{"id":1877,"date":"2017-12-26T17:17:42","date_gmt":"2017-12-26T22:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1877"},"modified":"2017-12-26T17:17:42","modified_gmt":"2017-12-26T22:17:42","slug":"if-you-try-to-hide-prosecution-conduct-then-the-court-will-presume-you-had-something-to-hide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1877","title":{"rendered":"If You Try to Hide Prosecution Conduct, Then the Court will Presume You Had Something to Hide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cafc.uscourts.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/opinions-orders\/16-1346.Order.12-21-2017.1.PDF\">Regeneron Pharmaceuticals v, Merus N.V.<\/a>, [16-1346] the Federal Circuit denied rehearing and rehearing en banc of the July panel decision previously discussed <a href=\"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1668\">here<\/a>, that litigation misconduct warranted a finding of inequitable conduct in patent prosecution.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Newman, who is usually spot-on in her analysis, again dissented, voicing her concern that\u00a0inequitable conduct in patent prosecution can be retrospectively\u00a0imposed by \u201cadverse inference\u201d arising from\u00a0later misconduct in litigation, without a showing of deceptive intent, which she called &#8220;a disservice to the patent practitioner, the\u00a0patentee, and the public.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>While it would be disturbing if the subsequent unrelated conduct of a litigator could retroactively change the nature of the conduct of the patent prosecutors, this is not the case in <em>Regeneron<\/em>.\u00a0 The litigation conduct complained of related to resisting disclosures about the alleged inequitable conduct.\u00a0 If a party is not forthcoming about accused conduct, it seems reasonable to assume that there was something wrong with that conduct.<\/p>\n<p>If\u00a0<em>Regeneron<\/em> is used to transmute litigation misconduct into prosecution misconduct, then Judge Newman is right this is a disservice to patentee and their prosecutors.\u00a0 However, if\u00a0<em>Regeneron <\/em>simply means that if you try to hide prosecution conduct, then the courts will presume you had something to hide, the rule should not be a threat to patent owners and their counsel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Regeneron Pharmaceuticals v, Merus N.V., [16-1346] the Federal Circuit denied rehearing and rehearing en banc of the July panel decision previously discussed here, that litigation misconduct warranted a finding of inequitable conduct in patent prosecution. Judge Newman, who is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1877\">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":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inequitable-conduct"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877","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=1877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1878,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877\/revisions\/1878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}