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No Warranty Without Express Language

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 02.24.10

Addressing the issue of warranties again within a week and once again reversing the Court of Federal Claims, the Federal Circuit in Precision Pine & Timber, Inc. v. U.S. (Feb. 19, 2010) found no warranty implicit in a contractual clause that allowed the Forest Service to suspend performance due to Endangered Species Act concerns. With respect to the one contract that lacked a suspension of work clause, however, the Forest Service breached because it lacked contractual authority to do so, even though it stopped performance in response to a district court injunction.

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Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.20.25

Design Patent Application Drawings & Prosecution History Must Be Clear (Merely Translucent Won’t Suffice!)

Design patents offer protection for the ornamental appearance of a product, focusing on aspects like its shape and surface decoration, as opposed to the functional aspects protected by utility patents. The scope of a design patent is defined by the drawings and any descriptive language within the patent itself. Recent decisions by the Federal Circuit emphasize the need for clarity in the prosecution history of a design patent in order to preserve desired scope to preserve intentional narrowing (and to avoid unintentional sacrifice of desired claim scope)....