Source: https://www.uspatent.com/tag/litigation-practice/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 15:54:22+00:00

Document:
Woodard Emhardt Moriarty McNett & Henry LLP is pleased to announce that Charlie Meyer has distinguished himself by earning an honored placement in Indiana as a Local Litigation Star in the Benchmark Plaintiff Handbook published by Legal Media Group. The guide ‘s results are the culmination of research conducted during extensive interviews with litigators and their clients identifying firms and attorneys who have displayed the ability to consistently handle complex, high stakes cases in multiple jurisdictions.
You’ve probably heard this story before. A little known patent holder begins a licensing campaign sending letters to hundreds of companies letting them know that they need a license to its patent. The letters continue and offer discounts for early licensees and say that they hope to avoid the need for litigation. The companies who receive the letters are confused as the product which supports the alleged infringement was purchased from another company.
It’s a common strategy employed by some patent holders, and often those referred to as non-practicing entities (NPEs) or patent trolls. The goal is to impose uncertainty and the threat of large legal costs upon a large number of established companies and hopefully obtain many small settlements in lieu of litigation as opposed to going after the vendor who provides the product.
Cisco, and more specifically its customers, were recently the target of such an effort by Innovatio IP Ventures, LLC, a company which acquired several wireless networking patents. However, rather than deal with its own indemnification obligations on a case by case basis, Cisco has chosen to taken an aggressive stance in filing a lawsuit claiming that Innovatio is guilty of racketeering based upon its sending of over 8,000 letters to coffee chains, hotels, and other retailers who use Cisco’s equipment or comparable Wi-Fi equipment. Cisco claims the letters are nothing more than extortion as Innovatio based many of its claims for infringement upon patents which had already expired as well as upon patents to which Cisco’s products were already licensed.
In order to prevail, Cisco will be forced to prove its allegations and Innovatio’s knowledge of them. While many commentators believe this will difficult, the fact that Cisco has turned the tide on Innovatio, forcing it to now defend its actions, just as it sought to do to Cisco’s customers, is an interesting development and will no doubt be interesting to observe going forward.
Judge Leonard Davis of the Eastern District of Texas recently ordered that a patent infringement lawsuit filed against an Indianapolis based company be transferred to the Southern District of Indiana. The lawsuit was filed following the effective date of the new joinder provisions of the America Invents Act which prevent Plaintiffs from filing large multi-defendant lawsuits. The case involved a New York based Plaintiff and Judge Davis found that the Southern District of Indiana was clearly a more appropriate forum. Woodard Emhardt attorneys Spiro Bereveskos and Bill McKenna are representing the Defendant.
In a recent patent infringement case, Amazon.com asked to have the case transferred from the Eastern District to the Western District of Texas. That motion was denied by the Eastern District federal court judge. Amazon appealed to the Federal Circuit (because the case involved patents) effectively asking the Federal Circuit to force the district court judge to vacate the original order and transfer the case. However, the Federal Circuit denied Amazon’s request and upheld the Eastern District court’s refusal to transfer the case (In re Amazon.com., Misc. No. 115, nonprecedential).
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has provided interim guidelines for determining subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. §101 for process claims in view of the United States Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Bilski v. Kappos. The guidelines provide additional factors to aid in the determination of whether a method which fails the machine or transformation test is patentable or vice versa. The guidelines state that §101 outcomes are not likely to change in most cases, and reminded that §101 should not be relied upon to avoid a full examination under other sections. The guidelines outline specific factors weighing toward and against eligibility under §101. Click here for more information on the interim guidelines.
In a recent decision, the Federal Circuit ruled a company’s patent unenforceable due to the inequitable conduct committed by the company’s non-inventor president. As background, Avid’s founder and president, Dr. Hannis Stoddard, hired three engineers to develop a product based on his idea of identifying and processing recovered animals. Dr. Stoddard was not an inventor on the patent that ultimately issued, but he did demonstrate an early version of the technology at a trade show more than a year prior to the filing date of the issued patent. This demonstration was not disclosed to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) during prosecution of the patent, and Dr. Stoddard did not dispute that this information was withheld with specific intent to deceive the USPTO for the purposes of obtaining a patent. He argued that he was neither an inventor nor an attorney and therefore owed no duty of candor to the USPTO; however, the district court disagreed and found Avid’s patent unenforceable for inequitable conduct committed by Dr. Stoddard.
The regulations governing inequitable conduct are provided by 37 C.F.R. §1.56 (“Rule 56”), which imposes a duty to disclose information to the USPTO when an individual is (1) associated with the filing and prosecution of a patent application, and (2) knows that the information in question is material. For purposes of identifying who owes a duty of candor to the USPTO, Rule 56 defines “individual(s) associated with the filing or prosecution of a patent application” as (1) each named inventor, (2) each attorney or agent that prepares or prosecutes the application, and (3) every other person who is substantively involved in the preparation or prosecution of the application and who is associated with the inventor or assignee. 37 C.F.R §1.56(c).
Dr. Stoddard is neither an inventor nor an attorney or agent involved in the preparation or prosecution of the patent, so the issue of whether or not he owed a duty to candor to the USPTO involved an analysis of whether or not he was “substantially involved” in the preparation or prosecution of the patent, and whether or not the prior demonstration was material to patentability.
With respect to “substantially involved,” the Federal Circuit identified a number of factors in affirming the ruling of the district court that Dr. Stoddard met this requirement. Some of these factors included his position and responsibilities in the company, his involvement in hiring the engineers/inventors to develop the product, and his communication with the inventors during prosecution of the patent in Europe.
With respect to materiality, the Federal Circuit dismissed Avid’s argument that the demonstration was not material to the patentability of the claims even though it would not have lead to a proper §102(b) rejection by the USPTO. Indeed, the demonstration involved a preliminary product that failed to contain all of the elements of the issued patent claims. Moreover, an infringement jury was given information regarding the demonstration and still found the patent valid. However, the court reasoned that the demonstration, while not invalidating, was the closest prior art and was thus material. By doing so, the court relied on the “reasonable examiner” standard, which was written out of the old Rule 56 (i.e., prior to the 1992 amendments). The current Rule 56 is much more objective and likely would have found this demonstration non-material to patentability.
The Federal Circuit thus affirmed the lower court’s ruling that Avid’s patent was unenforceable for inequitable conduct committed by Dr. Stoddard. This case seems to be a close call, and it certainly didn’t help that Dr. Stoddard purposefully withheld the information knowing that it would likely have some impact during prosecution. If anything, this case serves as a reminder to submit any relevant information to the USPTO even if the person aware of this information is only remotely involved in the preparation and prosecution of a patent application.
See Avid Identification Sys. v. Crystal Import Corp., No. 09-1216 (Fed. Cir. April 27, 2010).
The Federal Circuit has affirmed an International Trade Commission (ITC) decision finding two asserted patents invalid because they did not satisfy the best mode requirement of 35 U.S.C. §112.
The best mode requirement comes from 35 U.S.C. §112, which requires that the inventor disclose the preferred embodiment of the invention and any preferences that materially affect the claimed invention, but only to the extent that information is known by the inventor when an application is filed.
The patentee unsuccessfully argued that the improvements in the better E. coli strain related to other, non-patentable, improvements that were not related to the “inventive aspects” of the claimed invention.
Here, the best mode requirement was not met due to the breadth of the claims. The asserted claim recited the step of “cultivating a bacterium belonging to the genus [E. coli] … having mutation to desensitize feedback inhibition of L-lysine.” Because the scope of the claimed invention included “cultivating a bacterium,” the failure to disclose the preferred, and in one case, only bacterial strain used by the patentee to practice the claimed invention the best mode requirement was not met and the asserted patents were held invalid.
See Ajinomoto Co., Inc. v. International Trade Commission (Fed. Cir. 2010).

References: §101
 v. 
 §101
 §101
 §101
 §1
 §1
 §102
 v. 
 §112
 §112
 v.