Christian Doctrine Applied to Subcontract
Client Alert | 1 min read | 04.05.13
As discussed in more detail in a Crowell Alert issued today, the U.S. District Court for D.C. in UPMC Braddock v. Harris (Mar. 30, 2013) relied on the Christrian doctrine, a rule derived from case law that allows for the inclusion in a contract by operation of law of omitted government contract clauses expressing a significant public procurement policy, to incorporate affirmative action clauses into a subcontract between certain hospitals and a managed care organization with a Federal Employees Health Benefits Program prime contract. This is the first instance of which we are aware that a court has used the Christian doctrine to incorporate federal procurement obligations into a subcontract.
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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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