#federal-circuit

#federal-circuit

Gramm v. Deere & Company, No. 2024-1598 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 11, 2026), involves neither obviousness nor the Graham factors. Instead, it offers an illustration of means-plus-function claiming under § 112(f) and the doctrinal hazards.

"Though we articulated a component-by-component analysis was unnecessary in Odetics, the patentee must still account for each element of the claimed structure in its equivalence analysis." - CAFC opinion The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Thursday issued a precedential decision finding Sony's Playstation controllers and consoles did not infringe Genuine Enabling Technology's (GET's) patent for computer input devices. GET alleged that Sony directly and indirectly infringed its U.S. Patent No. 6,219,730 via certain Playstation products.

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"Without realizing it, in Egyptian Goddess, we meaningfully changed the substantial similarity test." - CAFC Chief Judge Moore

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision on Tuesday, January 20, concluding that a district court abused its discretion in granting motions to exclude two of Dr. Mark A. Barry's experts and granting judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) to DePuy Synthes Companies. The panel included Judges Stark, Taranto and Prost and Judge Stark dissented.

The Federal Circuit heard oral argument today in Apple Inc. v. Squires, 24-1864, a long-running challenge to the USPTO's Fintiv discretionary denial framework. Apple, Cisco, Google, and Intel argue that the NHK-Fintiv rule should have been adopted through notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) rather than through precedential Board designations.

by Dennis Crouch Today's post takes us back in time over the past five years (2020-2025) and looks at the Federal Circuit decisions that subsequently have become the most cited. As you might guess, this list is dominated by the older cases - since they have had more time to be cited. But, the is also dominated by § 101 patent eligibility decisions, with pleading standards, enablement, and procedural doctrine also featuring prominently. What follows is a brief tour through the top eleven.

The Federal Circuit has dismissed an appeal by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) seeking to unseal summary judgment briefing in a patent dispute involving standard-essential patents for cable modem technology. Entropic Communications, LLC v. Charter Communications, Inc., No. 24-1896 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 17, 2025) (nonprecedential). The CAFed held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying EFF's motion for permissive intervention as untimely under Fifth Circuit law.

MSN Pharmaceuticals, Inc. subsequently filed a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court in August of this year, arguing that there is "doctrinal chaos" surrounding the topic of after-arising technology in the context of patent infringement suits. While some Federal Circuit decisions have held "that when a patentee secures a claim construction that ensnares, as infringing, an accused device that features after-arising technology, the patentee risks invalidating its own patent on written-description and enablement grounds,"

Three new mandamus petitions recently arrived at the Federal Circuit, each attempting to navigate around the court's November 6 decisions that rejected challenges to the USPTO's expanded use of discretionary denials. The new petitions raise arguments their counsel contend are distinct from those already rejected in In re Motorola Solutions, Inc., No. 2025-134 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 6, 2025) (precedential).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Tuesday issued a precedential decision in Duke University v. Sandoz Inc., reversing a judgment from the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado and finding claim 30 of U.S. Patent No. 9,579,270 invalid for lacking an adequate written description. The ruling overturns a $39 million jury verdict finding that Sandoz Inc. infringed the patent owned by Duke University and Allergan Sales, LLC, which covers the eyelash growth drug, LATISSE.

The Federal Circuit has reversed a lost profits award in a patent infringement case involving self-balancing unicycles, holding that the district court applied the wrong legal standard when it excluded evidence of noninfringing substitutes that were not actually "on sale during period of infringement." In Inventist Inc. v. Ninebot Inc. (USA), No. 2024-1010 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 14, 2025) (nonprecedential), the court reaffirmed the principle from Grain Processing Corp. v. American Maize-Products Co., 185 F.3d 1341 (Fed. Cir. 1999),

[W]hen the patented invention is the result of the work of joint inventors, the portions of the reference disclosure relied upon must reflect the collective work of the same inventive entity identified in the patent to be excluded as prior art." - Federal Circuit The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision on Thursday,

Conventional wisdom is that a good certiorari petition needs to show the legal error below and also show why the case is important and timely. The petition follows this dual framing strategy: (1) a doctrinal claim that the Federal Circuit has abandoned preemption as the touchstone of patent eligibility; and (2) a policy argument tied to what I think of as the "new great game" and what the Trump Administration calls "Winning the AI Race." The case also arrives at the Supreme Court as the USPTO has begun to move aggressively toward limiting its use of eligibility in patent prosecution.

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a pair of precedential decisions involving appeals from U.S. federal agency determinations on the patent rights of North Carolina-based energy demand response developer Causam Enterprises. The Federal Circuit affirmed the invalidation of Causam's patent rights and mooted further infringement proceedings after finding that inconsistent positions on patent ownership taken by respondent ecobee in alternative forums did not present a constitutional due process issue.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Monday issued a decision in Rasmussen Instruments, LLC v. DePuy Synthes Products, Inc., vacating a United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts judgment and remanding with instructions to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The court held that Rasmussen Instruments lacked standing to bring the patent infringement lawsuit because it did not own the asserted patents at the time the suit was filed.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: USPTO Acting Commissioner for Patents Valencia Martin Wallace sends an internal email to staff indicating that 1% of the agency's workforce will be laid off; U.S. sales of electric vehicles hit a record during the third quarter of 2025 just as federal subsidies for EV purchases ended; the Federal Circuit nixes US Inventor's pursuit of associational standing to sue the USPTO for denying its petition for rulemaking on discretionary denial criteria for AIA trials;

Over the past couple of years, I have noticed increased willingness of the Federal Circuit to reject jury verdicts, especially in situations involving potentially inadequate expert testimony. This past summer, the Federal Circuit's en banc EcoFactor decision followed this pattern by overturning a $20 million jury verdict based upon flaws in the patentee's damages expert testimony.

The Federal Circuit reversed a Texas jury's $166 million infringement verdict in Finesse Wireless LLC v. AT&T Mobility LLC, 24-1039 (Fed. Cir. Sept. 24, 2025), holding that the patentee's contradictory and unclear expert testimony could not support the Jury's finding of patent infringement. The case is centered on Finesse's U.S. Patent Nos. 7,346,134 and 9,548,775, which relate to methods of reducing "intermodulation interference" in wireless communications.

In a spirited discussion at our annual Women's IP Forum, attendees were treated to an insightful fireside-style chat conversation with the Honorable Judge Pauline Newman, a trailblazer for women in law and a luminary in the field of intellectual property. Judge Newman spoke with Renee C. Quinn, Chief Operating Officer of IPWatchdog, Inc., about her extraordinary career and her life journey.