Justia Patents Opinion Summaries

Liberty’s 325 patent, issued in 2010, is “directed to a projectile structured to be discharged from a firearm and designed to overcome the disadvantages and problems associated with conventional firearm projectiles such as, but not limited to lead or steel jacketed projectiles.” The patent grew out of the U.S. military’s “Green Ammunition Program,” developed in response to concerns that lead-based ammunition was polluting military training ranges. The 325 patent sought to address “problems of lethality” with the conventional Army “green” ammunition. The Claims Court held that ammunition rounds used by the Army embody the claims of the patent, violating 28 U.S.C. 1498. The Federal Circuit reversed, holding that the trial court erred in construing claim terms: reduced area of contact; intermediate opposite ends. When the terms are construed correctly, the Army rounds do not embody the claimed invention. The court affirmed the Claims Court's rejection of a breach of contract claim based on a non-disclosure agreement signed by the named inventor of the 325 patent and an Army official during negotiations for a possible contract. The Army official did not have authority to enter into an NDA on behalf of the government. View "Liberty Ammunition, Inc. v. United States" on Justia Law

Scriptpro’s patent is directed to a “collating unit” used with a control center and an automatic dispensing system to store prescription containers after a medication has been dispensed into the containers. After a remand in an infringement case, the district court entered summary judgment, finding four claims invalid for lack of written description. The Federal Circuit reversed and remanded. The patent expressly states that containers can be sorted and stored “by patient, prescription, or other predetermined storage scheme without input or handling by the operator.” Not every claim must contain every limitation or achieve every disclosed purpose. Here, the original claims filed as part of the patent application did not include a requirement that sorting and storing be done by use of patient-identifying information. The district court erred when it determined that the specification limited the invention to storing prescription containers based on patient name and slot availability. Because the specification does not limit the scope of the invention in the manner the district court described, the asserted claims are not invalid for lacking such a limitation. View "Scriptpro LLC v. Innovation Assocs, Inc." on Justia Law

EPA and state clean air regulations regulate the percentage of contaminates that may be discharged from oil and gas storage tanks and other holding vessels into the atmosphere. The patents at issue address capturing and recovering fuel vapors. NanoVapor’s Vapor Suppression System, developed by Moorhead, aims to control or eliminate combustible and toxic gasses in fuel storage and transfer operations. After working with Moorhead to help market this technology, Nathan became NanoVapor’s COO in 2007. NanoVapor later hired Matheson to help with the “commercial embodiment” of the technology being developed. Moorhead filed a provisional patent application in December 2006, claiming the vapor suppression system. The parties disagree over whether Nathan was then aware of the progress of the patent application. NanoVapor alleged that Nathan and Matheson (collectively, Vapor Point) plotted to steal NanoVapor’s technology and associated trade secrets. Vapor Point claims that the application wrongfully claimed their conceptual and inventive contributions and that that they are the true inventors of the technology. The Federal Circuit affirmed issuance of a correction of inventorship (35 U.S.C. 256) in favor of Vapor Point and denial of Vapor Point’s motion for exceptional case status and attorneys’ fees. The court noted NanoVapor’s concession that a determination of inventorship would resolve the case. View "Vapor Point, LLC v. Moorhead" on Justia Law

Arendi’s patent is directed to coordination between a first computer program displaying a document and a second program for searching an external information source. It allows a user to access and conduct a search using the second program while remaining in the first program displaying the document and discloses mechanisms for analyzing the document to identify the presence of name and address information by analyzing formatting, certain designators and abbreviations, and a database of common names. A search by the second program using the first information as a search term then looks for second information associated with the first information in the information source. Once the second information is located, the claimed invention performs an action using the second information. On inter partes review, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board found several claims would have been obvious. The Federal Circuit reversed, stating that the Board misapplied precedent on the permissible use of common sense in an obviousness analysis. The Board’s presumption that adding a search for phone numbers would be “common sense” was conclusory and unsupported by substantial evidence; the missing limitation is not “peripheral” and there was nothing to support a conclusion that supplying the missing limitation would be obvious to one of skill in the art. View "Arendi S.A.R.L. v. Apple Inc.." on Justia Law

CSB’s 953 patent, issued in 1997, is directed to a circuit arrangement for integrating an electronic data processing (EDP) system with telephone systems connected to an integrated services digital network (ISDN) telephone network. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board upheld an examiner’s rejection of all claims of the 953 patent as unpatentable over the prior art during an ex parte reexamination. The Federal Circuit affirmed. While the Board should have applied the “Phillips” standard of claim construction rather than the broadest reasonable interpretation standard used by the examiner because the 953 patent expired during the reexamination, its claim construction was correct even under the Phillips standard. There was no support for limiting the broad claim term “personal computer” in the patent to exclude personal computers running software to emulate terminals. In the context of the 953 patent, a personal computer is defined by its hardware and computing capability, not by the software it happens to run at a point in time. View "In re: CSB-Sys. Int'l, Inc." on Justia Law

The 997 patent relates to spinal surgery that “insert[s] an artificial implant between two adjacent vertebrae” from a patient’s side and discloses “instrumentation and methods of performing surgical procedures on the human thoracic and lumbar spine along the lateral aspect [(i.e., side)] of the spine” to correct “thoracic and lumbar disc disease and spinal deformities where concomitant fusion is desired.” The lateral approach to spinal surgery seeks to avoid complications that may arise when the surgery is performed from the patient’s front or back. Based on petitions filed by NuVasive, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted inter partes review and found claims 1–8 and 17–23 obvious and therefore invalid. The Federal Circuit affirmed in part. Substantial evidence supported findings of obviousness in light of prior art and concerning motivation to combine prior art. The court vacated with respect to a limitation in one specific claim. View "In re: Warsaw Orthopedic, Inc." on Justia Law

Halo owns patents directed to surface mount electronic packages containing transformers for mounting on a printed circuit board inside electronic devices. Halo alleged infringement by Pulse. The district court entered summary judgment that Pulse did not sell or offer to sell accused products within the U.S. and, therefore, did not directly infringe, and that Pulse’s infringement with respect to accused products sold and delivered outside the U.S. was not willful. The Federal Circuit affirmed, upholding the constructions of the claim limitations “electronic surface mount package” and “contour element,” finding the patents not invalid for obviousness, and affirming the judgment of direct infringement with respect to products delivered in the U.S. and the judgment of inducement with respect to products delivered outside the U.S. but ultimately imported by others. The Supreme Court granted Halo’s certiorari petition with respect to enhanced damages, and held that Section 284 of the Patent Act “gives district courts the discretion to award enhanced damages . . . in egregious cases of misconduct beyond typical infringement.” On remand, the Federal Circuit left undisturbed the judgments on other issues, but vacated its unenhanced damages award with respect to products that were delivered in the United States, and remanded for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court’s opinion. View "Halo Elec,, Inc. v. Pulse Elec., Inc." on Justia Law

Multilayer sued Berry Plastics, alleging infringement of its patent, which relates to multilayered plastic cling wrap films. The district court construed the claims of the patent as not covering (i.e., closed to) blends of the four resins expressly recited by those claims or unlisted resins, instead requiring that each of five inner layers within the film be composed of only one of the listed resins. The court granted Berry summary judgment of non-infringement. The court also invalidated claim 10 of the patent under 35 U.S.C. 112(d), but denied Berry’s request for sanctions against Multilayer under FRCP 11. The Federal Circuit vacated the summary judgment, finding that the district court erred in one aspect of its claim construction. There is nothing in the prosecution history of the patent to suggest that blends of the resins are excluded. The court affirmed that claim 10 of the patent is invalid and the court’s decision not to impose sanctions against Multilayer. View "Multilayer Stretch Cling Film Holdings, Inc. v. Berry Plastics Corp." on Justia Law

Wi-LAN’s patents result from advances proposed for the WiMAX wireless network standard. In a typical wireless network, a base station connects directly to the user devices that it serves. The patents to add intermediary nodes between the base station and the user devices. Communications from the base station to a user device pass from the base station through an intermediary node to the user device; communications from a user device to the base station take the reverse path. This network architecture allowed for efficiency gains, primarily because the base station could offload some of its more resource-intensive tasks to the intermediary nodes. Wi-LAN claimed infringement by Apple’s iPhone operating on a 4G network. Based on several claim constructions, the district court granted Apple summary judgment of noninfringement. The Federal Circuit affirmed, upholding the court’s construction of the term “specified connection” and the term “UL connections.” View "WI-LAN USA, Inc. v. Apple Inc." on Justia Law

GPNE’s patents relate to a paging system, using devices capable of both receiving messages and sending messages through a central control station, which can also receive a message from a telephone (e.g., a callback number, as in one-way pager operations) and send it to a recipient device. The specification discloses that “the invention provides a two-way paging system which operates independently from a telephone system for wireless data communication between users.” GPNE asserted infringement of claims referring to the network's devices as “nodes” and requiring that the “node” be “in a data network, the data network including a plurality of nodes,” have “at least one processor,” have “a memory providing code to the processor,” and have an “interface” that transmits and receives communication signals in a particular manner. The claims are otherwise silent as to what a “node” is. Apart from the Abstract, the specification does not refer to “node,” but refers to devices as “pagers” or “paging units.” The specification discloses that each “paging unit” includes a transmitter, a receiver, a beeper, a vibrator, an LCD display, a keyboard, and a “pager computer” which performs the processing for the device's operation. The Federal Circuit affirmed that the claims are not infringed, upholding construction of “node” as “pager with two-way data communications capability that transmits wireless data communications on a paging system that operates independently from a telephone network.” View "GPNE Corp. v. Apple, Inc." on Justia Law