All posts by Dennis Crouch
Parts vs. Whole: Federal Circuit Corrects District Court’s Component-Level Section 101 Analysis in Gene Therapy Case
by Dennis Crouch
At $3.2 million per dose, Elevidys is one of the most expensive drugs ever approved. The drug is used to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a fatal genetic disease that progressively destroys muscle function and kills most patients in their twenties. Elevidys represents both the remarkable promise and the profound access tension at the heart of gene therapy patents. The underlying technology was developed in the laboratory of Dr. James M. Wilson at the University of Pennsylvania, supported in substantial part by more than $105 million in NIH funding over Wilson's career, and then exclusively licensed to REGENXBIO Inc., which sued Sarepta for using the platform technology without authorization.
On February 20, 2026, the Federal Circuit reversed a Delaware district court's grant of summary judgment of ineligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101, holding that the claimed genetically engineered host cells are not directed to a natural phenomenon. REGENXBIO Inc. v. Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc., No. 24-1408 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 20, 2026) (Stoll, J., joined by Dyk and Hughes). The reversal applies settled doctrine that traces Diamond v. Chakrabarty through Myriad's cDNA holding and Diamond v. Diehr's prohibition on dissecting claims into old and new elements. At the same time, the result here stands in sharp contrast to the § 101 struggles that have plagued software and diagnostic method claims over the past decade, where courts have routinely found "man made" items ineligible.
The patent at issue, US10526617, is owned by the University of Pennsylvania and exclusively licensed to REGENXBIO. The '617 patent expired in 2022, so this litigation was always about past damages, not injunctive relief. Representative claim 1 covers a cultured host cell containing a recombinant nucleic acid molecule encoding an AVV capsid protein having a sequence 95% identical to that listed. The molecule also includes a heterologous non-AAV sequence."
The key term "heterologous" means derived from a different species. "Recombinant" means the molecule is created by chemically splicing together nucleic acid sequences from two separate biological sources. Thus, the claimed cells do not themselves occur in nature -- but Judge Andrews still found the claims directed to a natural phenomenon. REGENXBIO Inc. v. Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc., No. 20-cv-1226-RGA (D. Del. Jan. 5, 2024).
SCOTUSGate: A New Portal to the Certiorari Pipeline
by Dennis Crouch
For many years, I relied on certpool.com to keep tabs on the Supreme Court’s certiorari docket. When that site went dark, I started building my own tracker in 2024, running it locally on my personal computer and checking it daily for new and interesting cases before the US Supreme Court. That project has now grown into SCOTUSGate.com, which I’m making publicly available for the first time. The site is very much in alpha, a work in progress, but it is functional and I’d welcome feedback from readers as it develops.
SCOTUSGate tracks petitions for certiorari and shadow-docket activity across the full Supreme Court docket. The database (named Cerberus, after the three-headed dog who guards the gates of the underworld) currently shows over 1,000 pending petitions, with structured data on conference scheduling, cert-stage briefing, CVSG invitations, and case dispositions. The site pulls docket information directly from the Court several times per day and I have incorporated both traditional text analysis tools as well as AI to extract questions presented from petition PDFs and assign topic tags for filtering and discovery.
The name works on a few levels. A gate as portal: the site is a point of entry into information about what the Court is considering. A gate as barrier: the certiorari process is itself a gate, with the Court granting review in only a small fraction of cases. And in the Watergate tradition of institutional-accountability naming: a site built on the conviction that the Court’s work should be visible and open to scrutiny, particularly at the cert and shadow-docket stages where transparency is most limited. (more…)
“Anonymous Work” and the AI Author Fight
by Dennis Crouch
The very first provision of the Copyright Act is a curious definition:
An “anonymous work” is a work on the copies or phonorecords of which no natural person is identified as author.
17 U.S.C. § 101. If Congress assumed every author must be a natural person, why would it need to define a category of works where no natural person is identified? That textual puzzle sits at the heart of Stephen Thaler's newly filed reply brief in Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 25-449, which asks the Supreme Court to take up whether AI-generated works can receive copyright protection. The case has been distributed for the Court's February 27, 2026, conference.
SCOTUSGate: Supreme Court Petition Tracker I have created a new website: SCOTUSGate (scotusgate.com), a tool for tracking petitions for certiorari at the Supreme Court. The site aggregates docket entries, briefing schedules, conference dates, and amicus filings for pending petitions. Cases can be browsed by topic, court of origin, or conference date. The Thaler case page is at scotusgate.com/case.php?number=25-449. The site also tracks cases flagged for response, relisted petitions, and CVSG orders, which are often early signals of the Court's interest in a case. SCOTUSGate is really at an Alpha stage - a work in progress - and I welcome feedback. -Dennis
An Inexact Art: Willis Electric and the Limits of Damages Gatekeeping
by Dennis Crouch
For the past year, the Federal Circuit has been systematically tightening the screws on patent damages and particularly pro-patentee expert testimony on the issue. Beginning with EcoFactor, Inc. v. Google LLC, 137 F.4th 1333 (Fed. Cir. 2025), the court vacated a $20 million reasonable royalty award for insufficient apportionment. Then came Jiaxing Super Lighting Electric Appliance Co. v. CH Lighting Technology Co., 146 F.4th 1098 (Fed. Cir. 2025), where the court vacated another award and suggested (in dicta) that experts must quantify their Georgia-Pacific adjustments. LabCorp v. Qiagen reversed a jury verdict on similar grounds. Coda Development v. Goodyear Tire "deflated" a $64 million award for inadequate apportionment. See Dennis Crouch, The Remedies Remedy is Almost Complete: EcoFactor v. Google, Patently-O (May 22, 2025); Dennis Crouch, Federal Circuit Extends EcoFactor Framework to Patent Damages Apportionment in Jiaxing Decision, Patently-O (Aug. 1, 2025); Dennis Crouch, Verdict Deflated: Fed Circuit Punctures Coda's $64M Win Over Goodyear, Patently-O (Dec. 8, 2025). The cumulative message to patentees seemed pretty clear: jury verdicts on damages face appellate scrutiny, and experts who failed to satisfy the court's increasing expectations would have their testimony excluded and the resulting awards overturned.
Today's decision in Willis Electric Co., Ltd. v. Polygroup Ltd., No. 2024-2118 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 17, 2026), suggests there is a limit. Writing for a unanimous panel, Chief Judge Moore affirmed a jury's $40+ million reasonable royalty award on a single dependent claim covering coaxial barrel connectors used in pre-lit artificial Christmas trees. The opinion runs to 37 pages, with the bulk devoted to a comprehensive defense of the damages verdict under Rule 702 and Daubert. The court upheld every challenged aspect of the patentee's expert testimony: her income-based apportionment, her market-based apportionment using comparable licenses, and her qualitative application of the Georgia-Pacific factors. Where EcoFactor drew a line against expert testimony predicated on inaccurate factual premises, Willis Electric draws a line in the other direction. It holds that methodological choices about how to model profitability, which licenses to consider comparable, and how to weigh qualitative factors are matters for cross-examination and jury deliberation, not judicial exclusion. The repeated refrain of the opinion is that reasonable royalty calculations "necessarily involve an element of approximation and uncertainty," EcoFactor, 137 F.4th at 1340, and Rule 702 must accommodate that reality.
For many years, I have seen the reasonable royalty "calculation" as a form of speculative science fiction. It is filled with such uncertainty that attempts for mathematical precision simply mask what is fundamentally a rough estimation exercise. The hypothetical negotiation is a legal fiction built on counterfactual assumptions, and the Georgia-Pacific factors provide structure without providing answers. Courts and experts have long struggled with how much rigor to demand from an inherently imprecise inquiry.
In Willis Electric, Chief Judge Moore engages with that tension directly, and several passages seem destined for heavy citation in future damages disputes. The court's core distinction is between (1) an expert who builds on erroneous factual premises -- ones that are "contrary to a critical fact upon which the expert relied" (the EcoFactor problem, warranting exclusion) and (2) an expert whose methodological choices reflect a "fact [dispute] over which reasonable minds can differ" (the Willis Electric situation, left to the jury). The opinion also deploys EcoFactor's own language about "approximation and uncertainty" as a shield rather than a sword, embedding it within a historical survey of reasonable royalty doctrine stretching back to Dowagiac Manufacturing Co. v. Minnesota Moline Plow Co., 235 U.S. 641 (1915), and even a 1960 Columbia Law Review student note. Recovery in Patent Infringement Suits, 60 Colum. L. Rev. 840 (1960).
Hot Bench: Speaking Time and Opinion Writing at the Federal Circuit
by Dennis Crouch
Oral argument at the Federal Circuit typically lasts 30 minutes. But the judges on the panel do not divide that time equally among themselves. I used a sample of 1000+ Federal Circuit oral arguments and found some big differences among the judges. 
Chief Judge Kimberly Moore leads the court with a median speaking time of 4.51 minutes per argument. Judge Taranto follows closely at 4.31. At the other end of the spectrum, Judge Lourie speaks for a median of just 0.86 minutes, and the newest member, Judge Cunningham for 0.92 minutes. That is a fivefold difference between the most and least talkative members of the court.
Lynk Labs Resource Guide
The Supreme Court will shortly decide whether to grant cert in Lynk Labs. At the suggestion of a reader, I wanted to make these posts about the case available to non-subscribers seeking to research the issues.
- Dennis Crouch, Prior Art Document vs. Prior Art Process: How Lynk Labs Exposes a Fundamental Ambiguity in Patent Law, Patently-O (July 9, 2025), https://patentlyo.com/patent/2025/07/document-fundamental-ambiguity.html. Identifies a previously unnoticed conceptual tension in patent law between two competing frameworks—“prior art as document” versus “prior art as process.” I argue that this ambiguity explains why §311(b)’s seemingly straightforward language becomes so contentious when applied to §102(a)(2) springing prior art.
- Dennis Crouch, Lynk Labs: How the Least-Vetted Documents Destroy Issued Patents, Patently-O (Dec. 15, 2025), https://patentlyo.com/patent/2025/12/documents-destroy-patents.html. Argues the Federal Circuit’s decision creates perverse incentives by allowing abandoned, unexamined patent applications to be backdated as printed publications to invalidate issued patents. Surveys the substantial amicus landscape supporting cert, including briefs from former USPTO Director Kappos, former Chief Judge Michel, and IP scholars led by Professor Sichelman.
- Dennis Crouch, Thinking back on Milburn and Secret/Springing Prior Art, Patently-O (July 15, 2025), https://patentlyo.com/patent/2025/07/thinking-milburn-springing.html. Traces the historical foundation of the springing prior art doctrine from the Supreme Court’s 1926 Milburn decision through its modern expansion, providing doctrinal context for the Lynk Labs dispute.
- Tim Hsieh, Guest Post: The Supreme Court Should Clarify How to Apply Loper Bright in the Patent Law Case of Lynk Labs, Inc. v. Samsung Co. Ltd., Patently-O (Dec. 3, 2025), https://patentlyo.com/patent/2025/12/hsieh-lynk-loper.html. Professor Hsieh argues that the Federal Circuit’s decision effectively resurrects Chevron-style deference under a different label by tracking USPTO policy rationales rather than exercising independent judicial judgment, framing Lynk Labs as a critical test of Loper Bright’s reach.
- Dennis Crouch, Secret Springing Prior Art and Joint Research: Lessons from Merck v. Hopewell, Patently-O (Nov. 4, 2025), https://patentlyo.com/patent/2025/11/springing-research-hopewell.html. Examines the Federal Circuit’s Merck v. Hopewell decision clarifying when a collaborator’s patent qualifies as prior art “by another,” and how the AIA has changed this category of secret springing prior art through §102(b)(2) and §102(c).
- Dennis Crouch, Publications Before Publishing and the Federal Circuit’s Temporal Gymnastics, Patently-O (Jan. 14, 2025), https://patentlyo.com/patent/2025/01/publications-publishing-gymnastics.html. Analyzes the Federal Circuit’s decision holding that published patent applications are prior art as of their filing date in IPR proceedings, even when they were non-public at the time the challenged patent was filed.
- Dennis Crouch, Supreme Court Asked to Resolve ‘Secret Springing Prior Art’ Controversy in IPR Proceedings, Patently-O (Sept. 18, 2025), https://patentlyo.com/patent/2025/09/springing-controversy-proceedings.html. Covers the filing of Lynk Labs’ cert petition (No. 25-308) asking whether patent applications that became publicly accessible only after the challenged patent’s critical date qualify as “prior art … printed publications” under §311(b).
- Dennis Crouch, Should Abandoned Applications Be Presumed Enabling? Supreme Court Asks for Response, Patently-O (Dec. 23, 2025), https://patentlyo.com/patent/2025/12/abandoned-applications-presumed.html. Addresses the related cert petition in Agilent v. Synthego, asking whether abandoned patent applications filled with prophetic examples should be presumed enabling as anticipatory prior art—a question with direct implications for the evidentiary standards governing the documents at issue in Lynk Labs.
- Dennis Crouch, The ‘Narrow’ Question That Appears in Half of PTAB Obviousness Decisions, Patently-O (Feb. 2026), https://patentlyo.com/patent/2026/02/question-obviousness-decisions.html. Critiques the BIO briefs filed by Samsung and the U.S. government urging denial of cert, finding their arguments about the decision’s limited impact “shockingly disingenuous” given that the post-AIA statute contains an essentially identical provision to the pre-AIA scheme at issue.
- Dennis Crouch, Secret Springing Prior Art and Inter Partes Review, Patently-O (Oct. 4, 2024), https://patentlyo.com/patent/2024/10/secret-springing-partes.html. Previews the Federal Circuit appeal and coins the term “secret springing prior art” to describe references that were secretly on file at the USPTO when a patent was filed but only became publicly accessible upon later publication.
The Director Unbound: Federal Circuit Holds NHK-Fintiv Exempt from APA Rulemaking
Ingevity’s $85 Million Lesson: Antitrust Tying Still Has Teeth
Pre-Alice Patents Keep Falling: Three Section 101 Decisions from the Federal Circuit
First Possession and Intellectual Property: A Supplement for Property Law
by Dennis Crouch
For my property law course this semester, students only get two credits, which means they get roughly half a page on patent law. That is not much space considering that I’ve written 9,000 posts covering every corner of our 235 year old system. The reading comes immediately after reading on Popov v. Hayashi and Pierson v. Post.
A core insight here is that Pierson v. Post, 3 Cai. R. 175 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1805), and the America Invents Act of 2011 are doing the same work. Both define a formal act that counts as “possession” and award priority to whoever performs it first. In Pierson, the act is killing or capturing the fox. In patent law, the act is filing the application. The shift from the old first-to-invent system to first-inventor-to-file is a rehash of the majority-dissent split in Pierson. The old regime, which rewarded the first person to conceive of an invention (so long as she proved diligence in reducing it to practice), resembled Justice Livingston’s dissent, which would have awarded the fox to the pursuer in hot chase. The new regime, like the Pierson majority, demands a clear, unambiguous act of capture. Note that this insight comes from Dotan Oliar & James Y. Stern, Right on Time: First Possession in Property and Intellectual Property, 99 B.U. L. Rev. 395 (2019), I just wrote it in a way that 1Ls can read and easily quickly. (more…)
Privity Without Duty: When Patent Inventors Are Bound but Not Represented
By Dennis Crouch
When a university scientist invents something valuable, a familiar sequence follows. The inventor assigns rights to the university as a condition of employment. The university licenses the patent to a corporate partner while the inventor retains a royalty interest. If infringement litigation erupts, the inventor watches from the sidelines while lawyers representing the university and its licensee make decisions that will determine the value of that royalty stream. The inventor's interests often align with the university - but certainly not always.
A new cert petition filed by Dr. Monib Zirvi highlights this structural problem. Zirvi v. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP, No. 25-940 (petition filed February 2026). Zirvi, a Cornell-trained scientist who co-invented "ZipCode" DNA sequencing technology, claims that the law firms controlling patent infringement litigation on behalf of Cornell University and its exclusive licensee Thermo Fisher Scientific told him that his interests were "aligned" with theirs and that they "represented his interests." He spent hundreds of hours preparing confidential technical analysis at the lawyers' request. But when the case settled, he had no seat at the negotiating table.
Zirvi later sued the lawyers for malpractice, but ultimately received a one-two civil procedure punch.
An Old Trick in the Patent Book: Targeted Drafting from 1876 to 2026
by Dennis Crouch
When Alexander Graham Bell filed his patent application on February 14, 1876, he titled it "Improvement in Telegraphy." Not "Telephone." Not "Apparatus for Transmitting Speech by Electricity." Just a modest tweak to the existing telegraph art. The United States government later alleged this was no accident. In United States v. American Bell Telephone Co., 128 U.S. 315 (1888), the government's bill of complaint charged that Bell "purposely framed his said application and claim in ambiguous and general terms" and "did not set forth or declare that his alleged invention had any relation to the art of transmitting articulate speech by means of electricity." The strategy worked, at least initially: the Patent Office examiner "did not understand the application to lay claim to the art of transmitting speech" and so "did not make an inquiry as to the state of that art or the patents or the printed publications concerning it." No search for the work of Reis, Meucci, or even the caveat filed that same day by Elisha Gray. Bell got his patent on March 7, 1876, three weeks after filing. The case raised serious fraud allegations that the Supreme Court addressed in a companion case, The Telephone Cases, 126 U.S. 1 (1888), but the patent survived.
Nearly 150 years later, patent attorneys are still doing the same thing, though the tools are better and the practice now has a name: targeted drafting. The basic idea is to frame an application so the USPTO routes it to a favorable art unit, where the examiner corps is more likely to allow claims. The mechanism is different from Bell's era, but the impulse is identical. A good negotiator picks a willing counterpart. A good patent prosecutor picks an art unit where the odds favor allowance. Analytics vendors have for years been marketing tools to predict art unit assignment and suggesting language changes to steer applications toward friendlier examiners.
Patent Suit Over NASA’s Mars Helicopter Blocked by Government Contractor Immunity
by Dennis Crouch
The War Industry (formerly Defense) heavily invests in new technology and patents. But, we see very few patent infringement lawsuits. A key reason is 28 U.S.C. § 1498. That statute channels patent infringement claims involving government-authorized work away from private defendants and into the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, with the United States as the sole defendant (and a reasonable royalty as the only remedy). For government contractors and subcontractors, § 1498 operates as a powerful shield: if the infringing activity was performed "for the Government" and "with the authorization or consent of the Government," the patent holder's only remedy is a compensation action against the United States. The contractor walks free. This design reflects a deliberate policy choice. The government pays heavily for technology development with taxpayer dollars and, in exchange, retains control as the key point person - and it allows the administration to resolve patent disputes as it sees fit.
In Arlton v. AeroVironment, Inc., No. 2021-2049 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 2026) (nonprecedential), the Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment shielding AeroVironment from patent infringement liability under § 1498 for its work developing NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter and a terrestrial copy called "Terry." The Arltons — co-inventors and co-owners of U.S. Patent No. 8,042,763, covering a counter-rotating coaxial rotor UAV — had developed the underlying technology under Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts with the military. When the government declined to award them follow-on work and instead contracted with AeroVironment through JPL and NASA, the Arltons sued AeroVironment for infringement.
The ‘Narrow’ Question That Appears in Half of PTAB Obviousness Decisions
by Dennis Crouch
Samsung and the U.S. government have filed briefs urging the Supreme Court to deny certiorari in Lynk Labs, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., No. 25-308. At issue is whether a patent application filed before a challenged patent’s priority date, but not published until afterwards, can serve as prior art in inter partes review. The Federal Circuit held that it can, applying the filing-date rule of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(e)(1). As I write below, I was not overly impressed with they briefing.
The case centers on the “Martin” reference, a patent application covering LED technology that was filed on April 16, 2003 and published on October 21, 2004. Martin was later abandoned and never became a patent. Lynk Labs’ ‘400 patent claims a priority date of February 25, 2004, placing it squarely in the gap between Martin’s filing and publication dates. Samsung successfully used Martin to challenge claims of the ‘400 patent as obvious in IPR.
As part of its streamlining effort, Congress limited what prior art can be used in inter partes review proceedings – only “prior art consisting of patents or printed publications.” 35 U.S.C. § 311(b). Although Martin was not publicly accessible when Lynk Labs filed its application, Martin was later published and also qualifies as prior art under pre-AIA 102(e)(1) (or its parallel post-AIA statute 102(a)(2)). In reading the statute, the court concluded that Martin can be used in an IPR because it satisfies each of the two requirements (prior art + printed publication) even though its prior art date is well before its publication date. Lynk’s cert petition frames this as a question about whether “printed publications” in § 311(b) carry the traditional public-accessibility timing requirement, or whether a published patent application can be backdated as prior art to its filing date in IPR.
I have previously written about this case at several stages. Dennis Crouch, Secret Springing Prior Art and Inter Partes Review, Patently-O (Oct. 2024); Dennis Crouch, Publications Before Publishing and the Federal Circuit’s Temporal Analysis, Patently-O (Jan. 2025); Dennis Crouch, Prior Art Document vs. Prior Art Process, Patently-O (July 2025); Dennis Crouch, Supreme Court Asked to Resolve “Secret Springing Prior Art” in Inter Partes Review Proceedings, Patently-O (Sept. 2025); Dennis Crouch, Lynk Labs: How the Least-Vetted Documents Destroy Issued Patents, Patently-O (December 2025).
Before getting into the merits of the responses, I first want to note how both briefs appear shockingly disingenuous in their discussion of the limited impact of the decision. (more…)
When Obviousness Rejections Pile On: Rethinking Multi-Reference Combinations
Who Are You? YMTC’s Refusal to Identify Its Real Parties in Interest
by Dennis Crouch
In January 2026, USPTO Director John Squires issued his first decision targeting a Chinese state-linked entity's inter partes review petition, and the result is both less dramatic and more revealing than the national-security framing might suggest. Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. v. Micron Technology, Inc., IPR2025-00098 & IPR2025-00099, Paper 38 (USPTO Jan. 15, 2026). The Director vacated the PTAB's decisions granting institution and denied YMTC's petitions challenging two Micron NAND flash memory patents (U.S. Patent Nos. 8,945,996 and 10,872,903). The decision is designated informative.
The case sits at the intersection focal points. The first is geopolitical. YMTC is a Chinese semiconductor manufacturer founded in 2016 by the partially state-owned Tsinghua Unigroup with approximately $24 billion in initial state-backed investment. The company was placed on the Bureau of Industry and Security's Entity List in December 2022 as an organization "reasonably believed to be involved, or to pose a significant risk of being or becoming involved, in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States." 15 C.F.R. § 744.11. The Department of Defense separately designated YMTC as a "Chinese Military Company Operating in the United States" in January 2024. Against this backdrop, YMTC filed IPR petitions challenging two Micron NAND flash memory patents. After Micron sought Director Review, Dir. Squires issued a Show Cause order on November 10, 2025, requiring YMTC to justify why adjudicating its petitions was an appropriate use of the Office's limited resources given its Entity List designation. See Dennis Crouch, Shutting the Patent Office Door: YMTC and the Entity List, Patently-O (Nov. 16, 2025).
The second focal point is IPR process. Dir. Squires has been systematically tightening the IPR petition process, including the real-party-in-interest requirement. In September 2025, he de-designated SharkNinja Operating LLC v. iRobot Corp., IPR2020-00734, Paper 11 (PTAB Oct. 6, 2020), which had permitted PTAB judges to ignore RPI deficiencies in some instances. With SharkNinja gone, the statutory text of § 312(a)(2) returned to full force as an independent threshold requirement: a petition "may be considered" only if it identifies "all" real parties in interest. Failure to disclose means the petition is simply not in condition for consideration.
The USPTO and the Board of Peace
by Dennis Crouch
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has filed two intent-to-use trademark applications for the mark BOARD OF PEACE, the name of the international body President Trump formally launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 22, 2026. Trump described it as "the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place." The trademark applications, both signed and filed personally by USPTO Director John A. Squires, represent an unusual instance of a federal agency seeking trademark protection for a nascent governmental initiative.
The first application, Serial No. 76720938, was filed on December 30, 2025, for a standard character mark. The second application, Serial No. 76720939, filed January 21, 2026, covers a design mark featuring a globe superimposed on a shield flanked by laurel branches. The logo used at the Board of Peace's inaugural meeting features a globe showing most of the United States along with portions of the Western Hemisphere, rendered in a gold color scheme. Both applications identify the USPTO itself as the applicant, described as an "Agency of the United States Government" holding rights in stewardship.
Find the Differences vs Substantial Similarity: Chief Judge Moore Challenges Federal Circuit’s Design Patent Infringement Framework
by Dennis Crouch
The Federal Circuit's decision in Range of Motion Products, LLC v. Armaid Company Inc., No. 2023-2427 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 2, 2026), affirms summary judgment of non-infringement in a design patent dispute involving body massaging devices. The most important part of the case is Chief Judge Moore's dissent, which offers an attack on how the Federal Circuit has been applying the "plainly dissimilar" standard for design patent infringement. Drawing on psychological research, empirical survey data from recent amicus briefs, and a children's puzzle from Highlights magazine, Chief Judge Moore argues that the court's post-Egyptian Goddess framing has fundamentally shifted the infringement analysis away from the Supreme Court's "substantially similar" test in Gorham Co. v. White, 81 U.S. 511 (1871).
The majority opinion in this case, authored by Judge Cunningham and joined by Judge Hughes, dismisses these concerns in a footnote, setting up what may become a vehicle for Supreme Court review. Note that in September 2025, the Federal Circuit denied en banc rehearing on a similar issue in North Star Technology v. Latham Pool Products, 23-02138 (Fed. Cir. 2025).
The oral arguments included lots of interesting statements including the following:
Judge Hughes: Well, first of all, the problem is you have failed to give a specific claim construction that would allow us to determine what's ornamental and what's not. You just say "the appearance." Well, that's just like your dumb patent ...
Chief Judge Moore: You said that out loud. That was not just in your head.
Judge Hughes: I'm perfectly content saying it out loud. I mean, you look at the front of your blue brief and you say the claim is this picture. Well, sure, that's the way you do design patents, but when you're doing claim construction, we use words and you have to give them words. And just saying "overall appearance" is not words.
Judge Hughes also authored the North Star Tech. opinion. Listening to the North Star Tech oral arguments, I also note Judge Chen's disregard of the patent in that case:
Judge Chen: I mean, we've had rectangular pools since there were pools. We've had rectangular tanning ledges ever since there were tanning ledges. We've had full-width steps from tanning ledges to the other part of the pool since forever. We've had deep-end benches since forever. And so I don't understand what was the contribution. What's the ornamentality here? Because other than what I just identified, this pool design doesn't have anything. It's so elemental. So basic.
Supreme Court IP Docket February 1, 2026: Hikma Leads, Section 101 and IPR Questions on Deck
by Dennis Crouch
As January 2026 wraps up, I wanted to take a fresh look at the Supreme Court patent docket. The centerpiece is Hikma v. Amarin after the Court granted certiorari on January 16, 2026. Hikma focuses on the doctrine of inducement - and particularly on how the patent doctrine fits with the Hatch-Waxman Act's skinny label provisions. The Court previously looked at Skinny Label litigation almost fifteen years ago in Caraco Pharmaceutical Laboratories, Ltd. v. Novo Nordisk A/S, 566 U.S. 399 (2012). That earlier case addressed the Hatch-Waxman counterclaim provisions but did not resolve when a generic manufacturer's marketing conduct crosses the line into inducement. Several other petitions have attracted Court attention through "Response Requested" orders, including cases challenging the Federal Circuit's Section 101 jurisprudence and the scope of prior art available in inter partes review proceedings.
The docket's composition reflects persistent tensions in patent law. Three petitions have received orders requesting responses from parties who initially waived their right to respond: United Services Automobile Association v. PNC Bank N.A., No. 25-853 (abstract idea eligibility); Agilent Technologies, Inc. v. Synthego Corp., No. 25-570 (prior art enablement); and Lynk Labs, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., No. 25-308 (printed publications in IPR), which has attracted a number of amicus briefs. Two petitions are scheduled to be decided at the February 20, 2026 conference, and two others are on deck - having received extensions of time to file. Two interesting trademark cases pending before the court include RiseandShine Corp. v. PepsiCo, Inc., No. 24-1016, asking whether trademark strength is a question of fact; and Curtin v. United Trademark Holdings, Inc., No. 25-435, which focuses on standing to oppose trademark registrations.