{"id":1489,"date":"2017-03-16T21:39:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T01:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1489"},"modified":"2017-03-25T22:48:37","modified_gmt":"2017-03-26T02:48:37","slug":"1489","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1489","title":{"rendered":"Among Other Things, the Federal Circuit Affirms Viability of Assignor Estoppel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In\u00a0<em>Mentor Graphics Corporation v. EVE-USA, Inc.<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cafc.uscourts.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/opinions-orders\/15-1470.Opinion.3-14-2017.1.PDF\">[2015-1470, 2015-1554, 2015-1556]<\/a> (March 16, 2016), the Federal Circuit:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>affirmed the jury verdict of infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 6,240,376, the denial of JMOL, and the award of $36,000,000 in damages, and that that assignor estoppel bars Synopsys\u00a0from challenging the validity of the patent.<\/li>\n<li>reversed summary judgment that U.S. Patent No.<br \/>\n6,132,109\u00a0is indefinite.<\/li>\n<li>affirmed summary judgment that U.S. Patent No.\u00a07,069,526 lacks patent-eligible subject matter.<\/li>\n<li>vacated the motion in limine precluding Mentor from<br \/>\npresenting evidence of willful infringement.<\/li>\n<li>reversed\u00a0summary judgment that U.S. Patent No. 6,947,882 lacks<br \/>\nwritten description.<\/li>\n<li>reverse\u00a0summary judgment that Mentor\u2019s infringement allegations<br \/>\nregarding U.S. Patent Nos. 6,009,531 and 5,649,176 are barred by<br \/>\nclaim preclusion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Regarding Assignor Estoppel, the Federal Circuit rejected\u00a0Synopsys argument that the Supreme Court abolished the\u00a0doctrinal underpinnings of assignor\u00a0estoppel in <em>Lear, Inc. v. Adkins<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Regarding the Damage Award, the Federal Circuit noted that the facts of this case are remarkably simple for a patent\u00a0damages appeal and Synopsys does not dispute any\u00a0of them.<\/p>\n<p>The jury found,\u00a0and Synopsys does not dispute on appeal, that Mentor<br \/>\nsatisfied all of the Panduit factors with regard to the sales\u00a0to Intel for which the jury awarded lost profits:<br \/>\n(1) there was a demand by Intel for the patented product;\u00a0(2) there were no non-infringing alternative emulator systems acceptable to Intel;\u00a0(3) Mentor had the manufacturing and marketing capability\u00a0to satisfy Intel\u2019s demand; and,\u00a0(4) Mentor established the amount of profit it would<br \/>\nhave made if Synopsys had not infringed. \u00a0Synopsys argued that the lost profits shuold be apportioned to cover only the patentee\u2019s inventive contribution. \u00a0The Federal Circuit agreed with Synopsys that apportionment is an important\u00a0component of damages law generally, and we\u00a0believe it is necessary in both reasonable royalty and lost<br \/>\nprofits analysis. \u00a0However, the Federal Circuit said that Panduit\u2019s requirement that patentees prove\u00a0demand for the product as a whole and the absence of\u00a0non-infringing alternatives ties lost profit damages to\u00a0specific claim limitations and ensures that damages are commensurate with the value of the patented features.<\/p>\n<p>Regarding indefiniteness, the Federal Circuit said that \u201ca method for displaying the\u00a0results of synthesized circuit analysis visually <strong><em>near<\/em><\/strong> the<br \/>\nHDL source specification that generated the circuit\u201d was not indefinite.The Federal Circuit held that the term \u201cnear\u201d informs a person of ordinary\u00a0skill in the art about the scope of the invention with<br \/>\nreasonable certainty, noting that a skilled artisan would understand \u201cnear\u201d\u00a0requires the HDL code and its corresponding circuit\u00a0analysis to be displayed in a manner that physically\u00a0associates the two.<\/p>\n<p>Regarding patentable subject matter, the Federal Circuit held that claims\u00a0containing\u00a0\u201cmachine-readable medium\u201d\u00a0renders the claimed<br \/>\nsubject matter invalid under 35 U.S.C. \u00a7 101. \u00a0The specification defined machine-readable medium as including carrier waves, found to be unpatentable in\u00a0In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346 (Fed. Cir. 2007).<\/p>\n<p>With respect to willful infringement, the Federal Circuit found the district court erred in barring evidence of willful infringement. \u00a0Specificaly, the Federal Circuit rejected a rigid rule that post-filing willful infringement cannot be presented unless the party moves for a preliminary injunction.<\/p>\n<p>With respect to written description, the Federal Circuit found that there was adequate written description. \u00a0The Federal Circuit found that the very language of claim 1 which\u00a0the court held was not supported by the specification was\u00a0present in the originally-filed claims. Original claims are\u00a0part of the original specification and in many cases will\u00a0satisfy the written description requirement.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, with respect to claim preclusion,\u00a0the Federal Circuit said that claim preclusion does\u00a0not bar later infringement allegations with respect to\u00a0accused products that were not in existence at the time of\u00a0the previous actions for the simple reason that claim\u00a0preclusion requires that in order for a particular claim to\u00a0be barred, it is necessary that the claim either was asserted,\u00a0or could have been asserted, in the prior action.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In\u00a0Mentor Graphics Corporation v. EVE-USA, Inc., [2015-1470, 2015-1554, 2015-1556] (March 16, 2016), the Federal Circuit: affirmed the jury verdict of infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 6,240,376, the denial of JMOL, and the award of $36,000,000 in damages, and that that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1489\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,48,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-15","category-damages","category-indefiniteness"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1489"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1492,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions\/1492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}