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TAA Thresholds: Downward Trend Continues for 2018-2019

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 12.13.17

On December 11, 2017, the U.S. Trade Representative published its biennial readjustment of U.S. dollar thresholds for government procurements covered by the Trade Agreements Act. The new thresholds, which go into effect January 1, 2018 for calendar years 2018 and 2019, reflect a continued decline in threshold values since the 2014-2015 revision, coinciding with the stronger value of the U.S. dollar relative to the other currencies included in market basket of currencies constituting the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) used to establish the thresholds contained in the WTO’s Agreement on Government Procurement.

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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....