A great post from our friends at the Bose Intellectual Property Blog about a significant Supreme Court case that brings patent appeals in line with the appellate standards governing non-patent cases.
The Supreme Court today issued a 7-2 decision which should go a long way to reduce almost automatic appeals in patent cases. The Federal Circuit appeals court was created to handle all patent appeals. The Roberts Court has been telling the Federal Circuit again and again that most of the moving parts in a patent lawsuit are just like what federal trial court judges decide in non-patent cases. They did it again today in Teva Pharmaceuticals USA v. Sandoz.
Patents must be written in words, and a major hurdle in patent disputes is deciding what they mean. The parties tell the court what they think the words mean, and they usually have strong disagreements on a few key terms. This stage of the lawsuit is called claim construction, and experts often testify about how the words are understood in the specialized area where the patent is useful, or art. It…
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