5 Key Takeaways | Rolling with the Legal Punches: Resetting Patent Strategy to Address Changes in the Law
Verdict in T-Cell Immunotherapy IP Case Tests 'Reasonable Royalty' Concept for Large Damage Awards
It is well established that an enantiomerically pure compound exhibiting advantageous properties not present in its isomer or its corresponding racemic mixture, can be patented even if its corresponding racemic mixtures are...more
On May 12, 2025, the Federal Circuit issued a decision in Regents of the Univ. of California v. Broad Inst., Inc.1 concerning the ongoing priority dispute relating to competing inventor groups for the CRISPR-Cas9 eukaryotic...more
The Federal Circuit issued a precedential opinion in In re: Xencor, Inc.concerning written support for Jepson claims. The decision affirms the decision of the Appeals Review Panel (ARP) of the USPTO, which held that the...more
On April 22, 2025, the Federal Circuit issued a decision In re: Bonnie Iris McDonald Floyd that underscores a critical and often overlooked risk in design patent prosecution: relying on a utility patent application for...more
In its recent In re Floyd opinion, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a decision by Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to reject a design applicant’s priority claim to an earlier utility filing for...more
Patent claims reciting compounds where at least one group of a compound genus is defined by its function are common. For example, familiar claim terms such as “chelating moiety,” “linker,” and “binding moiety” describe a...more
Addressing the distinction between conception and reduction to practice and the requirement for written description in the unpredictable arts, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit explained that proof of conception...more
The Regents of the University of California, et al. v. The Broad Institute, Inc., et al., Nos. 2022-1594, -1653 (Fed. Cir. (PTAB) May 12, 2025). Opinion by Reyna, joined by Hughes and Cunningham....more
Only a few days after the one-year anniversary of hearing oral argument, the Federal Circuit handed down its decision in Regents of the University of California v. Broad Institute, Inc. on Monday. The opinion reviewed the...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s ruling that a software term was a “nonce” term that invoked 35 U.S.C. § 112, sixth paragraph (i.e., a means-plus-function claim element). The Court...more
On March 13, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a decision in the case of In Re: Xencor, Inc. In this Appeal from the Appeals Review Panel of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (ARP), with regard to...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently issued a decision that highlights a risk in design patent prosecution—specifically, attempting to claim priority to a utility application. In re Floyd, the Federal...more
Entresto® (valsartan/sacubitril) - Case Name: In re Entresto, 125 F.4th 1090 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 10, 2025) (Circuit Judges Lourie, Prost, and Reyna presiding; Opinion by Lourie, C.J.) (Appeal from D. Del., Andrews, J.) Drug...more
In the landmark Amgen v. Sanofi case (previously covered here), the Supreme Court affirmed that patent claims drawn to a genus of monoclonal antibodies, which were claimed in terms of their function and the epitope to which...more
Current written description jurisprudence can make it difficult to obtain broad antibody patents, leading practitioners to explore alternative claiming strategies in an effort to bypass the limited scope afforded under the...more
On March 24, 2025, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Federal Circuit) issued a decision titled In Re: Riggs (the Riggs decision) that vacated a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the US...more
In In re: Xencor, Inc., the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit confirmed that the limiting preamble of a Jepson claim must be supported by the specification with “sufficient written description.” In its decision, the...more
Last week a remarkably interesting Federal Circuit case was decided concerning whether an asserted reference was properly shown to qualify as prior art in the rejection of a pending patent application. The pending application...more
On March 24, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“CAFC”) issued an opinion vacating and remanding a decision of the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (the “Board”) that a published patent application...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found a Jepson claim unpatentable where the specification did not provide adequate written description for the portion of the claim purporting to recite what was already well...more
In re: Xencor, Inc., Appeal No. 2024-1870 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 13, 2025) Our case of the week is an appeal from a decision of the Appeals Review Panel of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, concerning Xencor’s patent application...more
The Federal Circuit recently reversed a district court decision that found a patent that did not describe after-arising technology failed to satisfy the written description requirement. In so doing, the Federal Circuit...more
Addressing a preliminary injunction in patent litigation related to the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA), the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the district court’s grant of a...more
On January 29, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia’s entries of preliminary injunction preventing Samsung Bioepis Co., Ltd....more
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc., Appeal Nos. 2024-1965, -1966, -2082, -2083 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 29, 2025) Our Case of the Week is a 31-page decision that touches on a variety of issues, including...more