Eighth Circuit Applies Escobar's Materiality Standard
Client Alert | 1 min read | 10.24.16
In U.S. ex rel. Miller v. Weston Educ. Inc. (Oct. 19, 2016), the Eighth Circuit became the first appellate court to apply the materiality standard recently articulated by the Supreme Court in Escobar (discussion of Escobar available here), holding that defendant’s promise to keep accurate grade and attendance records was material in inducing the government to enter into an agreement under the Higher Education Act. The court rejected defendant’s argument that no individual false record caused payment by the government, reasoning instead that the false promise to keep accurate records was material based on the express regulatory conditions of participation, their reasonable importance to payment, and evidence that the government had terminated other institutions that falsified similar records.
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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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