Government Contracts at the High Court
Client Alert | 1 min read | 03.24.11
On February 28, 2011, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Stanford Junior Univ. v. Roche Molecular Sys., Inc., on the issue of whether a federal contractor's rights to an invention under the Bayh-Dole Act, 35 U.S.C. §§ 200-12, are trumped by a contractor-employee inventor's prior assignment to a third party of title to the same invention. As discussed in the March 14, 2011, BNA's Federal Contracts Report article "High Noon for Bayh-Dole?" by C&M's John McCarthy and Jon Baker, if upheld, contractors performing federally funded R&D work will need to be diligent to ensure that the assignments they receive from their employee-inventors do not take a back seat to any assignment agreements between their employee-inventors and third parties.
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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
