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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 | 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)....