1. Home
  2. |Insights
  3. |No Recovery Under EAJA for Employee’s Costs Working on an Appeal

No Recovery Under EAJA for Employee’s Costs Working on an Appeal

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 02.28.20

In GSI & Whitesell-Green JV (Jan. 30, 2020), the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals denied a contractor’s request for Equal Access to Justice Act fees that reflected its employees’ costs of supporting the entitlement appeal.  The Board rejected the contractor’s argument that its employees’ costs were similar to attorney’s fees finding support in Fanning Phillips, Molnar v. West, 160 F.3d 717 (Fed. Cir. 1998), which held that EAJA did not cover costs related to a contractor employees’ “personal absence from a business” or “other expenses” or “time spent [as] an ‘expert witness.’”

Insights

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....