Fresh From the Bench: Latest Federal Circuit Court Cases

CASE OF THE WEEK

Oracle America, Inc. v. Google LLC, Appeal No. 2017-1118, -1202 (Fed. Cir. 2018)

In an appeal from a jury trial, the Federal Circuit reversed the District Court’s decision denying Oracle’s motion for JMOL and remanded for a trial on damages. This was the second appeal to the Federal Circuit in this case, and is a rare instance in which our Case of the Week commentary focuses on copyright, as opposed to patent law. The case was originally both a copyright and patent case, but the patent issues have long since been resolved, and only the copyright issues remain outstanding. Given the public interest in the case, its $1 billion damages claim, and the relevance to parallel issues in patent law from some of the Court’s decision, we chose this as our Case of the Week this week.

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ALSO THIS WEEK

In re Brandt, Appeal No. 2016-2601 (Fed. Cir 2018)

In a patent applicant’s appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), the Court affirmed the PTAB’s and the examiner's obviousness rejections of claims based on an abutting range or a slightly overlapping range. Distinguishing its prior decision in In re Patel, 566 F. App’x 1005 (Fed. Cir. 2014), the Court found that in this case, a skilled artisan would not have found a meaningful difference between the claimed and prior art ranges, and the examiner properly found prima facie obviousness. Because the applicant submitted no evidence of criticality or unexpected results as to the claimed range to rebut the prima facie case, and rejecting the applicant’s “teaching away” argument, the Court affirmed the obviousness rejection.

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Written by: Scott D. Eads and Nika F. Aldrich, Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt

Contributors: Cristin Wagner and Jason Wrubleski