Source: http://www.patentblurb.com/doku.php?id=legal:validity_and_enforceability:validitity_under_112
Timestamp: 2014-04-16 16:07:35
Document Index: 713438867

Matched Legal Cases: ['§112', '§112', '§112', '§112', '§112', '§ 112']

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Validity under §112
En Banc CAFC reaffirm written description doctrine (03/28/10)
Claim scope narrowed by spec; invalidated by §112, ¶1 (03/16/09)
Fed. Cir. finds "fragile" vague (01/27/07)
Patent must enable "full scope of the claims" (03/22/07)
Fed. Cir. favors PTO on §112 first paragraph rejection (07/08/07)
Claim invalidated under 35 U.S.C. §112 ¶4 (08/03/06)
In Ariad Pharmaceuticals et al v. Eli Lilly the CAFC upheld a separate written description requirement. The patent at issue relates to a method for inhibiting an intracellular mechanism for expressing genes driving an immune response. Ariad and its co-plaintiffs sued Eli Lilly for infringement of claims 80, 95, 144, and 145 of the patent. A jury returned a verdict that the claims were valid (meeting the enablement and written description requirments) and infringed. Eli Lilly appealed the Federal Circuit, which reversed the jury's verdict of validity on grounds that the patent fails to set forth an adequate written description in a decision rendered in April 2009 1). The CAFC agreed to rehear en banc to answer the following two questions:
Whether 35 U.S.C. §112, paragraph 1, contains a written description requirement separate from an enablement requirement? If a separate written description requirement is set forth in the statute, what is the scope and purpose of that requirement? In answering the first question, the CAFC held that the plain meaning of the statute does not limit the written description requirement solely to requiring enablement. Stated the court: “If Congress had intended enablement to be the sole description requirement of § 112, first paragraph, the statute would have been written differently” and “Finally, a separate requirement to describe one’s invention is basic to patent law. Every patent must describe an invention. It is part of the quid pro quo of a patent. . . .” The CAFC cited the Supreme Court cases Schriber-Schroth 2), Gill v. Wells 3), and Festo 4).
With regard to the scope of the requirement, the court held that:
“the test for sufficiency is whether the disclosure of the application relied upon reasonably conveyed to those skilled in the art that the inventor had posession of the claimed subject matter as of the filing date.” “the specification must describe an invention understandable to that skilled artisan and show that the invention actually invented the invention claimed.”
“the written description requirement does not demand either examples or an actual reduction to practice”
“actual 'posession' or reduction to practice outside oft he specification is not enough.”
With regard to the purpose of the requirement, the court held that:
“requiring a written description of the invention plays a vital role in curtailing claims that do not require undue experimentation to make and use, and thus satisfy enablement, but that have not been invented, and thus cannot be described.”
“The written description requirement also ensures that when a patent claims a genus by its function or result, the specification recites sufficient materials to accomplish that function–a problem that is particularly acute in the biological arts.
The court does not sympathize with the impact of the written description requirement on research institutions (such as co-plaintiff MIT):
“Patents are not awarded for academic theories, no matter how groundbreaking or necessary to the later patentable inventions of others. '[A] patent is not a hunting license. It is not a reward for the search, but compensation for its successful conclusion.'”
“The goal is to get the right balance, and the written description doctrine does so by giving the incentive to actual invention and not 'attempt[s] to preempt the future before it has arrived. […] As this court has repeatedly stated, the purpose of the written description requirement is to 'ensure that the scope of the right to exclude, as set forth in teh claims, does not overreach the scope of the inventor's contribution to the field of art as described int he patent specification.”
Claim scope narrowed by spec; inv