Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today’s report highlights:
- an article discussing how the Federal Circuit recently gave “the Patent Trial and Appeal Board more freedom to identify its own unpatentability grounds that could block requests to amend a patent”;
- an article explaining how the Federal Circuit recently reversed and remanded “a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas that . . . claims were invalid as indefinite”;
- another article detailing how the “Federal Circuit is going to take a look at U.S. District Judge Alan Albright’s first decision invalidating a patent on eligibility grounds”; and
- yet another article assessing how “[t]he Arthrex appointments clause case is back before the [Federal Circuit] . . . calling into question not only Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions, but also hundreds of thousands of patents issued in the last 14 months.”
Matthew Bultman authored an article for Bloomberg Law discussing how, in Hunting Titan, Inc. v. DynaEnergetics, the Federal Circuit gave “the Patent Trial and Appeal Board more freedom to identify its own unpatentability grounds that could block requests to amend a patent.” Bultman noted that the “ruling opens the door for PTAB judges to be more aggressive in raising their own patentability issues when evaluating a motion to amend.”
Sadaf Deedar filed an article for IPWatchdog explaining how, in Dyfan, LLC v. Target Corp., the Federal Circuit reversed and remanded “a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas that Dyfan, LLC’s claims were invalid as indefinite.” Deedar highlighted that “[t]he CAFC concluded that the disputed claim limitations were not drafted in means-plus-function format, and therefore 35 U.S.C. § 112 ¶ 6 did not apply.”
Andrew Karpan wrote an article for Law360 detailing how the “Federal Circuit is going to take a look at U.S. District Judge Alan Albright’s first decision invalidating a patent on eligibility grounds.” Karpan noted that the decision was considered “a win for Facebook that a Texas research company’s patent licensing arm [was] called ‘baffling’ and ‘both legally and factually flawed.'”
Law.com published an article by Scott Graham assessing how “[t]he Arthrex appointments clause case is back before the [Federal Circuit] . . . calling into question not only Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions, but also hundreds of thousands of patents issued in the last 14 months.” Graham noted that “Federal Circuit Chief Judge Kimberly Moore said it’s clear an acting PTO director can decide PTAB cases.”