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Past Performance Formula For Disaster

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 03.21.06

In United Paradyne Corp. (Mar. 10, 2006, http://www.gao.gov/decisions/bidpro/297758.pdf), GAO sustained a protest of the Air Force's past performance evaluation based on its mechanical application of an irrational, mathematical formula. The Air Force's method, which independently rated the relevancy and quality of each offeror's past performance reference, improperly (1) penalized offerors for identifying less relevant past performance even when additional, relevant references had been submitted; and (2) assigned equal weight to both highly relevant and non-relevant past performance.

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Client Alert | 6 min read | 11.26.25

From ‘Second’ to ‘First:’ Federal Circuit Tackles Obvious Claim Errors

Patent claims must be clear and definite, as they set the boundaries of the patentee’s rights. Occasionally, however, claim language contains errors, such as typographical mistakes or incorrect numbering. Courts possess very limited authority to correct such errors. The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has emphasized that judicial correction is appropriate only in rare circumstances, where (1) the error is evident from the face of the patent, and (2) the proposed correction is the sole reasonable interpretation in view of the claim language, specification, and prosecution history. See Group One, Ltd. v. Hallmark Cards, Inc., 407 F.3d 1297, 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005) and Novo Indus., L.P. v. Micro Molds Corp., 350 F.3d 1348, 1357 (Fed. Cir. 2003)....