As we approach the end of 2016, it’s a good time to look ahead to the cases that may have a significant impact on patent law in the coming year. Here is a preview of some of the important patent decisions on the Supreme Court’s docket for 2017.

Life Technologies Corp. v. Promega Corp.

Over the last 15 years, the Federal Circuit has continued to expand the scope of the extraterritorial effect of U.S. patent law.

Attorney in the PTAB? Do you wish you could know ahead of time whether your judge was likely to institute your petition, grant your motion, or rule in your favor? 

Short of your reading your judge’s thoughts, the next best thing is Docket Alarm’s Analytics Platform for the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

On March 30th, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against drug manufacturer Endo Pharmaceuticals, alleging that Endo is paying generic drug manufacturers in order to delay the release of lower cost generic versions of their drugs, Opana ER and Lidoderm.

Generic drugs come to market when the patents on name brand drugs expire.

Docket Alarm is excited to announce the release of a new report: “Big Pharma and the Legal Industry: Docket Alarm’s Guide to Orange Book Patent Analytics”.

The report, presented in a visually engaging infographic, breaks down how the relatively new Patent Trial and Appeal Board is reshaping Hatch-Waxman litigation. Attorneys can see statistics on everything from the trajectory of Orange Book patents at the PTAB to the top players in the field.

Get your free copy of “Big Pharma and the Legal Industry: Docket Alarm’s Guide to Orange Book Patent Analytics”.

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Docket Alarm is the only research platform that offers patent practitioners a complete PTAB research and analytics platform featuring Orange Book patents engaged in litigation.

The Supreme Court announced Monday that it would agree to hear part of an appeal filed by Samsung seeking to overturn a $548 million damages award granted to Apple last year. Aside from finally closing the door on this five-year saga between Apple and Samsung, SCOTUS’s decision is newsworthy because it’s the first case before the Court involving design patents since 1894. See Dunlop v. Schofield, 152 U.S. 244 (1894).

The Court agreed to hear arguments regarding whether Samsung is liable for all profits from the sale of phones that infringed on Apple’s design patents, totaling $399 million dollars, or whether they are liable only for the portion of those profits attributable to the role those protected design elements played in actual phone sales.

San Francisco-based activity tracker startup, Fitbit, Inc., filed a complaint on November 2 with the ITC, requesting an investigation in the importation and sale of activity tracking devices by AliphCom, more commonly known as Jawbone, and BodyMedia, Inc. Fitbit alleges these devices, which included Jawbone’s “UP” product line and the “UP” App, infringe on claims in three of its patents.

The ITC is well known to be a fast-moving patent venue.  While the docket might indicate that not much has happened since the case was filed in November, in the next three months, an important substantive hearing (claim construction) will be in April 2016 and a final decision from the judge is due in less than a year.

In a victory for aerospace company SpaceX, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a decision on August 27th canceling 13 claims in a rocket sea-landing patent owned by competitor Blue Origin, a space venture backed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

The patent at issue, U.S. Patent No. 8,678,321 B2 (the “’321 patent”), describes a method of vertically landing a rocket booster on a floating platform after launch.

Back in February of 2014, German sportswear giant Adidas filed a patent infringement suit against competitor Under Armour, Inc. in United States District Court for the District of Delaware.

Adidas accused Under Armour and its newly acquired fitness tracker subsidiary, MapMyFitness, Inc., of infringing ten of its patents.

Terms and connectors searching allow users to string together multiple complex queries. Say you are searching for §112 issues in a patent case. You may search for “written description invalidity” to find relevant information. However, this search will return any result that uses those three words. By using terms and connectors, you can narrow your query: (written w/3 description) w/10 invalidity. This query indicates that you are looking for results where the word “description” appears within three words of “written”, and “invalidity” appears within ten words of that combination.

Terms and connectors searching is also helpful in finding cases whose characteristics match your own.

 In the News: Docket Alarm is excited to announce that we have been selected as a finalist in Legaltech News’ Innovation Awards for Best Research Product! The award is in recognition of outstanding achievement by legal professionals in their use of technology.

Know Your PTAB Judges: Meet PTAB Judge Trevor Jefferson

In this installment of Docket Alarm’s Know Your PTAB Judge newsletter, Docket Alarm is proud to feature Administrative Patent Judge Trevor Jefferson.

Last week, a Pennsylvania jury handed down one of the first patent infringement verdicts involving drones. Drone Technologies Inc. filed suit against France-based Parrot SA for infringement on two of their patents, U.S. Patents 7,584,071 and 8,106,748.

Parrot is a well-known drone manufacturing company, focusing primarily on the toy and hobby market.

The jury ruled in favor of Drone Technologies Inc., granting $7.8 million in damages.

In this second installment of Docket Alarm’s Know Your PTAB Judge newsletter, we are proud to feature Judge Jennifer Bisk.

Background

Judge Jennifer Bisk is a graduate of the George Mason University School of Law. Prior to law school, she obtained a Bachelor of Science in engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering from Vanderbilt, and a Master of Science in computer science from Stanford.

Judge Bisk has an extensive history clerking for various courts.