In a recent decision from the Eastern District of Texas, the court allowed the testimony of an expert witness on the entire market value theory even though the expert did not provide evidence of consumer demand. The court found that the expert could use the entire market value theory of…
Patent Lawyer Blog
Equitable Estoppel — Silence May Preclude Enforcement
Failing to act and follow up on cease and desist letters against potential infringers of a patent may preclude enforcement of the patent. This is particularly true when the patent owner does not begin litigation or execute a license for the patent and, during the intervening time, the potential infringer…
Applying Therasense Court Denies Defense Motion of Inequitable Conduct
In the first district court case applying the Federal Circuit’s new standard for proving inequitable conduct, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas concluded that defendants had failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the patents-in-suit were unenforceable due to inequitable conduct. The case…
Source Code Review — What Must a Defendant Provide During the Review?
In a case from the Eastern District of Texas, the district court granted an emergency motion to compel pertaining to source code contained on a stand-alone computer. In the case, Hyundai had loaded its source code on a stand-alone computer and provided a standard text-editor (Notepad), a source code editor…
Divided Infringement Leads to a Finding of No Infringement
In a recent case from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, the district court held that the defendant was not liable for patent infringement based on the doctrine of divided infringement. The district court based its ruling on the Federal Circuit’s decision in Centillion Data Sys.,…
Patent False Marking Claims Prove Largely To Be A Nuisance
Section 292 of the Patent Statute (Title 35) provides a civil penalty for falsely marking goods as being covered by a patent and imposes a fine of no more than $500 “for every such offense.” A Section 292 claim, moreover, can be brought by anyone on behalf of the United…
Microsoft Loses Clear and Convincing Evidence Challenge to Validity of Patents
The United States Supreme Court affirmed the use of the clear and convincing evidence standard for challenges to the validity of patents last week in a closely watched and eagerly anticipated case, i4i v. Microsoft. The Supreme Court’s opinion re-affirmed decades of case law that the standard to challenge the…
Patent for Insurance Claim Processing Held Invalid Under Bilski
In a recent decision from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, the district court considered defendant’s motion for summary judgment of invalidity. The plaintiff’s patent is directed to a computer program for developing a component based software for the insurance industry. The patent contained both method…
The Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art May Not Save your Patent
To have a valid patent, an inventor must disclose sufficient detail in the specification to enable the patent, often referred to as the enablement requirement. To fulfill the enablement requirement, an inventor must disclose enough detail in the patent to teach a person of ordinary skill in the art to…
Discovery Regarding Future Products Denied Despite Argument of Accelerated Market Entry
In a patent case pending against Intel in the District of New Mexico, the plaintiff sought to compel the production of Intel’s future products that were under development. The litigation involved plaintiff’s claim that Intel infringed its patent for a process called “double patterning,” which is a process that allows…