Here is an update on recent en banc activity at the Federal Circuit. In the only pending en banc case, a veterans case, the court received the appellant’s supplemental brief. As for patent cases, the court received a new petition raising questions related to patent eligibility. Here are the details.
En Banc Case
In the only pending en banc case, a veterans case entitled Taylor v. McDonough, Taylor filed his supplemental reply brief. In it, he argues that the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in “Arellano further supports estopping the government.” Taylor explains that allowing “the government to use threats of criminal prosecution as they did against Edgewood veterans like Mr. Taylor would thwart Congress’s entire statutory scheme for veterans’ benefits, from the very outset of that process.”
En Banc Petitions
New Petition
In ChromaDex, Inc. v. Elysium Health, Inc., ChromaDex asked the en banc court to review the following questions:
- “May a claim that includes an isolated natural substance in a treatment formulation be denied patent eligibility on summary judgment when there are disputed fact issues as to whether the isolated substance and formulation have markedly different properties from the naturally occurring form of the substance and the potential for significant utility?”
- “May a court evaluating patent eligibility for a claim directed to a purported ‘natural product’ bypass Alice/Mayo step two, even though Alice states that the two-step framework applies to claims directed to ‘natural phenomena’”?