The District Court of New Jersey declined Plaintiffs’ Vifor (International) AG and American Regent, Inc. request for judicial correction of what they argued was an obvious error in a patent related to Injectafer®. Vifor (International) AG v. Mylan Laboratories Limited, 19-cv-13955 (D.N.J. April 26, 2021). While Vifor may still seek correction at the USPTO, the…
The PTAB recently denied a petitioner’s request for inter partes review of a competitor’s surgical device patent, stating that the petitioner failed to provide a claim construction necessary to meet its burden to show a reasonable likelihood that at least one claim is unpatentable. OrthoPediatrics Corp. v. K2M, Inc., IPR2018-01548, Paper 9 (P.T.A.B. March 1,…
Less than two months after Andrei Iancu was confirmed as the new Director of the USPTO, the Office issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking concerning the claim construction standards employed in contested USPTO proceedings, including IRPs, PGRs, and CBMs. The proposed change would abandon the broadest reasonable construction standard currently used for unexpired patents in…
There is a fine and often ambiguous line between improperly importing limitations from the specification into the claims and interpreting claims in light of the specification. The Federal Circuit recently drew that line in The Medicines Company v. Mylan, Inc., reversing a lower court’s judgment that Plaintiff Mylan’s proposed bivalirudin formulation would infringe U.S. Patent…
On Friday, the Federal Circuit weighed in on the exception to the closed nature of the “consisting of” transition in patent claims, holding that the exception is more limited than perhaps previously thought. In Shire Development, LLC v. Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s infringement finding, holding that a claimed Markush…
Altaire Pharmaceuticals Inc. filed a Petition for a post-grant review of claims 1 to 13 of U.S. Patent No. 8,859,623 (“the 623 patent”) owned by Paragon Bioteck, Inc. The primary issue was whether Petitioner’s product—which qualified as 102(a) prior art—met the limitations of the ’623 patent claims and therefore rendered the claims obvious. The Board…
On January 5, 2016, Chief Judge Leonard P. Stark of the District of Delaware found the claim language of several patents covering Namenda XR®—Forest Laboratories, Inc.’s extended-release drug for treating Alzheimer’s-type dementia—indefinite. Forest Labs., Inc. et. al v. Teva Pharm. USA, Inc. et al., Civ. No. 14-cv-00121-LPS (D. Del. Jan. 5, 2016). Notably, the court…
The Disposition: On remand from the Supreme Court, the Federal Circuit affirmed its earlier decision finding the claims of Teva’s Orange Book patent for Copaxone invalid as indefinite. See Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. et al. v. Sandoz, Inc. et al., No. 12-1567 (June 18, 2015). Case History. In its initial review, the Federal Circuit reversed…
Last week, in Virginia Innovation Sciences (“VIS”) v. Samsung, the Federal Circuit provided some indication of the circumstances under which it would defer to a district court’s evaluation of extrinsic evidence in the post-Teva world. We have previously written about the Supreme Court’s 2015 Teva v. Sandoz opinion, which overturned long-standing precedent, holding that while…
In the first Federal Circuit ruling of an appeal from an inter partes review (“IPR”) decision, the Court held that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the PTAB”) correctly applied the broadest reasonable interpretation standard to construct patent claims, held that it lacked jurisdiction to review the PTAB’s decision to institute an IPR, affirmed the…