Please join us on Monday, August 8, 2022 at 12:00 pm, where we will discuss the following:

Novartis Pharm. Corp. v. Accord Healthcare, Inc., 38 F.4th 1013 (Fed. Cir. 2022) (rehearing decision here) – Novartis prevailed in the 5th Circuit on the validity of its claims under the Written Description Requirement based on a negative claim limitation that was nowhere in the specification.  The Court relied on expert witnesses and several ambiguous passages in the specification to find written description, but the dissent warns that contrary to the reasoning, “silence is not disclosure.”  Moreover, the limitation was added in the parent application to overcome the prior art, and then emphasized in the patent at issue for the same reason.

In Beatriz Ball v. Barbagallo Company, No. 21-30029 (5th Cir. 2022), July 12, 2022, (here), Plaintiff’s unregistered trade dress was given life based on the 5th Circuit’s opinion that the District Court failed to properly examine the factors determining secondary meaning.  An issue of standing in a parallel copyright claim was also addressed in Plaintiff’s favor.

Guy Cumberbatch, of counsel to SoCalIP, will lead the discussion.