News

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today’s report highlights:

  • a blog post about how “the Federal Circuit . . . revived an Administrative Procedure Act (APA) challenge to the Fintiv decision on discretionary denial” of petitions for inter partes review;
  • an article about the Federal Circuit also “reviv[ing] a patent-infringement lawsuit against Amazon.com Inc.” after a stipulation of non-infringement based on a district court’s claim constructions; and
  • another article about a Federal Circuit opinion “determining that the PTAB required too much evidence to establish a motivation to combine prior art.”

Jonathan Stroud wrote a blog post for IPWatchdog about how “the Federal Circuit . . . revived an Administrative Procedure Act (APA) challenge to the Fintiv decision on discretionary denial” of petitions for inter partes review. Stroud explained how “the Federal Circuit reversed-in-part a district court decision dismissing Apple’s administrative law challenge to the Fintiv factors . . . reviv[ing] claims arguing that the USPTO had not followed formal notice-and-comment rulemaking requirements under the APA.” Stround highlighted how “this case is notable since Director Vidal recently instructed panels to fully address Factors 1–5 before reaching the ‘compelling merits’ question in a sua sponte review in IPR2022-01242.”

Kelcee Griffis wrote an article about how the Federal Circuit also “revived a patent-infringement lawsuit against Amazon.com Inc.” Griffis reported how the Federal Circuit “used the precedential decision . . . to warn about ‘the dangers of stipulating to non-infringement based on a district court’s claim constructions without indicating the exact basis for non-infringement.’” Griffis explained how the suit began when “AlterWAN sued Amazon in Delaware federal district court, alleging that Amazon infringes” on a patent that allegedly “cover[s] reduced latency and improved security for wide area networks.”

Jasmin Jackson authored another article about a Federal Circuit opinion “determining that the PTAB required too much evidence to establish a motivation to combine prior art.” Jackson reported how “[t]he panel explained that the PTAB set the bar too high for Intel’s ‘motivation-to-combine’ argument regarding prior art, holding that Intel only had to show the previous publications addressed the computer issue and not that they improved it.”