Justia Patents Opinion Summaries

VA alleged infringement of the 413 patent. One defendant, Salesforce, filed a petition with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) for post-grant review of all claims of that patent under the Covered Business Method Patents (CBM) program, of the America Invents Act, 125 Stat. 284. Salesforce argued that it had standing to bring the petition because it was sued for infringement and that the PTAB should institute CBM review because all the patent claims were more likely than not patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. 101 and invalid under 35 U.S.C. 102, 103 in view of prior art references. Defendants moved to stay district court proceedings. In August 2013, while the motion was pending, the court issued a discovery order and held a scheduling conference, setting an April 2014 date for a claim construction hearing and a November 2014 date for jury selection. In November 2013, the PTAB granted-in-part Salesforce’s petition, concluding that all claims of the 413 patent are directed to a covered business method, and are more likely than not patent-ineligible and invalid, and set a July 2014 date for a trial on the validity of the claims. In January 2014, the district court denied Defendants’ motion to stay the case pending CBM review. The Federal Circuit reversed. View "VirtualAgility Inc. v. Salesforce.com, Inc." on Justia Law

The International Trade Commission (ITC) determined that Intel did not violate 19 U.S.C. 1337 because Intel’s products were not covered by X2Y’s asserted patents. The patents disclose technology relating to structures for reducing electromagnetic interference in electrical circuits. The inventions use shielding electrodes to reduce the undesirable buildup of charge, known as “parasitic capacitance,” between electrodes used for conduction. In particular, the patents disclose alternating arrangements of shielded and shielding electrodes. The Federal Circuit affirmed. In light of clear disavowals, the claims at issue are limited to “a common conductive pathway electrode positioned between paired electromagnetically opposite conductors.” Because X2Y conceded noninfringement based on that construction, the court did not reach any other issues. View "X2Y Attenuators, LLC v. Int'l Trade Comm'n " on Justia Law

Retractable sued, alleging that Becton’s 1 mL and 3 mL IntegraTM syringes infringed claims of Retractable’s patents. Becton had commercially launched its 3 mL syringe in 2002 and the 1 mL syringe in 2003. At trial, Retractable argued that infringement began in 2000 and that a hypothetical negotiation then would have resulted in a lump sum payment of $72 million for a 10-year license. Becton countered with a lost profits theory that would limit recovery to about $5 million based on the sales of the syringes, or, alternatively, that a reasonable royalty would have been no more than $3 million.. The jury found that both syringes infringed and that reasonable royalty damages were $5,000,000. The district court entered judgment in Retractable’s favor and a permanent injunction against the continued sale of both syringes. Becton appealed the infringement and validity determinations but neither appealed nor requested a remand of the damages determination. The Federal Circuit concluded that the district court misconstrued one claim term and that the 3 mL syringe did not infringe; no remand was ordered. Becton requested the district court to modify the injunction and the damages award in light of the decision, citing Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(5). Retractable consented to modification of the injunction to exclude the 3 mL syringe. The district court concluded that the mandate rule precluded it from revisiting damages because the award was within the scope of the original judgment and was not raised in the prior appeal nor remanded. The Federal Circuit affirmed. View "Retractable Techs, Inc. v. Becton Dickinson & Co." on Justia Law

An antibody is a protein that binds to a foreign substance, called an antigen, to facilitate its removal from the body, and is useful in treating diseases. AbbVie owns patents directed to genetically engineered fully human antibodies that bind to and neutralize the activity of human interleukin 12 (IL-12), a signaling protein secreted by the human body, the overproduction of which can cause psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis. Because the human body does not typically make antibodies to neutralize its own proteins, it does not produce IL-12 antibodies naturally. Antibodies from a non-human species can cause adverse immune reactions in humans. The AbbVie patents share the same written description and claim priority from a provisional application filed in 1999; they describe the amino acid sequence of about 300 antibodies having a range of IL-12 binding affinities. AbbVie sued for infringement and the defendants sought interference review under 35 U.S.C. 146. The district court entered judgments of invalidity in both the infringement and the interference actions. The Federal Circuit affirmed; all of the asserted claims are invalid for failing to satisfy the written description requirement. View "AbbVie Deutschland GmbH & Co. v. Janssen Biotech, Inc." on Justia Law

MadStad sought a declaratory judgment that the “first-inventor-to-file” provision of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) was unconstitutional and a permanent injunction barring its enforcement. Before the AIA, the PTO typically gave priority to the first to invent; under the AIA priority goes to the first inventor to file a patent application. The named inventor must have invented the invention independently and not derived the idea from another, 35 U.S.C. 102. The district court dismissed for lack of standing. The Federal Circuit affirmed. For MadStad to actually suffer any injury fairly traceable to the AIA, an “acutely attenuated concatenation of events” was required. MadStad failed to prove that any injury was actual or imminent. View "MadStad Eng'g, Inc. v. U.S. Patent & Trademark Office" on Justia Law

The patents, which claim priority to the same parent application, are directed to systems and methods for enabling hospital staff to remotely monitor the status of hospital beds and disclose hospital beds equipped with sensors that monitor bed parameters, such as the patient’s presence in the bed and the bed height. The systems send data about the status of a hospital bed to a remote location for monitoring. Hill-Rom sued Stryker alleging infringement of various claims. The parties stipulated to non-infringement based on the court’s construction of the claim terms “datalink,” “interface board including a processor,” “message validation information,” and “bed condition message.” The Federal Circuit reversed and remanded, based on erroneous construction of the terms. View "Hill-Rom Services, Inc. v. Stryker Corp." on Justia Law

CEATS filed a patent infringement suit against airlines and ticket agencies. After the parties failed to reach a settlement during court ordered mediation, a jury found that CEATS’s patents were infringed, but invalid. The Federal Circuit affirmed the finding of invalidity. While its first appeal was pending, CEATS filed sought relief from the judgment under FRCP 60(b) based on an alleged relationship between the court-appointed mediator and the law firm representing most of the accused infringers. The alleged relationship was brought to light in the unrelated Karlseng litigation. The district court denied CEATS’s Rule 60(b) motion. The Federal Circuit affirmed, stating that it disagreed with the district court’s finding that the mediator had no duty to disclose his dealings with one of the firms involved in the litigation, but that the three “Liljeberg factors” did not establish that this case presents an “extraordinary circumstance” where relief from judgment is warranted View "CEATS, Inc. v. Cont'l Airlines, Inc." on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the district court's remand to state court. Plaintiff moved to dismiss the case. At issue was whether the district court has jurisdiction over an inventorship dispute where the contested patent has not yet been issued. The court concluded that, regardless of whether the removed complaint included an inventorship dispute, that dispute was inadequate to establish the district court's jurisdiction because the allegations indicated that no patent had issued; by raising a timely objection to removal, plaintiff properly preserved its jurisdictional argument; and because removal was improper and the case had not yet been tried on the merits, binding precedent dictated that the court remand the case to state court. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's remand order as amended and dismissed plaintiff's motion and cross-motion. View "Camsoft Data Sys., Inc. v. Southern Electronics Supply, et al." on Justia Law

Augme sued Yahoo! alleging infringement of certain claims of two patents that disclose adding functionality, such as media or advertisements, to a web page. Yahoo! counterclaimed that Augme and World Talk Radio infringed certain claims of its patent. After claim construction, the court granted Yahoo! summary judgment of noninfringement and held that certain means-plus-function terms in claims 19 and 20 of Augme’s patent were indefinite. The parties stipulated to infringement of the asserted claims of Yahoo!’s patent based on the court’s claim construction. The Federal Circuit affirmed that Yahoo!’s accused systems do not infringe the Augme patents either literally or under the doctrine of equivalents and that certain claims are indefinite. The court also upheld the district court’s construction of the claim term “server hostname.”View "Augme Techs, Inc. v. Yahoo! Inc." on Justia Law

The 317, 485, and 727 patents (owned by Gemalto) derive priority from the same provisional patent application and share the same named inventors, specification, and title: “Using a High Level Programming Language with a Microcontroller.” The patented technology is designed to allow resource-constrained devices, including microcontrollers, to run software applications (or programs) written in high level programming languages, such as Java. According to Gemalto, its invention enabled resource-constrained devices to run applications written in high level programming languages (such as Java) by minimizing the computing resources that applications consumed during storage and execution. Gemalto sued for infringement, alleging that the defendants’ smartphones infringe when they run the Android operating system and Java applications (converted using the Android software development kit). The defendants contended that the accused smartphones do not infringe because they are not resource-constrained devices, but rely on off-chip memory to run Java applications, similar to prior art personal computers. The district court construed the asserted claims and granted summary judgment of non-infringement, concluding that the accused products did not infringe literally or under the doctrine of equivalents. The Federal Circuit affirmed.View "Gemalto S.A. v. HTC Corp." on Justia Law