Fourth Circuit Weighs in on Public Disclosure Bar and Retroactivity
Client Alert | 1 min read | 12.13.13
The Fourth Circuit in U.S. ex rel. Radcliffe v. Purdue Pharma.(Dec. 12, 2013) became the first court of appeals to address whether the FCA's public disclosure bar is still jurisdictional after its 2010 amendment by the Affordable Care Act (a topic about which Crowell & Moring attorneys wrote articles in March and September) and held that it is not, reasoning that the word jurisdiction was excised from the statute and that the government was newly empowered to veto application of the bar. This decision came in the context of a broader analysis in which the court clarified that the date of the allegedly fraudulent conduct, not the date that the complaint was filed, governs potential retroactive effect.
Insights
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.
Client Alert | 6 min read | 11.14.25
Microplastics Update: Regulatory and Litigation Developments in 2025
Client Alert | 6 min read | 11.13.25
