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Enough Is Enough! Supreme Court Puts an End to 18-Year FCA Litigation

Client Alert | 1 min read | 01.17.17

More than 18 years since the original qui tam complaint was filed, one of the longest-running FCA cases in history, U.S. ex rel. Purcell v. MWI Corp., came to an end in favor of defendant MWI, represented by C&M, when the Supreme Court on January 9, 2017, denied the relator’s petition for certiorari. The Supreme Court’s order caps MWI’s success on appeal, with the D.C. Circuit overturning a jury verdict against MWI on the grounds that the FCA’s scienter/knowledge element cannot be established when a defendant reasonably interprets an ambiguous regulation.

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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)....