Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today’s report highlights:
- an article about the Biden Administration advising the Supreme Court not to review a pharmaceutical patent decision raising questions related to the enablement requirement;
- a second article about the United States Patent and Trademark Office Director Kathi Vidal’s response “to a number of questions surrounding abuse of the inter partes review . . . system”; and
- a third article about “[a] recent district court order punt[ing] concerns about an administrative patent tribunal’s alleged bias to the Federal Circuit.”
Blake Brittain published an article with Reuters about the Biden Administration advising the Supreme Court not to review a pharmaceutical patent decision in Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi, Aventisub LLC, a case raising questions related to the enablement requirement. Brittain reported that “[a] Delaware judge threw out a jury verdict for Amgen in 2019,” which was affirmed by the Federal Circuit, after “finding patents related to Repatha invalid.” Brittain explained that the government argued the Federal Circuit “correctly found that the relevant parts of the patents did not describe Amgen’s inventions adequately.”
Eileen McDermott authored an article for IPWatchdog about the United States Patent and Trademark Office Director Kathi Vidal’s response “to a number of questions surrounding abuse of the inter partes review . . . system.” McDermott reported that Vidal focused on the questions regarding “the USTPO’s authority to issue sanctions for bad faith petitions,” and Vidal’s analysis of “statistics on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s use of sanctions since the America Invents Act (AIA) was passed.”
Samantha Handler wrote for Bloomberg Law about “[a] recent district court order punt[ing] concerns about an administrative patent tribunal’s alleged bias to the Federal Circuit.” Handler reported that “a district court judge for the Western District of Tennessee found” that the “Federal Circuit provides an adequate remedy in the event there’s any improper bias among judges at Patent Trial and Appeal Board.” Handler explained that “[t]he order came in response to an inventor who alleged the US Patent and Trademark Office is ‘rigged’ to favor big tech companies.”