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CFC Sustains Corrective Action Protest Where Solicitation Amendment Favored Original Awardee

Client Alert | 1 min read | 11.28.16

In Prof’l. Serv. Indus. Inc. v. United States, the Court of Federal Claims sustained a protest of a corrective action that the Federal Highway Administration took in the wake of a GAO decision that the awardee’s proposed program manager lacked the requisite experience. The court found that the agency’s decision to amend the solicitation was arbitrary and capricious because the agency changed the required qualifications for the program manager—in a manner that conformed to the original awardee’s proposal—rather than conducting a re-evaluation of the proposals under the un-amended solicitation’s criteria.

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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....