On June 23, 2011, the House of Representatives passed a patent reform bill, titled the America Invents Act, that is very similar to the version passed by the Senate (S. 23). The two bills will now go to a Congressional committee to resolve the differences between the two bills. You can read more about the reform legislation and its status in the recent e-alert (found here) authored by our colleagues, Doug Salyers, Jim Bollinger and Ryan Schneider.
Two recent decisions out of the Norfolk Division of the U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia highlight the Court’s increasing skepticism towards plaintiffs’ choice of Virginia as a forum for patent infringement claims that otherwise have no real connection with Virginia. In Adiscov, LLC v. Autonomy Corp., PLC, Civil Action No. 2:11cv201, Judge Rebecca Beach Smith granted a motion to transfer venue to the Northern District of California, finding that “though the district is the plaintiff’s home venue, the Eastern District as a forum has very little connection to the cause of action.” The Court focused on the fact that Adiscov is a non-practicing entity and that the center of the alleged infringing activity is San Francisco in concluding that “the plaintiff’s choice of forum does not warrant a strong presumption and instead counsels that transfer may well be proper.” Judge Smith’s Opinion can be found here.
Continue Reading...Our colleagues, Dan Ladow, Jeff Morgan, Trenton Ward and Dustin Weeks have authored a Troutman Sanders Advisory discussing the Federal Circuit’s new, heightened standard for materiality for inequitable conduct claims announced last week in Therasense, Inc. v. Becton Dickson and Company. In Therasense, the en banc Federal Circuit held that when an applicant for a patent fails to disclose prior art to the PTO, such prior art will be material for purposes of inequitable conduct only if the PTO would not have allowed one of the claims in the application if it had been aware of the undisclosed prior art. The full advisory, which analyzes the decision and how it might limit future claims of inequitable conduct, can be found here.
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