Tag Archives: Federal Circuit En Banc

The Path Forward for Intervening Rights: Presaging the En Banc Decision in Marine Polymer v. Hemcon

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Guest Post by Scott McKeown, Greg Gardella, and Lisa M. Mandrusiak all of OBLON, SPIVAK, MCCLELLAND, MAIER & NEUSTADT, L.L.P.[1]

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is currently considering en banc the panel decision in Marine Polymer Technologies, Inc. v. Hemcon, Inc. The panel decision can be interpreted as suggesting that intervening rights can arise from an argument made during a post grant patent proceeding, such as a patent reexamination proceeding,[2] even if the patent owner is merely urging a claim interpretation that is consistent with the manner in which the term would have been understood at the time the underlying patent application was filed. In cases where the post grant record simply clarifies the way in which a skilled artisan would have understood a claim term at the time of filing, or reiterates the positions of the previous intrinsic record, the scope of the claims cannot properly be said to have been altered during the subsequent proceeding.

Post grant PTO patent proceedings often focus on the meaning of different aspects of originally issued claim language than were considered during the earlier application prosecution. Therefore, much of the argument made by the patent owner during the subsequent PTO proceeding is directed to new issues not previously considered by the PTO. It is to be expected that re-opening the intrinsic record via post grant file histories will often include substantively new discussion of various claim terms.

For example, during post grant proceedings patent claims are accorded the broadest reasonable interpretation ("BRI"). Determining the BRI requires a different analysis than carried out in a district court during claim construction, and notably, there is no requirement that the PTO consider the earlier prosecution record in ascertaining the BRI and meaning of an originally issued patent claim. This often places patent owners in the position of having to re-argue distinctions which were implicitly or explicitly accepted by the previous patent examiner. When the PTO requires amendment of a claim in post grant proceedings the amendment may in fact be a simple restatement of previously agreed upon claim scope, which should not give rise to intervening rights.

The rule adopted by the Court should be flexible so as to accommodate the foregoing situations and permit intervening rights only in the appropriate circumstances. The application of argument-based intervening rights should be limited to situations in which the patent owner clearly and unambiguously revises the issued claim scope by urging that a limitation has a meaning that is plainly at odds with the interpretation a court would have given the originally issued claim language.

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The Federal Circuit’s Rare Opportunity to Protect the Public from Agency Misconduct

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Guest Post by Richard B. Belzer, Ph.D.

The Federal Circuit has before it an unusual petition for rehearing en banc. It involves an issue that, to my knowledge, has never before been heard by this court, and it's one that hardly anyone who practices patent law even knows about. Indeed, the reason that this issue is arising now is the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has made an extraordinary (and heretofore successful) effort to prevent inventors and the patent bar from understanding it.

For this reason, my nonprofit organization has filed an amicus brief asking the Court to uphold statutory rights that, until recently, possibly no patent lawyer knew how to defend. If the Court acts favorably, it can undo decades of rogue agency practice at the PTO.

In In re Lovin, the key issue is whether an examiner's failure to state a prima facie case of obviousness, as required by MPEP Chapter 2100, is sufficient ground for the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences to vacate or reverse a rejection. Lovin's brief alleges that the Board abandoned its longstanding practice of vacating rejections when the examiner had not made this case, and instead required the appellant to make a substantive showing of patentability in their appeal brief—that is, to prove a negative. The amicus brief of CFPH, LLC, a business unit of Cantor Fitzgerald, offered a complementary explanation of why the Board's interpretation of PTO Rule 41.37 was incorrect.

Regulatory Checkbook, the nonprofit I manage, seeks leave to intervene because the PTO lacked any legal authority to compel Lovin to provide this information. In fact, until December 22, 2009, the PTO had no legal authority to require any appellant to comply with any of the material information collections contained in 37 C.F.R. Part 41.

How could that be? To understand why, let's take a short trip to the Office of Management and Budget, which occupies the tall red brick building across Lafayette Park from the tall red brick building housing the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

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