September 2016

When Co-Counsel’s Violations are Your Own.

Ethics

This case, Martin v. Giordano, (E.D.N.Y. Aug. 18, 2016) is not a patent case, but it is a sad and awful read with a sad and awful lesson that should be known to patent litigators, which is:  sometimes you may be held responsible, jointly, with co-counsel who has violated court orders, including Rule 16 scheduling orders.

This one is a doozy, with the judge “sadly but without hesitation” publicly reprimanding two lawyers.  The lead lawyer, Lawyer A, repeatedly missed deadlines and, in the final straw, actually lied to co-counsel who got a continuance based upon the lie that Lawyer A’s mother had died.  (The court correctly holds that, though false, the statements did not violate Rule 11 because they weren’t presented in writing to the court.  I’m not making that up.)

The judge found co-counsel “should have known” that a lot of the earlier excuses were also suspect, and publicly reprimanded both lawyers.

It’s quite a sad read all around.

Patentlyo Bits and Bytes by Anthony McCain

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Get a Job doing Patent Law                  

Lee v. Tam: Supreme Court Takes on the Slants

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by Dennis Crouch

In its decision in this trademark registration case, the Federal Circuit found the statutory prohibition against registering “disparaging marks” an unconstitutional governmental regulation of speech in violation of the First Amendment. (En banc decision).  I noted in my December 2015 post that “there would be a good chance for Supreme Court review of the case if the government presses its position.”

The Supreme Court has now granted the USPTO’s petition for writ of certiorari asking:

Whether the disparagement provision of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1052(a), which provides that no trademark shall be refused registration on account of its nature unless, inter alia, it “[c]onsists of . . . matter which may disparage . . . persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute” is facially invalid under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.

In the case, Simon Tam is seeking to register a mark on his band name “The Slants.” The USPTO refused after finding that the mark is disparaging toward individuals of Asian ancestry.

Tam’s responsive brief was unusual in that he agreed that Certiorari should be granted.  The brief also restated and expanded the question presented as follows:

1. Whether the disparagement clause bars the registration of respondent’s trademark.
2. Whether the disparagement clause is contrary to the First Amendment.
3. Whether the disparagement clause is unconstitutionally vague under the First and Fifth Amendments.

While the Federal Circuit majority opinion had agreed that the disparagement clause was contrary to the First Amendment, only a two-judge concurring opinion indicated that the clause is unconstitutionally vague.  Thus, the reframing of the question presented here appears an attempt to offer alternative reasons for affirmance.  The Supreme Court offered no indication as to which question is proper.

Congratulations to Ron Colemen for shepherding this case and Profs Volokh and Banner who apparently wrote the petition response.

Texas Issues Several New Ethics Opinions

Ethics

The Texas ethical rules have some bearing on federal court litigation in the Fifth Circuit, although they do not control. See In re American Airlines, Inc., 972 F.2d 605 (5th Cir. 1992).  Nonetheless, the Eastern District will consider the Texas rules as part of determining “national standards” of ethics in federal court.  (I practiced in Texas for a long time, and am still licensed there and advise lawyers there, and this “national standards” of ethics thing can be a real trap for unwary lawyers who think they can rely on the Texas rules, alone.)

So, a few brand new opinions from Texas are worth mentioning:

  • Opinion 662:  This is a fun one:  what can you do if a client writes a nasty on-line review of you that, you think, is untrue or unfair?  They use Avvo.com (or Yelp?) and say you’re terrible as a patent prosecutor.  What can you do?  There are handful of opinions and they’re coming out the same way as this one, more or less:  You can’t reveal confidential information and you should be “restrained.”
  • Opinion 644:  Basically concludes that a firm that hires a lawyer who, before he became a lawyer, worked for the adversary’s firm as a paralegal, is not disqualified so long as it screens the lawyer from the work.  (Texas does not generally permit screening of lawyers moving from one private practice job to another, but does permit screening of non-lawyers who migrate, so this opinion addresses the odd hybrid scenario.)
  • Opinion 658:  Basically concludes that a firm may not bill a client more than the actual expenses paid on behalf of the client to third party vendors (like Fed Ex, etc.), unless the client agrees to pay more and if the lawyer has an ownership interest in the  vendor, that must be disclosed and make other disclosures.
  • Opinion 661:  Basically concludes that a lawyer can use the name of some other lawyer in Google ads and the like, so that if a person searches for the other lawyer, this lawyer’s name will appear as a sponsored ad.  (Of course, various caveats about truthful advertising still apply.)  (Trademark issue, anyone? I don’t know.)

Supreme Court Patent Cases – September 28 Update

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by Dennis Crouch

Cooper v. Lee and Cooper v. Square are both ask the same question: whether 35 U.S.C. §318(b) violates Article III of the United States Constitution, to the extent that it empowers an executive agency tribunal to assert judicial power canceling private property rights amongst private parties embroiled in a private federal dispute of a type known in the common law courts of 1789, rather than merely issue an advisory opinion as an adjunct to a trial court.”  The issues here are also parallel to those raised in MCM Portfolio v. HP (“Does IPR violate Article III of the Constitution?”).  The cases received a boost this month with the Court’s call for response (CFR) in Cooper v. Square.  Square had previously waived its right to respond, but its response is now expected by October 11, 2016.  Under Supreme Court R. 37, the Call for Response reopens the period for filing of an amicus curiae brief in support of petitioner. (~ due October 8, 2016).  Eight Amici Curiae briefs were filed in MCM and two in Cooper v. Lee.  In general, each brief additional brief incrementally increases the odds of certiorari.  Statistical analysis also suggests that a call for response significantly increases the odds of certiorari being granted.

I wrote earlier this week about the new IPR process challenge in Ethicon where the patentee has challenged Director Lee’s delegation of institution decision authority to the PTAB.  The case is one of statutory interpretation but uses the separation-of-function doctrine as an interpretive guide. The same question is also presented in LifeScan Scotland, Ltd. v. Pharmatech Solutions, Inc.  Both petitioners (Ethicon and LifeScan) are owned by J&J.

The final new petition is a personal jurisdiction case: Mylan v. Acorda.  The Hatch-Waxman setup involved Mylan preparing and filing its abbreviated new drug application that created a cause of action for infringement under 35 U.S.C. 271(e)(2). Although the ANDA preparation occurred in West Virginia and the filing in Maryland, the infringement lawsuit was filed by Acorda in Delaware.  Mylan asks: “Whether the mere filing of an abbreviated new drug application by a generic pharmaceutical manufacturer is sufficient to subject the manufacturer to specific personal jurisdiction in any state where it might someday market the drug.”  The argument builds on the non-patent decision Daimler AG v. Bauman, 134 S. Ct. 746 (2014). In the pro-business case of Daimler, the Supreme Court reduced the scope of general personal jurisdiction to states where the defendant company is incorporated or has its personal place of business.

 

In the claim construction front, the Supreme Court also called for a response in Google v. Cioffi. In that case Google suggests an interpretative principle of “strictly construing” amended claim language against the patentee. [GoogleCioffiPetition]

On the merits side – we have three patent cases pending oral arguments.  First-up is the design patent damages case of Apple v. Samsung.   Although not a party, the Solicitor General has requested to been granted leave to participate in oral arguments.   Its brief, the SJ argued (1) Section 289 does not permit apportionment but rather requires award of the infringers profits on the relevant article of manufacture; but (2) the article of manufacture can be a “component” rather than a finished product sold to end-users.  In the end, the SJ argues that the jury should have been tasked with determining the appropriate article-of-manufacture and that the case should be remanded to determine whether a new trial is warranted.  Briefing continues in both SCA Hygiene (laches) and Life Tech (Component Export liability).

 

(more…)

Unpacking Trade Secret Damages

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Prof. Elizabeth Rowe (Florida) has posted a new article on trade secret damages: Unpacking Trade Secret Damages.   The article looks at outcomes of about 150 federal trade secret lawsuits that went to trial and received a verdict. These cases are all pre-DTSA and thus in federal court on diversity or supplemental jurisdiction grounds.   Prof Rowe found – in my view – a surprisingly low percentage of cases where punitive damages or attorney fees were awarded (~2% and 8% respectively – of cases with an award).

The award distribution is also highly skewed.  “[T]en cases account for half of the total damages of the approximately $2.4 billion awarded since 2000.”  Top on this list is DuPont’s 2011 award of 900 million against Kolon.

[Read the Article]

 

Ethicon v. Covidien: Delegation of Institution Decisions to the PTAB

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Ethicon has filed its expected petition for writ of certiorari challenging the USPTO’s delegation of IPR Institution Decisions to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.  I wrote about the case earlier:

The newly filed petition argues pure statutory interpretation:

Whether the [AIA] permits the Patent Trial and Appeal Board instead of the Director to make inter partes review institution decisions.

The setup: The statute requires “The Director” to “determine whether to institute.” 35 U.S.C. § 314(b).  Under the statute, the PTAB picks up its role after institution in order to “conduct each inter partes review instituted under this chapter,” § 316(c).  Rather than making the determinations herself, the PTO issued a rule that the PTAB makes the institution decisions “on behalf of the Director.” 37 C.F.R. § 42.4(a).

Although the statute does not expressly prevent the Director from delegating her authority, Ethicon argues that the statute should be interpreted in light of the “longstanding policy of separation-of-functions whereby adjudicatory officers inside an agency (such as administrative law judges or, here, administrative patent judges) are insulated from discretionary executive functions.”  Of course, the Director does not have to personally do all the work – The idea here though is that it is impermissible to delegate policy issues to the administrative patent judges.  And, the AIA is clear that the institution decision is at least partially based upon policy and institutional competency determinations.

Read the Petition: Ethicon Petition for Certiorari 

In the background, patentees see the separation of institution from trial as a mechanism for getting two-bites at the apple.

 

RMail: Is Eligibility a Proper Litigation Defense?

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Thus far, the Federal Circuit has successfully ducked any direct holding on whether eligibility under 35 U.S.C. 101 is a “condition of patentability” or a proper invalidity defenes.  Professor Hricik and I raised these issues in a number of posts back in 2012.

Following Hricik’s proposal, patentee and DJ Defendant RMail raised the issue in district court.  [LINK]  The district court followed tradition and held that ineligibility is a defense that can be raised in a district court challenge to patent infringement. After losing on the merits (summary judgment) the case is now on appeal and RMail again argues that “Ineligibility is not a litigation defense under §282(b).”  In its brief, RMail writes:

Patent defenses are statutory. If a patent defense is not denominated within the Patent Act, then the Court lacks jurisdiction to address it. See Aristocrat Tech. Section 282(b) . . . enumerates the defenses that may be raised in a patent infringement action. . . . [T]he
plain language of §282(b)(2) does not authorize ineligibility as a defense.

A stumbling block for the patentee here is the Versata decision which held that the PTAB has authority to decide Section 101 challenges in a CBM review.  The newly filed brief distinguishes that case, however, by arguing that “Versata relies on the legislative history of the AIA . . . not the legislative history of the 1952 Patent Act, which enacted §282(b)(2).”

In the end, I expect that history and tradition are strong enough to overcome the statutory gap, but it would be nice to see an explanation from the Court.

Read the brief: RMAIL 101 Challenge.

 

Update: If Alice was always the law, why did you get so many “invalid” patents for your clients?

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I blogged about this case — Encylopaedia Britannica, Inc. v. Dickstein Shapiro LLP (D. D.C. Aug. 26, 2015) — way back when it came out.  The case was summarily affirmed in June.  A cert petition has been filed, and it’s worth reviewing this case again.  If the law stays the way it is, then maybe clients should start suing lawyers to get their fees back for patents that the lawyers “should have known” were “invalid” years before Alice came out…

The Dickstein Shapiro firm had been retained by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. (EB) in 1993 to file a patent application. The patent issued, and in 2006 EB sued several companies for infringing it. The patent was held invalid due to “an unnoticed defect” in the 1993 application.  The basis for invalidity was not 101, and is not clearly stated in the opinion, but seems to have been a break in the chain for priority.

EB then sued the law firm for malpractice in prosecuting the 1993 application.  EB contended that, but for the firm’s negligence, it would have made a lot of money in the infringement suit.

After the malpractice suit was filed, Alice was decided.  The defendant law firm then argued that — had the defendants in the 2006 case not prevailed on the “unnoticed defect” defense (the break in the chain for priority) — they would have prevailed because the patents were “invalid” under 101.  Because the claims would have been “invalid” in the 2006 litigation under 101, there was no harm caused by the actual basis for invalidity — the priority problem.

To put this in context:  Because of a 2014 Supreme Court decision, the 2006 infringement case would have been lost in 2009 anyway because the court in 2009 would have applied Alice’s standard and found the claims ineligible.

And the argument worked.  The district court granted a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim (actually, for judgment on the pleadings under 12(c), but same standard), finding (holding?) the subject matter ineligible on the face of the patent.

What is interesting is the court’s approach to retroactive application of Alice.  The issue was whether in the 2006 litigation asserting the patent, even had the firm’s alleged malpractice not caused the invalidity of the patent because of the break in priority, the claims were “invalid” under 101 in 2006 — years before Alice was decided.  The district court held that Alice did not change the law, but merely stated what it had always been.    Specifically, the district court stated:

When the Supreme Court construes a federal statute… that construction is an authoritative statement of what the statute has always meant that applies retroactively.  Alice represents the Supreme Court’s definitive statement on what 101 means — and always meant.  Because the underlying case is governed by 101, it is appropriate for this Court to apply the Supreme Court’s construction of 101 as set forth in Alice.

(Citations omitted).

For this and other reasons, the court reasoned that “the only rule that makes sense in this context is to apply the objectively correct legal standard as enunciated by the Supreme Court in Alice, rather than an incorrect legal standard that the [district court in the 2006 infringement case] may have applied prior to July 2015 [when the court was deciding the motion.]”  The court then applied Alice and found the claims “invalid” under 101.  Thus, the firm’s failure to maintain priority did not cause harm — the “invalidity” under 101 did.

There’s a lot to unpack here.

Let’s start with a basic statutory interpretation principle: as a matter of statutory construction the retroactivity principle relied upon by the district court is correct in that retroactivity does not ordinarily apply when an interpretation is changed.  (This perhaps explains why the Supreme Court is careful to avoid saying it is changing an interpretation, because changes to interpretations of a statute are prospective, only, as a general rule.  In that regard, think about Therasense for a moment.) So, if Alice changed the law, then the district court was likely wrong to apply it retroactively.

Let’s be real:  the Supreme Court will never say that Alice changed the law.  We all know it did, or I guess a better way of putting it is:  we were wrong about what the pre-Alice law meant — despite reading the cases as best we could, and so was the USPTO (which is why it issued all those bad patents, and had to put in place, post-Alice, all of those new guidelines, etc.).  So, we were all wrong and Alice merely said what we all were not smart enough to understand the law always was and had been.

Shame on us.

But now let’s look at Dickstein Shapiro’s conduct through that lens: if the law was that clear — that you could 12(b)(6) or summary judgment this patent for “invalidity” under Section 101, why did you get the for the client in the first place?    If the law about 101 “always” was this way, why did you advise EB to spend so much money on a patent so clearly invalid that a judge could decide it by looking at it?

If cert is not granted, patent prosecutors should be ready to disgorge a lot of fees, I guess is what I’m saying.  Remember:  fee disgorgment doesn’t require damages — it requires (usually) a clear and serious breach of duty.  How can this not be?

So now let’s say prospective litigation counsel looks at a patent and in evaluating it, says to the patentee “no, this one’s bad under Alice.  It’s worthless.”  If the client then sues the lawyer who prosecute the patented, you’d think the client would have an easy case: “Lawyer, the law was always the way Alice says it was, and yet you got me this stupid patent, and charged me $25,000 to get it. Give that money back.”

Now, we can get into what is called judgmental immunity — but if the law was settled and clear, how can that help?  We could also argue the law changed — but it didn’t, or so the courts tell us.

But we can’t obviously do this: Allow lawyers to escape liability for bad patents because the law was “clear” back then, and so the client would never have prevailed in an infringement suit, but then allow lawyers to say “the law was unclear” and allow them to avoid disgorging fees.

Someone got any ideas?  The intellectually honest way to approach it is to say that the EB case was wrongly decided:  whether the patent would have been “invalid” under 101 in the 2006 litigation should be decided under the law at the time of trial, not the law in 2014, just as the decision to seek the patent in 1993 should turn on 101 law in 1993, not the law in 2014.  More to that point, we all know that certain claim formats have fallen out of favor (e.g., means-plus-function). If the law was favorable to them in, say, 1993, and a lawyer picked them, why should we use standards developed in 2014 to judge the lawyer’s conduct, even though the “change” is more subtle than occurred in Alice?

And now one more wrinkle.  Suppose a firm represents the client, and sues.  Suppose the judge shifts fees onto the client under 285.  Unless the court holds that those fees are the responsibility of the lawyer bringing the suit, not the client, then the client’ going to be responsible for having sued on an “invalid” patent. Is it going to sue the prosecution firm and say: the law was clear back then, why did you get this patent for me? Look at the damages you caused…?

Stay tuned.

 

Affinity II: Who Has the Burden for Alice Step II?

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by Dennis Crouch

A few days ago I wrote about the Federal Circuit decision in Affinity Labs. v. DirecTV  affirming that Affinity’s U.S. Patent No. 8,688,085 claims an ineligible abstract idea rather than a patent eligible invention.

The companion case – Affinity Labs v. Amazon was decided by the same panel of Chief Judge Prost and Judges Bryson (author) and Wallach and U.S. Patent No. 7,970,379 and also affirmed that the challenged claims lack eligibility under Section 101.

In DirectTV, the court first “stripped” the representative claim “of excess verbiage.”  Using the same approach but different words, the Amazon court here offered its version of the representative claim “stated more succinctly:”  the claim “is directed to a network-based media system with a customized user interface, in which the system delivers streaming content from a network-based resource upon demand to a handheld wireless electronic device having a graphical user interface.” [Full claim text below]

Abstract Idea: Analyzing the claimed invention, the court found that the claims are directed to a high level of generality “describing a desired function or outcome, without providing any limiting detail that confines the claim to a particular solution to an identified problem. The purely functional nature of the claim confirms that it is directed to an abstract idea, not to a concrete embodiment of that idea.”  In Enfish, the court considered technological inventions and queried whether the invention represents “an improvement in the functioning of a computer,” or merely “adding conventional computer components to well-known business practices.”  Here, of course, the invention uses more than just a “computer component” but the court still found Enfish applicable — finding that the claims “fall into the latter [ineligible] category.”  Further, the “tailoring of content based on information about the user . . . is an abstract idea that is as old as providing different newspaper inserts for different neighborhoods.”  Slip opinion at  10.

Burden Shifting for Step Two?:  Once a patent is deemed to be directed to an abstract idea, the burden appears to shift against the patentee to show that the claim includes “something more” such as an “innovative concept” that goes beyond the ineligible abstract idea.  This burden-shifting would go against the traditional rule that each each element in an invalidity analysis must be proven with clear and convincing evidence — and so it may still be proper to say that the challenger also has the burden under Step Two of Alice/Mayo to show the claim includes “nothing more” of patentable weight.  A complication of this internal dialogue is that eligibility is deemed a question of law whereas the C&C evidentiary requirement applies only to questions of fact.  That distinction became important in this case since the district court dismissed the case on the pleadings prior to the consideration of any factual conflicts.

Nothing More:  Enfish substantially increased the overlap between Steps One and Two of the eligibility analysis.  Typically, if a claim includes an eligible inventive concept then it will not be deemed directed to an abstract idea in the first place.   Here, the court found the converse logic also true:

As noted [in our Enfish analysis], representative claim 14 is written in largely functional terms, claiming “a collection of instructions” that perform the functions of displaying a selection of available content on a graphical user interface and allowing the user to request streaming of that content. . . . [These features] do not convert the abstract idea of delivering media content to a handheld electronic device into a concrete solution to a problem. The features set forth in the claims are described and claimed generically rather than with the specificity necessary to show how those components provide a concrete solution to the problem addressed by the patent.

Thus, the claim fails under Step Two as well – Judgment on the Pleadings of Invalidity Affirmed.

= = = = =

The court noted that the title of the patent ““System and Method to Communicate Targeted Information” has essentially no relation to the asserted claims.  That disconnect had no direct impact on patentability.  However, it appears to have lent credence to the notion that the claims lack innovative weight and technical application since the focus of the claims is something different than what was originally thought to be innovative and worth extensive description.

= = = = =

Claim 14: A media system, comprising:

a network based media managing system that maintains a library of content that a given user has a right to access and a customized user interface page for the given user;

a collection of instructions stored in a nontransitory storage medium and configured for execution by a processor of a handheld wireless device, the collection of instructions operable when executed: (1) to initiate presentation of a graphical user interface for the network based media managing system; (2) to facilitate a user selection of content included in the library; and (3) to send a request for a streaming delivery of the content; and

a network based delivery resource maintaining a list of network locations for at least a portion of the content, the network based delivery resource configured to respond to the request by retrieving the portion from an appropriate network location and streaming a representation of the portion to the handheld wireless device.

= = = = =

Traditional equitable defenses do not apply to IPR proceedings

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Husky Injection Molding v. Athena Automation (Fed. Cir. 2016)

Referring to the headline. The PTAB (acting on behalf of the PTO Director) held that traditional equitable defenses do not apply to IPR proceedings.  Because this holding was made as part of an IPR institution decision, the appeal was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. 

The case here is interesting because Husky’s former owner (Schad) is the founder of competitor Athena.  Schad is also co-inventor of Husky’s U.S. Patent No. 7,670,536 – that Schad’s company challenged in an IPR proceedings.  The PTAB ultimately found some of the challenged claims valid and cancelled others.

On appeal Husky argues that assignor estoppel bars the IPR proceeding.  The PTAB rejected that contention – holding that traditional equitable defenses do not apply to IPR proceedings.  Athena v. Husky, IPR No. 2013-00290 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 25, 2013) (Institution Decision on behalf of the Director).    On appeal, the Federal Circuit dismissed — holding that the institution decision is not appealable. 35 U.S.C. 314(d) (“The determination by the Director whether to institute an inter partes review under this section shall be final and nonappealable.”); Although the Supreme Court in Cuozzo suggested that some appeals of institution decisions may be available.  Here, however, the court rejected the idea of venturing into that abyss:

[Prior cases] establish a two-part inquiry for determining whether we may review a particular challenge to the decision whether to institute. First, we must determine whether the challenge at issue is “closely tied to the application and interpretation of statutes related to the Patent Office’s decision to initiate inter partes review,” or if it instead “implicate[s] constitutional questions,” “depend[s] on other less closely related statutes,” or “present[s] other questions of interpretation that reach, in terms of scope and impact,” “well beyond ‘this section.’” Cuozzo.  If the latter, our authority to review the decision to institute appears unfettered. But if the former, § 314(d) forbids our review. One further exception remains, however. At the second step of the inquiry, we must ask if, despite the challenge being grounded in a “statute closely related to that decision to institute,” it is nevertheless directed to the Board’s ultimate invalidation authority with respect to a specific patent. Id.; see also Versata; and Achates. If so, we may review the challenge.

After rejecting Husky’s challenge of the institution decision, the Federal Circuit moved to Athena’s appeal.

Incorporation by Reference: Athena challenged the portion of the Board’s opinion finding some of the claims not anticipated.  The basic issue is that the prior art (Glaesener – U.S. Patent Pub. No. 2004-0208950) did not itself disclose all of the claimed elements.  However Glaesener referred particularly to a prior patent (Choi): noting that Choi described “pineapple and toothed-ring mechanism” and in a separate paragraph stating that “All cross-referenced patents and application[s] referred to in this specification are hereby incorporated by reference.”  The combination of Choi and Glaesener do (arguably) teach all of the claim element but the Board refused to treat them as a single document despite the incorporation by reference. On appeal, the Federal Circuit has vacated that holding.

The standard:

A host document incorporates material by reference if it “identif[ies] with detailed particularity what specific material it incorporates and clearly indicate[s] where that material is found in the various documents.” Advanced Display Sys., Inc. v. Kent State Univ., 212 F.3d 1272 (Fed. Cir. 2000). . . .  In making such a determination, we assess whether a skilled artisan would understand the host document to describe with sufficient particularity the material to be incorporated [giving no deference on appeal].  . . . [Thus t]he incorporation standard relies only on the reasonably skilled artisan and his or her ability to deduce from language, however imprecise, what a host document aims to incorporate

Here, the court found sufficient particularity to incorporate Choi by reference – noting that PHOSITA would “appreciate Glaesener’s reference of ‘pineapple and toothed-ring’ to describe, with sufficient particularity” the securing assemblies in Choi. “To find otherwise would be to undervalue the knowledge of a skilled artisan.”  On remand, the Board will need to re-evaluate anticipation based upon Glaesener now expanded by Choi.

Point of Novelty Returns to Indefiniteness Analysis

Patent

Cox Communications v. Sprint (Fed. Cir. 2016)

The district court found all of Sprint’s asserted claims invalid as indefinite under 35 U.S.C. § 112, ¶ 2.  The term “processing system” was common to the claims of all six asserted patents, and the lower court found it “functionally” described and claimed in a manner that did not provide the reasonable certainty of claim scope required under Nautilus.  U.S. Patent Nos. 6,452,932; 6,463,052; 6,633,561; 7,286,561; 6,298,064; and 6,473,429.  On appeal, the Federal Circuit has reversed.

Section 112, ¶ 2 requires claims “particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming” the invention and is seen as the textual source of the definiteness requirement.  In Nautilus, the Supreme Court held that “a patent is invalid for indefiniteness if its claims, read in light of the specification delineating the patent, and the prosecution history, fail to inform, with reasonable certainty, those skilled in the art about the scope of the invention.”

More Definiteness Leeway For Terms Outside the Point of Novelty: In thinking through its analysis, the Federal Circuit started with an interesting issue: Point of Novelty.  The appellate panel noted that the claimed “processing system” was did not provide newness to the claim but was “merely the locus at which the steps are being performed.”  To drive this point home, the court walks through a representative set of claims to show how “processing system” does almost no work in the claims.

Of course, “point of novelty” analysis has a history in indefiniteness cases – most famously in the pre-1952 Supreme Court cases of Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Co. v. Walker, 329 U.S. 1 (1946) and Gen. Elec. Co. v. Wabash Appliance Corp., 304 U.S. 364 (1938) that heightened the definiteness burden at the point of novelty.  Those cases particularly on functional claim language:

The vice of a functional claim exists not only when a claim is ‘wholly’ functional, if that is ever true, but also when the inventor is painstaking when he recites what has already been seen, and then uses conveniently functional language at the exact point of novelty.

Gen Elec. I’ll note here that the Federal Circuit’s Sprint opinion does not cite to either of these older cases. The court does, however, refer to the Post Nautilus decision in Eidos Display, LLC v. AU Optronics Corp., 779 F.3d 1360 (Fed. Cir. 2015). In that case, the court found the term “contact hole” sufficiently definite since the specification referred to well-established practice in the industry and the limitation was not itself offering a point of novelty.

Coming back to Sprint’s claims, the court writes

If “processing system” does not discernably alter the scope of the claims, it is difficult to see how this term would prevent the claims … from serving their notice function under § 112, ¶ 2.

Here, the court notes that the indefiniteness test focuses on each “claim” not “claim terms” themselves.  And, although we have a common practice of focusing on individual terms — that approach is merely a helpful tool.

Particularly focusing on the functional nature of the “processing system” claim term – the court first held that functional claim language is permissible and at times quite helpful in providing definite scope limits.

As Nautilus instructs, the dispositive question in an indefiniteness inquiry is whether the “claims,” not particular claim terms, “read in light of the specification delineating the patent, and the prosecution history, fail to inform, with reasonable certainty, those skilled in the art about the scope of the invention.”

The Sprint majority opinion here was authored by Judge Prost and joined by Judge Bryson. Judge Newman wrote a concurring opinion, protesting the majority’s approach to determining the term’s importance by removing the challenged term from the claim and then determining whether the removal changes the claim meaning.

 

Affinity Content Distribution Scheme – Abstract Idea

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Affinity Labs v. DirecTV (Fed. Cir. 2016)

The Federal Circuit here affirms that Affinity’s challenged claims invalid as directed to an abstract idea.  when “stripped of excess claim verbiage”, Claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 7,970,379 “is directed to a broadcast system in which a cellular telephone located outside the range of a regional broadcaster (1) requests and receives network-based content from the broadcaster via a streaming signal, (2) is configured to wirelessly download an application for performing those functions, and (3) contains a display that allows the user to select particular content.” Slip opinion.

Alice Step 1: Considering these limitations and the claim’s “character as a whole” the court identified the concept of “providing out-of-region access to regional broadcast content” as an unpatentable abstract idea.  The court explained its conclusion by noting that the practice (1) has been long employed in media distribution; (2) is not tied to any particular technology; and (3) could be implemented by very low-tech technology such as via mail.  The court went on to explain that (4) nothing in the claim “is directed to how to implement out-of-region broadcasting on a cellular telephone. Rather, the claim is drawn to the idea itself.” And, (5) unlike in Enfish, the claims are not directed to “an improvement in cellular telephones but simply to the use of cellular telephones as tools.” Taking all these together, the court found the claim was in fact directed to an abstract idea.

Alice Step 2: Step two of Alice indicates that a patent directed to an abstract idea is patent eligible if it claims “additional features” that constitute an “inventive concept” that go beyond “well-understood, routine, conventional activity.” Mayo. Here, the court found no such additional features. “The claim simply recites the use of generic features of cellular telephones, such as a storage medium and a graphical user interface, as well as routine functions, such as transmitting and receiving signals, to implement the underlying idea. That is not enough.” Slip Opinion at 15-16.

= = = = =

Claim 1 below – seen was used as representative for the analysis:

1. A broadcast system, comprising:

a network based resource maintaining information associated with a network available representation of a regional broadcasting channel that can be selected by a user of a wireless cellular telephone device; and

a non-transitory storage medium including an application configured for execution by the wireless cellular telephone device that when executed, enables the wireless cellular telephone device:

to present a graphical user interface comprising at least a partial listing of available media sources on a display associated with the wireless cellular telephone device, wherein the listing includes a selectable item that enables user selection of the regional broadcasting channel;

to transmit a request for the regional broadcasting channel from the wireless cellular telephone device; and

to receive a streaming media signal in the wireless cellular telephone device corresponding to the regional broadcasting channel, wherein the wireless cellular telephone device is outside of a broadcast region of the regional broadcasting channel, wherein the wireless cellular telephone device is configured to receive the application via an over the air download.

 

Obviousness does not Require Prior Art to Fit Together Exactly

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ClassCo v. Apple (Fed. Cir. 2016)

In response to being sued for patent infringement, Apple filed for inter partes reexamination of ClassCo’s Patent No. 6,970,695. That litigation (originally filed in 2011) has been stayed pending the resolution here.  Although the patent had survived a prior reexamination, this time the Examiner rejected the majority of the patent claims as obvious; the PTAB affirmed those rejections; and the Federal Circuit has now re-affirmed.

The patent relates to a “caller announcement” system that uses a phone’s speaker (rather than screen or separate speaker) to announce caller identity information.  The system includes a “memory storage” that stores identify information being announced.

The examiner identified the prior art as U.S. Patent No. 4,894,861 (Fujioka) that teaches all of the claimed elements (of representative claim 2) except for use of the phone’s regular audio speaker (rather than a separate speaker) to announce a caller’s identity (claimed as the “audio transducer”).  A second prior art reference was then identified as U.S. Patent No. 5,199,064 (Gulick) that taught the use of the audio transducer for providing a variety of call related alerts.

On appeal, ClassCo argued that the combination of Fujioka and Gulick was unreasonable because it would involve changing the function of the known elements.  The Federal Circuit disagreed writing that:

KSR does not require that a combination only unite old elements without changing their respective functions. . . . Instead, KSR teaches that ‘[a] person of ordinary skill is also a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton.’ And it explains that the ordinary artisan recognizes ‘that familiar items may have obvious uses beyond their primary purposes, and in many cases a person of ordinary skill will be able to fit the teachings of multiple patents together like pieces of a puzzle.

Slip opinion at 8 (quoting KSR).  The court goes on to explain that a combination of known elements can be obvious even the elements don’t fit perfectly together like puzzle pieces.  Rather, the approach is “flexible” in its pursuit of determining whether the combination would have been “predictable” – i.e., obvious.

Although KSR rejected a strict application of a motivation-to-combine, the court consistently required at least an explanation of that motivation.  Here, the court found that “substantial evidence” supports the PTO conclusions since some of the benefits were suggested by both prior art references.

Secondary Indicia: During reexamination, ClassCo had also presented evidence of industry praise for its products covered by the patent.  That evidence was disregarded by the PTO as, inter alia, not commiserate commensurate with the scope of the claims. 🙂 In particular, the Board noted that the industry praised particular embodiments but did not praise other potential embodiments. On appeal, the Federal Circuit rejected those conclusions.  The court found that some of the evidence praised ClassCo features that were not available in the prior art and that were “within the scope” of the representative claims.

[T]he Board found the evidence not commensurate in scope with these claims on the ground that they are too broad, encompassing other embodiments. But “we do not require a patentee to produce objective evidence of nonobviousness for every potential embodiment of the claim.” Rambus. Rather, “we have consistently held that a patent applicant ‘need not sell every conceivable embodiment of the claims in order to rely upon evidence of [objective indicia of nonobviousness].’” In re Glatt Air Techniques, 630 F.3d 1026 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (quoting In re DBC, 545 F.3d 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2008)).

Although the Board erred in its approach to objective indica, that was harmless error since the prior art evidence was strong. “We nonetheless agree that the value this evidence possesses in establishing nonobviousness is not strong in comparison to the findings and evidence regarding the prior art under the first three Graham factors.”  Obviousness affirmed.

Although a different product, the following ClassCo video review is a fun throw-back:

Objective Reasonableness Still at Play in Willfulness Cases

Patent,

WesternGeco v. Ion Geophysical (Fed. Cir. 2016) [WesternGeco]

Following Halo v. Pulse, the Supreme Court vacated and remanded WesternGeco’s case for further consideration.  Now on remand, the Federal Circuit now vacates the district court judgment denying willfulness.

The patent act authorizes district court to award enhanced damages. 35 U.S.C. 284 (“the court may increase the damages up to three times the amount found or assessed”).  In Halo v. Pulse, the Supreme Court held that the statute grants district courts discretion in awarding enhanced damages – although noting that the punitive damages should ordinarily be limited to egregious infringement – “typified by willful infringement.”  In rejecting the Federal Circuit’s Seagate test, the Court held proof of “subjective willfulness” is sufficient to prove egregious infringement.  “The subjective willfulness of a patent infringer, intentional or knowing, may warrant enhanced damages, without regard to whether his infringement was objectively reckless.”  Halo at 1933.  As with other punitive damage regimes – proof sufficient for an award does not necessitate such an award. In patent cases, punitive damages remain within the discretion of the district court even after sufficient evidence establish the egregious behavior.

In WesternGeco, the jury issued a verdict on subjective willfulness — that “ION actually knew, or it was so obvious that ION should have known, that its actions constituted infringement of a valid patent claim.”  However, following that verdict, the district court excused the willfulness under the objective willfulness prong of Seagate – finding that ION’s non-infringement and invalidity defenses were “not unreasonable.”

On remand, the district court will first determine whether the jury verdict was supported by substantial evidence and, if so, whether enhanced damages should be awarded.  The Federal Circuit writes:

The district court, on remand, should consider whether ION’s infringement constituted an “egregious case[] of misconduct beyond typical infringement” meriting enhanced damages under § 284 and, if so, the appropriate extent of the enhancement.

Slip Opinion. On remand, we vacate the district court’s judgment with respect to enhanced damages for willful infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 284 and reinstate our earlier opinion and judgment in all other respects.

Using Objective Evidence Going Forward: An interesting aspect of the WesternGeco decision is its discussion of the ongoing relevance of “the objective reasonableness of the accused infringer’s positions.” In particular, the Federal Circuit held that objective reasonableness is part of the “totality of the circumstances” that to be considered before awarding enhanced damages.  In some ways this holding is in tension with the Halo decision itself. Halo does not mention the “totality of the circumstances” approach and writes harshly against the objective test as merely awarding “attorney[] ingenuity.”  Judge Dyk explains the holding as follows: (1) “Halo relied upon the patent attorney fee case of Octane Fitness for the relevant standard of district court’s discretion; (2) Octane Fitness in turn held looked to the copyright case attorney fee case of Fogerty v. Fantasy; and (3) Fogerty required consideration of a “totality of the circumstances,” which “could” include objective unreasonableness.” Thus, the Federal Circuit writes: “objective reasonableness is one of the relevant factors.”

“Inherent Disclosure” in Priority Document is Sufficient to Satisfy Written Description Requirement

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Yeda Research v. Abbott (Fed. Cir. 2016)

Abbott’s patent broadly covers Tumor Necrosis Factor α binding protein (TBP-II). U.S. Patent No. 5,344,915.  The U.S. application was filed in 1990, but claims priority to two German applications filed in 1989. A would-be anticipatory prior art reference (Engelmann) was published after the priority applications but before the U.S. application – and the parties have agreed that dispute turns on whether the claims get to rely upon the early priority date.

In the preceding interference proceeding, the Board sided with Abbott as did the district court – finding that one of the German applications sufficiently disclosed the invention.  (Yeda’s application was filed nine days after Abbott’s.)

A priority filing is only effective if the claimed invention was sufficiently described in the original filing.  This implementation of the written description requirement requires the invention “be disclosed in a way that clearly allows a person of ordinary skill to recognize that the inventor invented what is claimed and possessed the claimed subject matter at the date of filing.” Ariad Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Eli Lilly & Co., 598 F.3d 1336, 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (en banc).  In the priority context, failure of written description does not directly invalidate the claims but instead effectively negates the priority claim.  Here, that date is critical because of the intervening prior art.

 

Abbott’s Claim 1 is directed to the binding protein with “a molecular weight of about 42,000 daltons” and that has at “the N-terminus the amino acid sequence Xaa Thr Pro Tyr Ala Pro Glu Pro Gly Set Thr Cys Arg Leu Arg Glu . . . .”  The problem though is that neither of Abbott’s priority filings expressly disclose the claimed N-terminus sequence.

Abbott was able to overcome the lack of express disclosure with an “inherent disclosure”:

Under the doctrine of inherent disclosure, when a specification describes an invention that has certain undisclosed yet inherent properties, that specification serves as adequate written description to support a subsequent patent application that explicitly recites the invention’s inherent properties.

Slip Opinion at 6 (citing Kennecott).

Here, the priority document described how to make TBP-II, but did not identify the actual sequence as claimed.  On appeal, the Federal Circuit ruled that the original disclosure “inherently discloses the remaining amino acids in the N-terminus sequence” and therefore “serves as adequate written description support for the patent claiming TBP-II.”

 

 

 

Your List of Lists is not the Disclosed List

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AppleScreenIn re Lemay (Fed. Cir. 2016)

In a divided opinion, the Federal Circuit has sided with Apple Inc. and reversed the Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB) — finding that no substantial evidence supported the USPTO’s factual findings regarding what was taught by the prior art.  Application No. 11/968,067 (2007 priority date).  The application here is one of 75+ that all claim priority to the same 2007 provisional application.

The claims at issue here relate to a method of displaying a “list of information about online video items” on a touchscreen.  The method includes scrolling after a “moving finger gesture;” requesting an online video after a “tap gesture” in one location; providing further information about the selected video after a different “tap gesture;” and displaying a different list of information after a “finger gesture on a respective icon.” The Board held that the combination of prior art references (Cook and Saarinen) taught each of the claim limitations and that the combination would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art.

Mapping of prior art onto the claim elements is sometimes tricky.  Prior art provides images, charts, and disclosures – but patent claims focus on boundary lines unique by design.  That said, the standard of appellate review makes it difficult to challenge PTAB findings as to what is taught by the prior art.  PTAB factual findings are generally upheld on a appeal if supported by at least a scintilla of evidence – substantial evidence.

Here, the Federal Circuit sided with the patent applicant – finding that the prior art failed to teach a “list of information” that corresponds to online video items as claimed.  The specification explains that this might be a listing of “most viewed” videos or “Pokemon theme music” videos.

The opinion is something of a confusing shame – essentially ends up arguing the impossibility of a list of lists. The court writes:

If each of the three sets of title, artist, and price information constitutes one of the “lists of information,” it cannot also be correct that the search results as a whole (i.e., “Mandy More,” “I Wanna Be With You,” and “Now That’s What I Call Music! 4”) constitute one of the lists.

Claim Construction: The dissent by Judge Moore identified the issue as one of claim construction — she would would have interpreted the claims slightly differently (and in a way suggested by the PTO) that the claimed “corresponding list of information about online video items” need not be associated with the set of icons as suggested by the majority.  She writes: “Understanding claim 1 in this way, I would hold there is substantial evidence to support the examiner’s finding, adopted by the Board, that these limitations are disclosed in Cook.”  This interpretation is also appropriate according to Judge Moore under the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claims given to terms during prosecution.

Judgmental Immunity in Patent Malpractice Cases

Ethics

I serve as an expert in patent cases, sometimes for clients and sometimes for lawyers.  Before offering an opinion, I look very closely at every case, but more closely before opining that a lawyer has violated the standard of care or breached a fiduciary duty to a client. Why?  First, it’s easy to second-guess decisions made in patent prosecution:  reasonable care is required, but what is reasonable under the budget and time constraints (and then-current knowledge) in patent practice may not stand up to the glare of fly-specking that goes on in malpractice litigation, just as a patent that is well-prosecuted may not withstand the scrutiny of litigation.  Second, and it probably is related to the first point, some decisions in patent practice are inherently judgment calls and so there’s a zone of “discretion,” if you will, that should be afforded to those decisions.

The law recognizes these notions in the form of a doctrine called “judgmental immunity.”  The D.C. Circuit recently applied this doctrine in a patent malpractice,  Seed Co. v. Westerman, (D.C. Cir. Aug. 12, 2016).

The malpractice claim arose out of an interference proceeding and has an interesting twist.  The lawyer needed to claim priority to an earlier-filed Japanese patent application that had been domesticated through a PCT.  The Japanese application and the PCT were in Japanese.  Regulations required that a motion to claim benefit had to include English translations of the earlier applications in the claim.  The lawyer filed a US translation of the (first-filed, obviously) Japanese application, but not the PCT.

The Board awarded the earlier Japanese filing date.  Seed won.

The Federal Circuit reversed.  It held that without the English translation of the PCT, the Board erred in awarding  giving the application the filing date of the Japanese application, and, as a result, Seed lost the interference.

Hence the malpractice case.

The district court granted summary judgment to the defendant lawyers, relying upon the “judgmental immunity doctrine.”  It reasoned that, because the law was not settled that a translation of the PCT was required, their decision not to file one was immune from second-guessing.

This court, however, reversed.  It stated that the judgmental immunity doctrine was limited to circumstances where “a lawyer makes a strategic choice between two options, each of which has costs and benefits.”  Thus, an interpretation of unsettled law that “manifestly risks the loss of a client’s claim for no plausible advantage” was subject to a jury’s inference that “a reasonable lawyer would err on the side of caution by filing the translation if the requirements were ambiguous and there were no reason not to do so.”

(The case also has an interesting discussion of the continuous representation rule, a rule that basically says so long as a lawyer is representing a client, limitations does not begin to run.  Here, lawyers who represented the client while at Firm A left and took Seed Co. with them; as to them, limitations continued to be tolled; but not as to Firm A.)

 

Supreme Court Patent Cases: Malpractice, Obviousness, and Venue

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by Dennis Crouch

The Supreme Court will begin granting and denying petitions in early October.  Meanwhile, several new petitions are now on file.  Last week I wrote about the TC Heartland case as a mechanism for limiting venue. Without any good reason, the Federal Circuit overruled a 1957 Supreme Court case that had strictly limited patent venue as spelled out in the patent venue statute 1400(b).  See VE Holdings (explaining its overruling of Fourco Glass). A result of VE Holdings is the expansive venue availability that facilitated the rise of E.D. Texas as the most popular patent venue. TC Heartland simply asks the Supreme Court reassert its Fourco holding – something that could almost be done with a one-line opinion: “REVERSED. See Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Products Corp., 353 U.S. 222 (1957).”  The best arguments for the Federal Circuit’s approach are (1) the reasoning of Fourco itself is a bit dodgy; and (2) VE Holdings is well settled doctrine (decided 26 years ago) and Congress has revised the statutory provisions several times without amending.  As a side note, several members of Congress have suggested they will act legislatively if SCOTUS fails to act.

Two new petitions (Grunenthal v. Teva and Purdue v. Epic) stem from the same Federal Circuit OxyContin case and focus on anticipation and obviousness respectively.  Grunenthal v. Teva questions how ‘inherently’ operates for anticipation purposes.   Purdue suggests that – despite the final sentence of Section 103, that the actual circumstances of the invention should be available to help prove non-obviousness (but still not be available to prove obviousness).   Another new petition includes the BPCIA case Apotex v. Amgen that serves as a complement to the pending Sandoz case questioning the requirements and benefits of providing notice of commercial marketing.

Finally – Encyclopedia Britannica v. Dickstein Shapiro is a patent prosecution malpractice action.  The lower court held the lawyers harmless since Alice would have invalidated the patents even if drafted to perfection. The petition asks whether Alice Corp can excuse patent prosecutors from alleged prosecution errors made well prior to that decision.

(more…)

Federal Circuit on PTAB Initiation Decisions: Still No Appeal …

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Wi-Fi One v. Broadcom (Fed. Cir. 2016)

Wi-Fi One is the new owner of Ericcson’s U.S. Patent No. 6,772,215 that covers a method for encoding and sending packet-receipt error messages over the internet. In 2013, Broadcom brought this IPR challenge and the Board eventually found many of the claims anticipated.

On appeal here Wi-Fi challenges Broadcom’s standing to bring the IPR challenge under 35 U.S.C. § 315(b).  Section 315(b) indicates that an IPR proceeding may not be instituted if the petitioner (or its privy) had been served with an infringement complaint more than one year prior.

315(b) Patent Owner’s Action.— An inter partes review may not be instituted if the petition requesting the proceeding is filed more than 1 year after the date on which the petitioner, real party in interest, or privy of the petitioner is served with a complaint alleging infringement of the patent.

Although Broadcom had not been previously sued on the patent, Wi-Fi argues that its privies had been previously sued.  The PTAB rejected that argument – finding that Broadcom was not a “privy” of the prior litigants because Wi-Fi did not prove that Broadcom had power to control the prior district court litigation or that Broadcom would be bound by the outcome of that prior litigation. The Board also refused Wi-Fi’s request for further discovery on the matter.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed — holding that the question of proper institution is unreviewable based upon the statutory statement that “The determination by the Director whether to institute an inter partes review under this section shall be final and nonappealable.” 35 U.S.C. § 314(d).  Although I have not quite found the line in the decision, is appears that the court also held that even the denial of discovery is unreviewable.

The Supreme Court extended the preclusion of judicial review to statutes related to the decision to institute; it did not limit the rule of preclusion to substantive patentability determinations made at the institution stage, as the facts of Cuozzo itself make clear.

Slip Opinion at 8.  The decision here essentially follows the Federal Circuit’s prior ruling in Achates.

The court also sided with the Board on Wi-Fi’s substantive argument – affirming the Board decision that the prior art anticipates.