Federal Circuit Announces Heightened Materiality Standard for Inequitable Conduct Claims
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.
