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Private Party MEO Teammate Allowed Intervention To Protect Proprietary Information

Client Alert | 1 min read | 12.14.06

In the protest of a contract award to the Government's Most Efficient Organization (MEO) in an A-76 public/private procurement, the COFC granted MEO private team member Lockheed Martin Services, Inc.'s motion to intervene as a matter of right for the limited purpose of protecting its trade secrets and proprietary data (Northrop Grumman Information Technology, Inc. v. United States). The MEO did not have legal representation separate from the awarding agency, and the COFC concluded that Lockheed's interests were not adequately represented by agency counsel in the context of an A-76 procurement in which agency counsel must "wear multiple hats at the same time" and where agency counsel admitted that the "most comfortable" hat is representing the Source Selection Authority.

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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....