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Mandatory Disclosure And Cooperation To Be Proposed For Commercial Item And Overseas Contractors

Client Alert | 1 min read | 04.16.08

In a hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on April 15, 2008, the Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy indicated that he is inclined to issue a new proposed rule that would subject commercial item contracts and contracts performed overseas to mandatory disclosure to the agency inspector general when the contractor "has reasonable grounds to believe that a principal, employee, agency, or subcontractor of the [c]ontractor has committed a violation of Federal criminal law in connection with the award or performance of [a] contract or any subcontract thereunder." Such proposed rule would also modify a November 14, 2007 proposal, discussed in the linked article by C&M's Angela Styles, to mandate "[f]ull cooperation with Government agencies responsible for audit, investigation, or corrective action" for commercial item and overseas contracts.

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Client Alert | 2 min read | 11.14.25

Defining Claim Terms by Implication: Lexicography Lessons from Aortic Innovations LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corporation

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....