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Federal Circuit Panel Once Again Splits on Claim Construction

Client Alert | 1 min read | 04.24.07

In Acumed LLC v. Stryker Corp. (No. 2006-1260, April 12, 2007), a Federal Circuit panel offers a split decision regarding the proper construction of a single term in the claims. According to the dissent, the district court used a dictionary as the starting point when defining each disputed term. Therefore, the dissent argues that the district court’s method actually led them astray from a proper claim construction. The majority counters by simply noting that a proper de novo review prohibits the court from considering the logic or definitions used by the lower court to reach the correct construction. Rather, the majority explains, “[w]e review only the district court’s finished product, not its process” and the unorthodox methods used by the district court during the Markman hearing are legally irrelevant.

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Client Alert | 4 min read | 10.30.26

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right: GAO Sustains Protest Where Agency Tried to Fix PIA Violation with a Second PIA Violation

Recent sustain decisions by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in Fluor Federal Solutions, LLC and Reliance Test & Technology send a clear message: when an agency tries to fix a Procurement Integrity Act (PIA) violation by committing a second one, the cure can be just as fatal as the disease. The cases involved the U.S. Air Force’s $1.8 billion procurement for O&M services at Elgin Air Force Base. During discussions, the Air Force inadvertently released a pricing overview slide with all offerors’ bottom-line evaluated costs to Reliance Test & Technology, which immediately notified the agency of the error. In response, the Air Force decided to level the playing field by providing the same information to all the other offerors in the procurement, stating, “[o]fferors may consider this disclosure in their [final proposal revision].”...