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The Top FCA Developments Of 2018

Client Alert | 1 min read | 02.04.19

From the government’s renewed use of its dismissal authority to changes to the policy on corporate cooperation credit, the second year of False Claims Act (FCA) enforcement under the Trump administration was defined by several announcements concerning how the Department of Justice (DOJ) will pursue cases under the FCA. These policy reforms are among the many FCA developments highlighted by C&M attorneys in a "Feature Comment" published in The Government Contractor, which considers key issues such as small business fraud, materiality post-Escobar, trade and domestic preferences, and the Supreme Court’s review of a circuit split concerning the statute of limitations.

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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....