity finding (but before its reversal), the defendant stopped paying royalties — placing them in escrow. Go eventually sued for infringement, but the patent was found invalid. (invalidity affirmed on appeal).
Thus, according to the CAFC, the original invalidity finding did not relieve the defendant of its responsibilities to continue to pay its license fees. Further, the defendant’s movement of payments to escrow was not sufficient to avoid license fees because the defendant did not explicitly state that it was “ceasing payments [because it deemed the] patent to be invalid.” Merely placing royalty payments in escrow “until the validity of the patent was resolved on appeal” is insufficient to relieve a licensee from license payments.
Zura discusses the best mode issues here.
Qualcomm v. Nokia (Fed. Cir. 2006).
A 2001 license agreement between Nokia and Qualcomm includes an arbitration clause. The agreement apparently does not cover all of Nokia’s products, and in 2005, and Qualcomm sued Nokia for patent infringement. The parties disputed whether the arbitration clause should apply here. Writing for a two-judge majority, Judge Prost explained that the parties “clearly and unmistakably” intended that the patent questions be arbitrated instead of a court as evidenced by the agreement’s incorporation of the AAA rules.
Halliburton v. M-I LLC (E.D. Tex., Oct 18, 2006).
Halliburton decided to take advantage of the E.D. Texas patent excitement and sued M-I for infringing its patents directed to a method of drilling a borehole without losing “fragile gel” drilling fluid.
Datamize makes clear that adequate support in the specification can make a purely subjective claim term definite. However, when, as here, the specification provides only a subjective definition for a subjective claim term, there is no “objective anchor” by which skilled artisans can identify the bounds of the claims.
Medrad v. Tyco (Fed. Cir. 2006).
In October 2005, I discussed the district court case involving Medrad. In that case, the district court held that a Section 251 Reissue can only be used to correct an error in the specification, drawings or claims and cannot be used to correct a procedural error that is not reflected in the patent grant itself. During prosecution, the patentee had filed a second reissue to correct a mistake made during the prosecution of the first reissue. (The patentee failed to file a supplemental reissue declaration in compliance with PTO Rule 1.175). The lower court found that correction of that mistake did not fall within the guidelines of Section 251.
On appeal the CAFC sided with the patentee by giving a broad meaning to the statutory phrase “[invalid] by reason of the patentee claiming more or less than he had a right to claim in the patent.” In particular, the unanimous appellate panel found that the phrase does not literally mean “claim more or less” but rather that the phrase “encompass[es] any error that causes a patentee to claim more or less than he had a right to claim.” Thus, a reissue can apparently be filed based on any error that would result in invalid claims.
The CAFC has now explicitly opened the door to fee-based regulation at the USPTO.
Figueroa v. U.S. (Fed. Cir. 2006).
Fighting a lost cause, Figueroa sued the U.S. government using PTO fees to fund other federal programs (fee diversion). From FY 1991 to FY 2004, for instance, the PTO collected about $11.1 billion in fee revenue and only spent about $10.6 billion. The remaining $545 million was returned to the general fund.
Figueroa alleged that the PTO fees “exceeded congress’s power under the Patent Clause” of the Constitution and was also an un-apportioned (and thus unlawful) direct tax on intellectual property.
Using a rational-basis test, the two-judge majority found that Congress had plenty of reasons for charging the fees that it did. Most notably, the court found that an acceptable basis for high fees would be to provide incentives against certain types of patent prosecution activities.
[E]ven if fees exceeded the existing and predicted costs of operating the patent system, Congress could also rationally decide to set fees above what is needed to meet the funding needs of the PTO in order to deter the filing and prosecution of certain types of patent applications. The Supreme Court has recognized that Congress may legitimately impose taxes or fees in order to discourage undesirable behavior.
In particular, the court noted that high fees could be used to discourage the filing of applications associated with vanity patents, likely invalid patents, non-commercial uses, and patents designed to inhibit competition.
Prior discussion of Figueroa [Court of Federal Claims].
Information on the case from the prosecuting lawyer.
Nipper’s discussion of the case.
AIPLA amicus brief supporting Figueroa at the Court of Federal Claims.
Aero has patented an air mattress inflation control system that it advertises using the registered mark “ONE TOUCH.” A jury found that Intex (and Wal-Mart) were infringing both the patent and the trademark. The judge awarded $5.80 million for willful patent infringement ($2.95 in compensation, doubled for willfulness) and $1 million for the trademark infringement.
On appeal, the CAFC looked at the damage award and found some double-counting.
This case presents the question of whether Aero’s recovery of both patent and trademark infringement damages represents an impermissible double recovery.
Under Federal Circuit, double recovery for the “same injury” is inappropriate.
At trial, Aero had used similar evidence of Intex sales to show damages for both the patent and trademark claims. Because Aero did not show any other harm to its trademark apart from the sales of the patented product, the CAFC found that the injury was identical, and thus cancelled the trademark recovery.

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