Justia Patents Opinion Summaries

3M sells laminate products such as diapers and claimed infringement of four patents by Tredegar, a supplier of breathable and nonwoven film laminates for personal care products, including baby diapers, training pants, and adult incontinence products. After the district court construed claim terms the parties stipulated to noninfringement. The Federal Circuit remanded. The court affirmed the appropriate scope of the claim terms “continuous contact” and “continuous microtextured skin layer over substantially the entire laminate,” but clarified the appropriate scope of those terms. The court reversed claim constructions relating to the terms grouped as “preferential activation zone” and the term “ribbon,” finding that the district court erroneously limited certain claim terms in a manner inconsistent with the intrinsic disclosures. View "3M Innovative Props. Co. v. Tredegar Corp." on Justia Law

Tetra Pak’s patent involves commercial cheese-making vats. The district court granted summary judgment, holding that CSI infringed under the doctrine of equivalents and had not proven the patent invalid, and entered a permanent injunction against CSI. The Federal Circuit affirmed. View "Cheese Sys., Inc. v. Tetra Pak Cheese & Powder Sys., Inc." on Justia Law

The Plantronics patent is directed to a concha-style headset for transmitting received sounds to the ear of a user, and discloses an apparatus for stabilizing a concha style headset during use. The district court granted-in-part Aliph’s motion for summary judgment of noninfringement and invalidity, construing certain terms and holding the asserted claims invalid as obvious. The Federal Circuit reversed in part, vacated in part, and remanded, holding that the terms “stabilizer support member” and the “concha stabilizer” are not structurally limited either in claim language or in their corresponding description in the specification. The district court concluded that the patent was invalid as obvious before considering objective indications of nonobviousness. View "Plantronics, Inc. v. Aliph, Inc." on Justia Law

CMW’s patent generally relates to a two-pipe drill for boring underground holes horizontally. An inner pipe rotates the drill bit. An outer pipe, with a body and casing, is used for steering. The patent discusses a structure called a “deflection shoe” as a steering mechanism; it is included on one side of the casing to create an asymmetry about the casing’s centerline axis. If the casing does not rotate, the deflection shoe causes the drill to deflect away from a straight path. When the casing rotates, the drill follows a straight horizontal path. CMW sued Vermeer for infringement. The district court held that the accused commercial products and non-commercial prototypes do not infringe, literally or under the doctrine of equivalents. The Federal Circuit vacated in part, holding that CMW did not have sufficient notice that the prototypes were within the scope of the summary judgment decision. The court reversed with respect to the doctrine of equivalents, but affirmed that there is no literal infringement. View "Charles Mach. Works, Inc. v. Vermeer Mfg. Co." on Justia Law

Generic manufacturers submitted Abbreviated New Drug Applications (ANDAs) seeking FDA approval to market generic versions of Copaxone®, a drug used in treating multiple sclerosis. Teva, which markets Copaxone®, sued the generic manufacturers for patent infringement under 35 U.S.C. 271(e)(2)(A). The patents at issue share a common specification and are listed in the Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations (Orange Book) entry for Copaxone®. The patents include claims reciting a product called copolymer-1 and recite two methods of making copolymer-1: one using statistical average measures and the other describing how many molecules in a polymer sample have molecular weights that fall within an arbitrarily set range. The district court found that various claims of the nine patents by Teva are infringed, based on holdings regarding indefiniteness, nonenablement, and obviousness. The Federal Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part, holding that Group I claims are invalid for indefiniteness, but that Group II claims were not proven indefinite. The district court did not err in finding that the claims are infringed, and that the generic manufacturers failed to prove that the claims would have been obvious and are not enabled. View "Teva Pharm. USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc." on Justia Law

The patent at issue concerns methods for preventing bovine mastitis, the inflammation of udder tissue in cows, and is entitled “Antiinfective free intramammary veterinary composition.” The summary of the invention describes how the composition employs a physical barrier within the teat canal to block introduction of mastitis-causing organisms without requiring use of antiinfectives such as antibiotics. A patent examiner rejected certain claims introduced in the context of ex parte reexamination. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board and Federal Circuit affirmed, finding that substantial evidence supported the Board’s finding that one claim failed the written description requirement because the disclosure did not “describe[] a formulation excluding a specific species of the anti-infective genus, while permitting others to be present.” View "In re: Bimeda Research & Dev. Ltd." on Justia Law

Novozymes’s 723 patent, entitled “Alpha-Amylase Mutants with Altered Properties,” relates to recombinant enzyme technology. Enzymes are proteins that catalyze biochemical reactions; they facilitate molecular processes that would not occur or would occur more slowly in their absence. The 723 patent claims particular modified enzymes with improved function and stability under certain conditions. Novozymes sued DuPont, alleging infringement. DuPont counterclaimed, seeking a declaratory judgment of invalidity for failing to satisfy enablement and written description requirements of 35 U.S.C. 112. The district court granted Novozymes summary judgment on the issue of infringement and denied DuPont summary judgment of invalidity. A jury concluded that the claims were not invalid and awarded infringement damages of more than $18 million, but the district court granted DuPont’s post-trial motion for judgment as a matter of law that the claims are invalid for failure to satisfy the written description requirement. The Federal Circuit affirmed. To actually possess the variant enzymes claimed in the patent would require Novozymes to confirm its predictions by actually making and testing individual variants or at least identifying subclasses of variants that could be expected to possess the claimed properties, which it did not do before filing its 2000 application. View "Novozymes A/S v. DuPont Nutrition Biosciences, APS" on Justia Law

The 096 application states that “[p]athologies of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract may exist for a variety of reasons such as bleeding, lesions, angiodisplasia, Crohn’s disease, polyps, celiac disorders, and others.” It can be difficult to detect the pathologies, although the majority of pathologies result in changes of color and/or texture of the inner surface of the GI tract and may be due to bleeding. The 096 application is directed to a system for detection of blood within a body lumen, such as the esophagus, and includes a swallowable capsule having an in-vivo imager for obtaining images from within the body lumen. An examiner rejected the claims (35 U.S.C. 103) as obvious over several prior art references. The Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences and Federal Circuit affirmed. View "In re: Adler" on Justia Law

Plaintiff sued Marvel for patent infringement and breach of contract, claiming that it had used his ideas in developing a Spider-Man role-playing toy called the "Web Blaster" without compensating him. The parties subsequently agreed to settle the case while appeals were pending and executed a Settlement Agreement. Thereafter, Marvel entered into a licensing agreement with Hasbro giving it the right to produce the Web Blaster. At issue was the calculation of royalties for subsequent iterations of the Web Blaster. The court joined its sister circuits in holding, pursuant to Brulotte v. Thys Co., that a so-called "hybrid" licensing agreement encompassing inseparable patent and non-patent rights was unenforceable beyond the expiration date of the underlying patent, unless the agreement provided a discounted rate for the non-patent rights or some other clear indication that the royalty at issue was in no way subject to patent leverage. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of Marvel, concluding that plaintiff could not recover royalties under the Settlement Agreement beyond the expiration date of the patent at issue. View "Kimble v. Marvel Enter., Inc." on Justia Law

Synthes owns a patent, issued in 2006, directed to a system for repairing fractures in long bones, such as the femur, using a bone plate along the outside of the fractured bone, attached by anchors inserted through predrilled holes in the plate and then into the bone. The Patent and Trademark Office granted Smith & Nephew’s 2009 reexamination request and rejected all 55 claims of the patent as obvious based on prior art. The Board of Patent Appeals upheld the rejections of 31 of the claims, but reversed the rejections of 24. The Federal Circuit reversed, holding that Smith & Nephew met its burden of showing that the claims at issue would have been obvious. The patentability of the invention turns on the structure of the holes, not the special nature of the non-locking screws. The conical, partially threaded holes were well known in the art, as was the advantage of adding more of them to the head of a bone plate in place of unthreaded holes. The screws and the holes perform a conventional, expected function in securing the plate. View "Smith & Nephew, Inc. v. Rea" on Justia Law