Intellectual Property Expert Group
Intellectual Property Expert Group
Moderna sued on Friday, August 26 both Pfizer and BioNTech, claiming that their Covid vaccine copied its groundbreaking technology. Moderna said in a statement that Pfizer and BioNTech infringed on patents filed between 2010 and 2016 that covered its mRNA…
“The Case for Restoring Inventors’ Rights” David Wanetick’s seventh book on patents touches on the inequality of arms between the inventor and the institutions meant to uphold the patent system and large patent holders. He starts by recognizing that the…
The enactment of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) of 2016 in the United States creates a new paradigm and is a watershed event in intellectual property law. Former U.S. President Barack Obama signed the bill into law on May…
In European countries, a patentee often must prove the accused infringer’s negligence in order to obtain patent infringement damages. In America, the situation is arguably more complicated. This post briefly addresses some of the questions relating to this situation that…
The United States Supreme Court has granted a writ of certiorari this term in Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc. (reviewing the Court of Appeals’ decision in Biosig Instruments, Inc. v. Nautilus, Inc., 715 F.3d 891 (Fed. Cir. 2013)), to…
As we noted in a previous item (“Reselling products in the USA, Part II: ‘First Sale’ doctrine in patent,” March 22, 2013), American patent law features a doctrine of “exhaustion,” also sometimes (apparently interchangeably) called “first sale.” If you own…
As most patent practitioners know, the appellate court for United States patent cases, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, reviews decisions on how patent claims should be construed without any deference to the district court, and has the…
“Exhaustion,” also known as the “first sale doctrine,” has been the subject of two Supreme Court cases this term: Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons (copyright), which was decided on March 19, 2013, and Bowman v. Monsanto (patent), which was…
At a secondhand bookstore in Palo Alto, California (the location is relevant, as shall be seen below), I once paid US$5 for the first volume of Jean-Yves Tadié’s biography of Marcel Proust from the Éditions Gallimard “Collection Folio,” a book…
Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court spoke on patentable subject matter in Bilski v. Kappos, 130 S. Ct. 3218 (2010), Federal Circuit panels have taken a variety of approaches to the subject. The latest approach is seen in Dealertrack, Inc.…
In American patent law, claim elements drafted as means for performing a function – e.g., “means for adding two numbers” – read on the structure corresponding to that function disclosed in the specification “and equivalents thereof.” 35 USC § 112…
On September 16, 2011, large changes were made to many areas of patent law in the America Invents Act (the “reform act”). In this post, we discuss the changes that bring America closer to a first to file regime, as…
For over fifteen years, from In re Alappat, 33 F.3d 1526 (Fed. Cir. 1994) to In re Bilski, 545 F.3d 943 (Fed. Cir. 2008), it seemed that the requirement of patentable subject matter had no bite in the US. It…
It was long a subject of dispute in America what state of mind a defendant had to possess to be found liable for inducing patent infringement. Some panels believed that “the only intent required of [the defendant] is the intent…
Over the past few years, companies accused of infringing method claims in America have had a new defense available to them: the absence of a “mastermind” directing the performance of the method. [W]here the actions of multiple parties combine to…
A well-known American lawyer, Bill Lerach, once stated: “I have the greatest practice of law in the world. I have no clients.” Peter J. Henning, Behind the Rise and Fall of a Class Action King, New York Times (March 1,…
What is a patent worth? In 1943, Nikola Tesla, who patented many fundamental inventions only to watch others become wealthy using them, died impoverished in New York City. Tesla had outlived his rival in radio technology, Guglielmo Marconi, who had…
After a momentous U.S. Congressional election that saw more turnover in the chamber than had occurred for many years, the 112th US Congress is showing signs of continuing recent efforts to make changes to the country’s patent law. In the…
The United States Supreme Court’s recent grant of certiorari in Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd. raises the issue of whether patent law requires clear and convincing evidence of invalidity to invalidate a patent. The clear and convincing evidence standard of…
Can a university “retain” something it never had to begin with? Can the federal government “receive” rights from inventors with whom it has no contractual relationship? In post-Bayh-Dole America, with whom do rights to innovation first vest? These are some…