Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today’s report highlights:
- an article analyzing Judge Stark’s 2018 ruling as a district judge in an important patent eligibility case and how it might portend his analysis of patent eligibility as a judge on the Federal Circuit; and
- a blog post and an article discussing how the Federal Circuit recently addressed estoppel as a result of inter partes review.
Gene Quinn and Steven Brachmann wrote an article for IPWatchdog taking “a look back at [Judge Stark’s] 2018 Ruling in American Axle” as he “ascends to the Federal Circuit.” Quinn and Brachmann argued that, “under Judge Stark’s analysis, it’s very likely that there can’t be a single U.S. patent ever granted that passes Alice/Mayo at step one.”
Dennis Crouch authored a blog post for PatentlyO discussing how the “Federal Circuit clarifie[d] [the] scope of [35 U.S.C. §] 315(e) estoppel.” Crouch noted how, in reference to California Institute of Technology v. Broadcom Ltd., the “original panel has now released a correction” to its opinion such that the “result here is that CalTech still expands the scope of estoppel beyond prior Federal Circuit precedent, but the estoppel is now limited to attempts to re-challenge the same patent claims.”
Ryan Davis similarly filed an article with Law360 assessing how the “Federal Circuit tweak[ed] [its] ruling to clarify [the] scope of IPR estoppel.” Davis explained how the “Federal Circuit on Tuesday revised a recent decision [California Institute of Technology v. Broadcom Ltd.] involving Apple to delete language that suggested the America Invents Act’s estoppel provision, which prohibits invalidity arguments in district court after an unsuccessful inter partes review, applies more broadly than the law states.”