Lexion Medical, LLC v. Northgate Techs., Inc., No. 04 C 5705, Slip Op. (N.D. Ill. Jun. 8, 2007).*
Judge Rosenbaum (a visiting judge, who is the Chief Judge for the District of Minnesota) denied defendants’ Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b) for relief from the Court’s judgment. The Court held a trial in October 2006 resulting in a jury verdict that defendants’ insufflator (a device that blows a powder, gas or vapor into a body cavity) infringed plaintiff’s patent (you can read more about the case in the Blog’s archives). In their motion, defendants argued that the Supreme Court’s April 2007 obviousness decision, KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., __ U.S. __, 127 S.Ct. 1727 (2007), dramatically changed obviousness law and conflicted with the jury instructions which “nullif[ied] the jury verdict.” Defendants moved the Court to invalidate two claims of the patent in suit or to order a new trial on obviousness. But the Court held that even under the KSR standard, the jury’s verdict was fully supported by evidence at trial. Because a corrected instruction would not have changed the result, the erroneous instruction was harmless.

Continue Reading Pre-KSR Validity Verdict Upheld Under KSR Standard

Leapfrog Enterprises, Inc. v. Fisher-Price, Inc., No. 06-1402, Slip Op. (Fed. Cir. May 9, 2007).
The Federal Circuit issued its first opinion analyzing an obviousness determination based upon the Supreme Court decision in KSR v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. __, 2007 WL 1237837 (2007). The Court affirmed the district court’s holding that the claim was invalid based upon obviousness and explained that obviousness is not determined by “a rigid formula disassociated from the consideration of the facts of a case.” You can download a copy of the Federal Circuit’s decision here.

Continue Reading First Post-KSR Fed. Cir. Obviousness Analysis

KSR v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. __ (2007).

A unanimous Supreme Court rolled back the Federal Circuit’s teaching, suggestion or motivation obviousness test in favor of the Court’s prior, and substantially broader, test as set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co. of Kansas City, 383 U.S. 1 (1966).  Justice Kennedy delivered the Court’s