News Archive

The district court held the patent-in-suit to be patent ineligible under Section 101.  It further found that the case was exceptional under Section 285 because, even under ...

This appeal involves the amount of a patent term adjustment awarded to Pfizer.  Pfizer filed the lawsuit seeking to reverse the PTO’s amount of the adjustment and to add back ...

Akzo appealed the district court’s grant of summary judgment of non-infringement, both literally and under the doctrine of equivalents and Dow cross-appealed the ...

The jury’s verdict of non-infringement in this case turned on the meaning of two claim terms: “independent storage unit” and “in files.”  The Federal Circuit held ...

This case involves an appeal to the Federal Circuit of the PTO’s decision in an inter partes reexamination.  The third party requesting the inter partes reexamination was ...

McKool Smith has been recognized by Law360 as one of five “Go-To” trial firms in the country in a report published on February 26, 2016.  In the report, Law360 notes that ...

A California state judge recently ruled that a jury should hear Quincy Jones' $10 million lawsuit against Sony Music Entertainment and Michael Jackson's production ...

McKool Smith was awarded United States “IP Firm of the Year” at the 2016 Benchmark U.S. awards for the second year in a row. Fellow nominees included Fish & Richardson; ...

McKool Smith principal Sam Baxter has been recognized as an “Icon of IP” by Law360. According to Law360, the publication’s IP Icon series honors “individuals who ...

McKool Smith principal Pierre Hubert discusses the changing climate of the PTAB forum and the recent drop in institutional decisions of inter partes review petitions in a ...

On remand from the Supreme Court to determine the correct construction of the claim term “virtual machine” in light of Teva Pharm. USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 135 U.S. 831 ...

The patent owner MCM appealed the PTAB’s holding in an inter partes review proceeding that the claims of the patent were invalid as being obvious on three grounds.  First ...

This is an appeal from a bench trial on the sole issue of damages for a patent covering a standard in the wireless communications field that is practiced on chips that are used in ...

The court affirmed the PTAB’s construction of three claim terms in an IPR proceeding under the broadest reasonable interpretation standard, and, under those ...

The Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s construction for the claim term “mobile device” to exclude devices that contain “computer modules.”  ...

The court affirmed the PTAB’s finding that SightSound’s patents were invalid as being obvious in connection with Apple’s requested Covered Business Method (CBM ...

The court affirmed the PTAB’s finding that Merck’s claims were obvious over the prior art.  The court, applying the substantial evidence standard of review to the ...

In a companion case to Merck v. Gnosis, decided on the same day, South Alabama makes essentially the same arguments why the PTAB erred by finding that the claims at issue would ...

The court reversed the finding of anticipation, because the patent examiner misapplied the “printed matter doctrine.”  Under the doctrine, if a claim limitation ...

On remand from the Supreme Court (which held that a defendant’s belief that a patent is invalid is not a defense to induced infringement), the court addressed Cisco’s ...

The court affirmed the district court’s denial of Redline’s motion to submit four new exhibits—an expert declaration, CV, and two pieces of prior art—that was ...

In an IPR proceeding brought by Berk-Tek, the PTAB held that asserted claims 1-4 were invalid as being obvious and held that the validity of claims 5-6 would be confirmed.  On ...

This case involved claims against two defendants, Teva and Amphastar.  The patent claims at issue involved a method for “quality control release testing” of an ...

The court affirmed the grant of summary judgment of non-infringement.  On appeal, the patentee, Imaginal, argued that the district court erred in construing the term ...

The patent at issue related to a method for treating certain female patients having a certain type of irritable bowel syndrome.  The court affirmed the district court’s ...

The claim at issue related to a container packing system which required that a certain piston-and-cylinder unit be connected to the “proximate end” of the base and ...

The district court held that the claims of four of Cubist’s patents were invalid as being obvious and held that the claims of the fifth of Cubist’s patents were not invalid ...

In an inter partes reexamination proceeding, the patentee amended its claims to add a negative limitation: “the chip selects . . . are DDR chip selects that are not CAS, RAS ...

Following the en banc court’s reversal of the JMOL finding no infringement, the court resolved all residual issues in the appeal and cross-appeal in this opinion.  Three ...

The court vacated and remanded the PTAB’s finding that the petitioner Ariosa failed to prove that the patent claims at issue were obvious.  Specifically, the PTAB held that ...

The court remanded the PTAB’s finding that the claims at issue were anticipated and obvious when using a claim construction that the court found was erroneous.  Applying ...

In an ANDA case, the court affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment that claims 1-2 of the patent-in-suit were invalid as being obvious and that claims 5-9 ...

The patent applicants sought to “swear behind” (37 CFR § 1.131) a certain prior art reference using affidavits and documents.  The PTAB held that the applicants had not ...

This case involves Dr. Shukh, who sued his former employer Seagate to correct the identity of the inventors under 35 U.S.C. § 256 by adding his name as an inventor on six patents ...

The PTAB held that a prior art reference was enabled and therefore it anticipated the claims at issue.  On appeal, Morsa argued that the PTAB’s reliance on statements in the ...

This case turned entirely on the construction of terms in asserted claim 21.  The district court granted Medtronic’s motion for summary judgment of non-infringement of ...

In a companion case to Atlas IP, LLC v. Medtronic, Inc., Atlas appealed the district court’s grant of summary judgment of non-infringement to Medtronic.  Atlas contended ...

The Federal Circuit held that a global settlement of all issues in a case, including mutual release which was joined by the attorneys, divested the court of jurisdiction of an ...

In a year filled with scores of awards and honors, it’s hard to select the best of the best, but here’s a run down of some of the firm's 2015 accolades:

• Named United States ...

With so much young talent in the firm, and so many stars, it’s almost impossible to single out one star from another. Thankfully, we don’t have to! This year, Super ...

McKool Smith, one of America’s leading trial firms, has announced that veteran intellectual property litigator, William “Bill” LaFuze, has joined the firm as a ...

• Law360 Profile - Doug Cawley 
• Law360 profile - Mike McKool 
• Law360 profile - Sam Baxter

The court affirmed the district court’s holding that the PTO correctly found claim 1 of the patent-in-suit obvious in an ex parte reexamination.  The patentee Dome argued ...

The court affirmed the district court’s holding that all claims of the asserted patent were indefinite under Section 112(2), because the term “compliance ...

The court affirmed the decision of the PTAB in an inter partes review not to reject claims of the patent-at-issue as anticipated by the Raymond patent, because the ...

The court reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment of obviousness.  On appeal, the court considered the declarations submitted by the patentee in ...

The court vacated the district court’s decision to deny Apple’s motion for a permanent injunction and remanded.  The jury found that Samsung infringed three Apple ...

The court affirmed the district court’s holding that new claims obtained in a reexamination were not substantially identical to the original claims.  The court found that ...

The technology at issue was systems used to scan airline passenger boarding passes.  The patentee sued three contractors in the Maryland district court for inducing or ...

In an en banc opinion, the court held that laches remains a defense to legal relief in a patent infringement lawsuit, i.e., precluding pre-filing damages; that laches could ...