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CAS Offsets Permitted Among Different Contract Types

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 04.14.06

In an important case of first impression, the Court of Federal Claims in Lockheed Martin Corp. v. United States (Mar. 29, 2006) has held that the cost impact of a Cost Accounting Standard (CAS) noncompliance is the net of all increased costs and all decreased costs that result from the noncompliance on all CAS-covered contracts. The Court rejected the government's argument that decreased costs paid on fixed-price contracts could not be offset against increased costs paid on cost-reimbursement contracts, finding that it "is -- in a word -- wrong."

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Client Alert | 2 min read | 11.14.25

Defining Claim Terms by Implication: Lexicography Lessons from Aortic Innovations LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corporation

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....