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DOJ Puts Academic Medical Centers in Spotlight

Client Alert | 1 min read | 11.29.12

On November 27, DOJ announced that Baylor University Medical Center has agreed to pay nearly $1 million to settle whistleblower claims brought under the False Claims Act, alleging that Baylor double-billed Medicare for certain procedures and billed for more expensive services when different, less expensive services should have been billed. The settlement, which DOJ hailed as an example of increased cooperation between DOJ and HHS under the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT) initiative, follows a string of recent cases in which DOJ has targeted higher ed institutions under the FCA.


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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....