Good Faith Duties in Procurements Confirmed
Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 11.13.12
Working around overbroad dicta in a recent decision of the Federal Circuit that DOJ has been trying to exploit, Judge Lettow in J.C.N. Constr., Inc. v. U.S. (Nov. 6, 2012) joined other CFC judges in affirming that the government still has an implied, good faith duty to treat bidders fairly and impartially. To work around the dicta, the CFC judges are saying this duty now emanates from subsection (b) of 28 U.S.C. § 1491, rather than from (a), from where it has traditionally been found to lodge.
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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.
Client Alert | 6 min read | 11.14.25
Microplastics Update: Regulatory and Litigation Developments in 2025
Client Alert | 6 min read | 11.13.25
