Difficulty In Articulating Description Is Relevant To A Determination Of Indefiniteness
Client Alert | 1 min read | 06.12.06
In Xerox Corp. v. 3Com Corp , (No. 04-1470), the Federal Circuit reverses in part, vacates in part and remands the district court's summary judgment of invalidity of U.S. Patent No. 5,596,656 (“the ‘656 patent'). Xerox brought suit against 3COM alleging infringement of the ‘656 patent by the “Graffiti” system used in 3Com's PalmPilot devices. The Federal Circuit, which had previously remanded this case on two separate occasions, finds that the district court erred in concluding the term “sloppiness space” is insolubly ambiguous and thereby invalid. The specification, although not considered as providing a rigorously precise description, is deemed nonetheless to provide adequate guidance, “particularly in light of the difficulty in articulating a more exact standard for the concept.”
Insights
Client Alert | 8 min read | 06.30.25
AI Companies Prevail in Path-Breaking Decisions on Fair Use
Last week, artificial intelligence companies won two significant copyright infringement lawsuits brought by copyright holders, marking an important milestone in the development of the law around AI. These decisions – Bartz v. Anthropic and Kadrey v. Meta (decided on June 23 and 25, 2025, respectively), along with a February 2025 decision in Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence – suggest that AI companies have plausible defenses to the intellectual property claims that have dogged them since generative AI technologies became widely available several years ago. Whether AI companies can, in all cases, successfully assert that their use of copyrighted content is “fair” will depend on their circumstances and further development of the law by the courts and Congress.
Client Alert | 3 min read | 06.30.25
Client Alert | 3 min read | 06.26.25
FDA Targets Gene Editing Clinical Trials in China and other “Hostile Countries”
Client Alert | 3 min read | 06.26.25
