Federal Circuit Clarifies Implied Duty of Good Faith and Fair Dealing
Client Alert | 1 min read | 02.19.14
In an important decision clarifying the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing, the Federal Circuit in Metcalf Constr. Co. v. United States (Feb. 11, 2014) held that specifically targeted conduct is not required to prove a breach and rejected the government's assertion that violation of an express provision of the contract is a prerequisite to liability, while observing that the scope of the duty depends on the context of the particular contract and its "contemplated value." The court also vacated the judgment for the government on the ground that the contractor was not to bear the risk of error in the government's affirmative representations made in pre-bid documents.
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Client Alert | 2 min read | 11.14.25
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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