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SBA’s July 2013 Small Business Subcontracting Revisions Finally Implemented in the FAR

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 07.21.16

On July 14, 2016, DoD, GSA, and NASA published a final rule implementing numerous updates to the FAR to account for regulatory changes affecting the small business subcontracting requirements made by the SBA dating back to July 2013. These changes, which become effective November 1, 2016, range from requiring prime contractors to assign NAICS codes to subcontracts, to providing contracting officers the discretion to establish subcontracting goals at the order level of IDIQ contracts, to protecting subcontractors’ ability to discuss payment or utilization matters with the contracting officer.

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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....