Insights

Washington – June 6, 2024: Crowell & Moring earned 78 rankings for 67 lawyers, as well as 41 national and statewide practice area rankings, in the Chambers USA 2024 guide. The rankings are driven by independent interviews of clients and lawyers at peer firms.

The PTAB ruled last week that the common law doctrine of claim preclusion only applies at the PTAB in one direction, holding that Congress did not intend for an adverse district court judgment to block a party from pursuing a subsequent inter partes review challenge. 

On October 22, 2021, the Court of Federal Claims (Court) unsealed a decision awarding contractor SecurityPoint Holdings, Inc. (SecurityPoint) over $100 million in damages for TSA’s infringement of SecurityPoint’s patent No. 6,888,460 (“the ‘460 patent”). The ‘460 patent concerns a system of trays that recycle through security screening checkpoints by use of movable carts, and was first filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on July 3, 2002 by SecurityPoint CEO Joseph Ambrefe. Ambrefe had offered the TSA a license to use the patent in exchange for the exclusive right to advertise on the trays, but TSA refused the offer.

On Tuesday, May 30, 2017 the Supreme Court continued its trend of overruling the Federal Circuit, issuing a decision on patent exhaustion in Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc.  The doctrine of patent exhaustion, which is rooted in 17th century common law, generally holds that patented items, once sold, should not be subject to post-sale restraints by the patentee.  A single sentence encapsulates the Supreme Court’s decision: “We conclude that a patentee’s decision to sell a product exhausts all of its patent rights in that item, regardless of any restrictions the patentee purports to impose or the location of the sale.”  Slip Op. at 1.  Notably, this conclusion broadens the reach of U.S. patent law by removing the location of the sale from the patent exhaustion equation.  Judge Ginsburg, the lone dissenter, dissented in part on this aspect of the decision, specifically disagreeing that U.S. patent rights were exhausted by foreign sales. 

Courthouses across the country are restarting and rethinking trials amid the coronavirus pandemic. This webinar will address what actions judges and courts are taking to conduct safe trials, including all virtual proceedings. Crowell & Moring’s experienced trial attorneys will discuss both best practices and important considerations to consider as matters navigate through the system. This panel of experts will weigh in on: