Functional patent claim language not only justified an Examiner’s indefiniteness rejections under 35 USC § 112(b), but also justified a new ground of indefiniteness rejection in In re Xie, Ex parte Appeal 2017-000540, Applicati…
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Providing a common data format for “out-of-band network management” is patent-eligible, said a court in denying a motion to dismiss under FRCP 12 and 35 U.S.C. § 101. Avocent Huntsville LLC v. ZPE Systems, Inc., No. 3:17-cv…
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The Federal Circuit has clarified what written description is sufficient for a PCT application to qualify as a priority document for a U.S. Patent application. In Hologic, Inc. v. Smith & Nephew, Inc., No. 2017-1389 (Fed. Cir.…
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The phrase “minimal redundancy” in a patent claim was indefinite under 35 USC § 112 where the patent specification inconsistently described levels of redundancy achieved by its system. Berkheimer v. HP, Inc., No. 2017-1437…
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The written description requirement does not extend to equivalents asserted under the doctrine of equivalents, according to a recent order in the District of Delaware. The district judge in Sprint v. Cox resolved dueling summary…
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The Federal Circuit’s decision to weaken the presumption against interpreting patent claims under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f) (or 112, sixth paragraph), in Williamson v. Citrix Online, LLC, in 2015, highlighted the challenges that funct…
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Tinnus Enterprises, LLC (“Tinnus”), owner of U.S. Patent No. 9,527,612 B2 (“the ‘612 patent”) recently suffered a setback when the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board ordered institution of a post-grant review of the…
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A patent claim directed to a system comprising multiple elements including a “CRM software application” that according to the claim “presents,” “receives,” and “generates” various data was not indefinite under 35 U…
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Knowledge of a person of skill in the art was recently used to revive claims that had earlier been found indefinite under 35 U.S.C. § 112. Delaware District Court Judge Leonard P. Stark granted a motion for reargument on the is…
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In a precedential and split decision, the Federal Circuit reversed the International Trade Commission and found patent claims reciting the term “virtually free from interference” not indefinite. One-E-Way, Inc., v. Internation…
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