IP Newsflash

In a patent case containing a variety of federal and state law claims, the District of Massachusetts retained supplemental jurisdiction over the state law claims even after all the federal law claims were dismissed.

The Federal Circuit recently upheld the USPTO’s authority under the estoppel provision 37 C.F.R. § 42.73(d)(3)(i) to prohibit a patent owner from obtaining patent claims that are not patentably distinct from claims previously declared unpatentable in inter partes review (IPR) proceedings. However, the court clarified that the regulation applies only to new claims or amended claims, not previously issued claims.

The Federal Circuit recently affirmed an ITC holding that the AIA’s § 102 on-sale bar applies to the sale of a product made according to a secret process when that sale occurs more than one year before the patent’s effective filing date. In so doing, the court confirmed that, despite changes to the text of § 102, the AIA did not undo long-settled pre-AIA precedent that the on-sale bar applies when, before the critical date, a party sells products secretly made using a patented process.

The Federal Circuit dismissed an appeal of a final written decision in an IPR based on issue preclusion where a district court had dismissed a complaint finding the patent claims subject-matter ineligible. The patentee had filed a second amended complaint, but then voluntarily dismissed the case without asking the district court to vacate its prior invalidity ruling, which it also never appealed. The Federal Circuit held that the initial invalidity order was interlocutory when issued but merged with the voluntary dismissal with prejudice, making the invalidity determination final and the present appeal moot.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board denied institution of an inter partes review petition because a prior art patent figure did not provide exact dimensions, and therefore could not meet the relevant claim limitation.  On review from the denied institution, the Director explained that a drawing may be relied upon for what it clearly shows, vacating and remanding for a determination of whether the reference is clear on its face or reasonably would have suggested the limitation in view of the supporting expert testimony.

In a case it described as “‘a prime example’ of when ODP does not apply,” the Federal Circuit recently reversed a decision from the District of Delaware that invalidated a claim for obviousness-type double patenting (ODP), holding that a first-filed, first-issued, later-expiring claim cannot be invalidated for ODP based on a later-filed, later-issued, but earlier-expiring claim from the same family. In so doing, the court answered the question of whether a later-filed, later-issued patent in the same family can be an ODP reference against the first application in the family—it cannot. The court also clarified the scope of its prior ruling in In re Cellect, explaining that case answered a different question—the question of what expiration date should be used for an ODP analysis.

A court in the Western District of Oklahoma dismissed a complaint as to one of the asserted patents where the patent included a terminal disclaimer stating that the patent would be enforceable only as long as it was co-owned with a reference patent that the PTO had misidentified. The court relied on the public notice function of the patent system to hold the plaintiff to the exact language in its terminal disclaimer, and held that the asserted patent was unenforceable from the moment it issued because it and the reference patent were never co-owned.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has denied institution of an inter partes review, in part because the petitioner failed to show that a key reference qualified as prior art. The PTAB ruled that the petitioner was required to explain how a patent application publication was entitled to the priority date of a provisional application to qualify as prior art under AIA §§ 102(a) and (d)(2). Because the petitioner did not provide any analysis, there was no basis to find that the patent application publication was prior art.