Allergan v. Sun – A Glidant Slips Past the Written Description Requirement

The most interesting part of this decision by the Fed. Cir. (No. 24- 1061, Aug. 13, 2024) is that the court was faced with an argument by Sun that Allergan’s claims in U.S. Pat. No.11,311,516 et al. are invalid as failing to meet the WDR of § 112. Sun argued that the claims of certain of Allergan’s patent thicket were invalid because the specifications did not support a pharmaceutical composition containing the drug eluxadoline with a number of inert ingredients that did not include a “glidant.” In other words, Sun argued that there was no support for the absence of a glidant in any of the patent claims, a component Sun was apparently using in its compositions. Continue reading

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The Chisum Patent Academy Makes an Appearance in Cincinnati

When I was in law school, we had but one treatise to use, the weighty “Choate on Patents” (1973). A number of “horn books” have appeared since, including the authoritative “Chisum on Patents” and his wife’s weighty treatise “Mueller on Patent Law.” With the beehive of information sources buzzing around every patent attorney’s head, any one of us would be wise to keep abreast of developments in IP law, even if they do not appear immediately to impact one’s practice.

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Patent Office Releases Role of AI in Inventorship Determinations

In February, the PTO released “Inventorship Guidance for AI-assisted Inventions (89 CFR 10043) and noted that the Office will issue examples to assist in the examination of applications in accord with this Guidance. I recently finished reading and annotating the Guidance and the Examples, that amounts to a short course on inventorship in all its fact-driven glory. The Guidance goes beyond factors involving the determination of inventorship, and tackles the duties of disclosed in Rule 56 and the duty of reasonable inquiry and the requirements for information. The latter can be made by the examiner “or other USPTO employee” (37 CFR s. 1.105). This can include an inquiry into inventorship and the role of AI in making the invention. Remember, the application cannot name an AI inventor, since AI is not a natural person, but the role that AI played in making the claimed invention may well be relevant to the role(s) played by the named inventors, and that role may not meet the “significant contribution” required by the Pannu standard.(Pannu v. Iolab Corp., 155 F.3d 1344 (Fed. Cir.  1998)). Put another way, “[A] new inventor cannot be named if no natural person made a significant contribution to an AI assisted invention” (89 C.F.R. 10048). So AI can “invent”, just not be named as an inventor on any claim when the application is filed.

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Is the Patent Eligibility Act a Panacea for Claims to Diagnostics?

On January 23, the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held a hearing in which the members of the committee heard testimony about the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) introduced by Senators Coons and Tillis. I have considered case law directed to s. 101 of 25 U.S.C. for more than a decade, and was hopeful that PERA could achieve its subtitled goal of “Restoring Clarity, Certainty, and Predictability to the U.S. Patent System”. The eight panelists had submitted comments that preceded the hearing, and the hearing was live streamed. The panelists were a blue ribbon group of patent attorneys who testified before the Senators, and took questions.

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