Patent Baristas

In Eli Lilly & Co. v. Emisphere Technologies, Inc., a district court judge has decided that Eli Lilly doesn’t have any rights to a patent it applied for based on its partner’s technology after ruling that Lilly breached its contract with Emisphere by setting up a secret research team to study its partner’s technology. Under […]

A federal District Court ruled that a terminal disclaimer does not negate Patent Term Extension. King Pharma v. Teva Pharma, 78 USPQ2d 1237 (D.N.J. 2006). In a patent dispute, Teva argued that Wyeth’s patent on zaleplon drug products had expired because of a terminal disclaimer. Wyeth, and its exclusive licensee King Pharma, argued that patent’s […]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in Aventis Pharma S.A. v. Amphastar Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Teva Pharmaceuticals Usa, Inc., (No. 05-1513; April 10, 2006), held that if there is another reasonable inference for not disclosing information during prosecution, the failure to disclose may have been due purely to inadvertence. In the case, […]

In an exciting exchange at the Supreme Court, lawyers for MercExchange and eBay squared off in the battle for and against injunctions. The Court heard oral arguments yesterday in a crucial intellectual property case where the outcome could hinge on whether the justices think eBay is an evil patent infringer or the innocent victim of […]

Medtronic filed a patent infringement lawsuit in Ireland against Guidant Corp.’s Vision and Xience stents (tiny tubes that prop open arteries) alleging that the stents infringe patents licensed to Medtronic from Evysio Medical Devices, a Canadian company. Medtronic is seeking an injunction and monetary damages. This is high-stakes for both Medtronic and Guidant as they […]

In a Sign o’ the Times, Sanofi-Aventis and Bristol-Myers Squibb have reached a settlement agreement with Apotex in the patent infringement lawsuit pending between the parties in the US District Court. The suit relates to the validity of a composition of matter patent for clopidogrel bisulfate, the active ingredient in Plavix. Plavix is one of […]

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in what seems to be a confusion over neutralization of an acid versus a salt, held that a claim for an acid is not literally infringed by a salt in Kao Corp. and Andrew Jergens Corp. v. Unilever and Conopco. Earlier, the U.S. District Court ruled that […]

In an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times entitled “Patently Ridiculous,” the editors state that “something has gone very wrong with the United States patent system. That’s not really “new” as far as patent reform claims of this sort go but the editors do finally concede that the problem lies “not just with the […]