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Competitive Range Of One Gets Close Scrutiny

Client Alert | 1 min read | 09.25.08

Reviewing the law that an agency's narrowing the competitive range to one results in close scrutiny, the CFC in L-3 Communications Eotech, Inc. v. U.S. (Sept. 23, 2008, http://www.crowell.com/pdf/L3-Communications_v_US-AimPoint_08-515.pdf) proceeded to set aside such a determination when the agency disqualified the protestor based on a failed functional test that it relaxed for the favored offeror. The court, after seeing a live demonstration of the hardware involved, also found irrational the agency's failure to seek clarifications when the protestor's perceived testing problem could have been corrected relatively easily.

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Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.20.25

Design Patent Application Drawings & Prosecution History Must Be Clear (Merely Translucent Won’t Suffice!)

Design patents offer protection for the ornamental appearance of a product, focusing on aspects like its shape and surface decoration, as opposed to the functional aspects protected by utility patents. The scope of a design patent is defined by the drawings and any descriptive language within the patent itself. Recent decisions by the Federal Circuit emphasize the need for clarity in the prosecution history of a design patent in order to preserve desired scope to preserve intentional narrowing (and to avoid unintentional sacrifice of desired claim scope)....