FedCircuitBlog

Here is an update on recent en banc activity at the Federal Circuit in patent cases. Highlights include two new petitions, a response to a petition, and an amicus brief in support of a petition.

Once a month we provide an update on activity in cases pending before panels of the Federal Circuit where the cases involve at least one amicus brief. Today we highlight recent activity in six such cases. We introduced four of these cases last month in a previous blog post. Of the two new cases, one concerns an attempt to vacate a judgment of non-infringement of a patent in favor of a settlement agreement, and the other questions whether the Patent Trial and Appeal Board may consider eligibility challenges to amended patent claims filed in inter partes review proceedings.

Late on Friday the Federal Circuit issued two precedential orders in patent cases and one nonprecedential order in a patent case. These orders represent the immediate fall out from the Federal Circuit’s opinion late on Thursday in Arthrex, Inc. v. Smith & Nephew, Inc. that the Secretary of Commerce’s appointment of Administrative Patent Judges to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board violates the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. (You can find this blog’s report on that decision here.) On Friday, the Federal Circuit ruled in two cases that the appellants forfeited this same challenge by not raising it in their opening briefs, but instead only in a post-briefing motion or notice of supplemental authority. In the third case, the court canceled this week’s oral argument, vacated the PTAB’s decision, and remanded the case because the appellant did raise the Appointments Clause challenge in its opening brief. Here is the text of the orders.