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- Facebook Loses Reexaminations of Pragmatus’ Patents
- How is Reexamination Treating Round Rock Research?
- Reexamination has not Saved Apple against MobileMedia Patents, So Far
- What is an “Involved Application” in IPR Practice?
- Apple Victorious over Affinity Labs of Texas’ Portable Audio Player Patent
- Think IP Strategy Offers 2011 News Almanac
- An Update on Oracle’s Infringement Case against Google
- PTO Requests Public Comment on Proposed Rules for AIA Post-Issuance Proceedings
- Microsoft-i4i, Oracle-Google & VirnetX-Apple-Cisco Updates
- Oracle Patent to Emerge from Reexamination
- VirnetX again Sues for Infringement, and again Faces Reexaminations
- How Strong are Google’s Requests for Reexamination of the Lodsys Patents?
- PTO Board Sides with NVIDIA on Two Rambus “Barth I” Patents
- Oracle ‘520 Moves toward Confirmation in Reexamination
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- Did Google Request Reexamination of Lodsys Patents?
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- Rambus Wins Limited Exclusion Order at ITC against NVIDIA, despite Pending Reexaminations
- 最初が肝心：不備のない再審査請求書を作成するために
- That’s My Patent You’re Reexamining…
- “Why Wait for Oppositions?” by Scott Daniels, 47 IDEA 343 (Law Review of Franklin Pierce Law School)
- The Basics
Noteworthy Links
- "The Interplay between Reexaminations, Preliminary Injunctions and Stays of Litigation" - by Dennis Crouch at PATENTLYO.COM
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Non-Final Rejections in Reexamination Not Admissible in Jury Trial
| August 14, 2009
The CAFC ruled today that non-final reexamination determinations are “of little relevance” to a jury’s consideration of the obviousness issue. Since the risk of the jury being “confused” by such determinations was high, the CAFC affirmed the trial judge’s exclusion of such a determination at trial.
In that case, Callaway had accused Acushnet of infringing a series of patents claiming golf balls. Acushnet replied by filing inter partes reexamination requests with the PTO, asserting that the patents were invalid over certain prior art.
At the time of the trial, the PTO had issued a non-final rejection of the claims as being obvious over the prior art. The accused infringer then asked to introduce the non-final rejection into evidence at trial, but the judge refused to admit it, finding that there would be undue prejudice to the patentee. The accused infringed on the same prior art at trial as in its reexamination requests.
The CAFC’s decision today also reversed the jury’s verdict of nonobviousness because that verdict had been inconsistent – it an independent claim to be non-obvious, but a claim that depended on it to be obvious. The CAFC therefore remanded the case to the trial court for it to conduct a new trial on the obviousness issue to all of the patents.
Interestingly, on July 31, the PTO made its obviousness rejection final in a 368-page Office Action.
