Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today’s report highlights:
- an article discussing an amicus brief filed by a group of intellectual property professors in support of an en banc petition in a patent case raising questions about claim construction;
- another article addressing a recent Federal Circuit decision that “clarifies infringement analysis”; and
- a third article detailing how the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition to review a Federal Circuit patent case.
Adam Lidgett published an article for Law360 discussing how a “group of nearly two dozen intellectual property law professors want the Federal Circuit to rethink a panel’s decision [in Dyfan LLC v. Target Corp.] to reverse [a district court’s] invalidation of two communications patents asserted against Target.” As the article notes, Professor Mark A. Lemley emphasized that this “‘is an important case because the Federal Circuit’s opinion essentially abandoned the court’s prior rules requiring that a patent must disclose some actual structure for performing a service.'” Accordingly, Lidgett highlighted, the professors argued that, “‘[i]f software patentees can avoid [precedent] and write purely functional claims merely by using the word “code” in place of actual structure, this court will have rendered [precedent] a dead letter.'”
Logan Murr wrote an article for IPWatchdog addressing how, in Sound View Innovations, LLC v. Hulu, LLC, the Federal Circuit rejected the district court’s determination that a “‘cache’ cannot be the same as a ‘buffer.'” The article noted how “the CAFC recognized that ‘although there is no per se rule against “negative constructions,” which in some cases can be enough to resolve the relevant dispute,’ the district court’s construction here was inadequate.”
Blake Brittain filed an article with Reuters detailing how the U.S. Supreme Court recently denied a petition to review the Federal Circuit’s decision in PersonalWeb Technologies, LLC v. Patreon, Inc.. Brittain explained that the Federal Circuit previously found “that PersonalWeb Technologies LLC could not bring follow-on lawsuits against several Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers, citing a patent doctrine that dates back to 1907.” Notably, Brittain highlighted, “[t]he U.S. Solicitor General told the court in April that the case did not merit high-court review, but disagreed with how the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit applied the doctrine.”