When Juries Don’t Matter: Written Description Effectively Becomes a Question of Law

by Dennis Crouch

In consecutive weeks, the Federal Circuit has reversed two jury verdicts totaling over $80 million in pharmaceutical patent disputes, holding in both cases that the specifications failed (as a matter of law) to satisfy §112(a)'s disclosure requirements. Seagen Inc. v. Daiichi Sankyo Company, Ltd., Nos. 2023-2424 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 2, 2025); Duke University v. Sandoz Inc., No. 2024-1078 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 18, 2025).

In my view, these cases represent a significant doctrinal development. I see these as revealing three interconnected trends:

1. The Federal Circuit's increasing willingness to treat patent specifications as legal texts subject to judicial interpretation of the text rather than factual determinations of its meaning;
2. The practical (re)convergence of written description and enablement into a unified adequacy inquiry; and
3. The court's growing confidence in overturning jury verdicts on §112(a) grounds as a matter of law.