Eleventh Circuit OK’s Suspension of Affiliates Beyond 18 Months
Client Alert | 1 min read | 01.08.14
In Agility Def. & Gov’t Servs. v. Dep’t of Def. (Dec. 31, 2013), the Eleventh Circuit reversed the judgment below and held that when an agency suspends a contractor it may suspend affiliates of that contractor for greater than 18 months based solely on their affiliation provided legal proceedings have been initiated during that period against the contractor. The district court had held that the regulations required affiliation-based suspensions to be lifted after 18 months unless legal proceedings had been initiated against the affiliates themselves, but the Eleventh Circuit held that affiliates are afforded sufficient due process and that no independent showing of wrongdoing by an affiliate is required for suspension or debarment.
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Client Alert | 2 min read | 11.14.25
Claim construction is a key stage of most patent litigations, where the court must decide the meaning of any disputed terms in the patent claims. Generally, claim terms are given their plain and ordinary meaning except under two circumstances: (1) when the patentee acts as its own lexicographer and sets out a definition for the term; and (2) when the patentee disavows the full scope of the term either in the specification or during prosecution. Thorner v. Sony Comput. Ent. Am. LLC, 669 F.3d 1362, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2012). The Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Aortic Innovations LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corp. highlights that patentees can act as their own lexicographers through consistent, interchangeable usage of terms across the specification, effectively defining terms by implication.
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