Fresh From the Bench: Latest Federal Circuit Court Case

CASE OF THE WEEK

Atlanta Gas Light Company v. Bennett Regulator Guards Inc., Appeal No. 2021-1759 (Fed. Cir. May 13, 2022)

In this week’s Case of the Week, the Federal Circuit Court addressed the third appeal from an underlying inter partes review proceeding in the wake of a recent Supreme Court decision holding time-bar determinations as unreviewable. The Court dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

The patent related to an “anti-icing device for a gas pressure regulator.” Bennett initially sued Atlanta Gas for infringement in 2012. After the 2012 lawsuit was dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction, Atlanta Gas filed an IPR petition requesting review of the ’029 Patent, which was subsequently terminated due to Atlanta Gas’s failure to list its parent company.

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By Annie White

ALSO THIS WEEK...

Intuitive Surgical, Inc. v. Ethicon LLC, Appeal No. 2020-1481 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 11, 2022)‎

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dealt with claim construction issues in a case concerning assertions of inconclusive claim and specification language. To determine the scope of the patent, the Federal Circuit turned to arguments Sound View made during prosecution. The Federal Circuit ultimately vacated and remanded the case due to the District Court’s failure to adequately construct “buffer” in the claim limitation language. The Court also affirmed the District Court’s exclusion of Sound View’s expert testimony regarding reasonable royalties. Sound View tried twice to introduce expert testimony regarding how valuable the patented invention was, and what a reasonable royalty should therefore be. Sound View’s first damages opinion failed for relevance reasons; the expert failed to account for the “substantial differences between the circumstances” of a study evaluating the benefits of “adaptive streaming” to wireless devices in high-speed vehicles, and the expert’s claims regarding the benefits of adaptive streaming to “stationary viewers, on desktop computers or televisions, via WiFi or wired connections[.]” The expert’s second damages opinion failed for reliability reasons; the opinion was based on a press release describing a report authored by a third party, where the expert did not see the report, and the press release did not adequately characterize the underlying study.

The opinion can be found here.

By Tyler Hall

Written by: Nika Aldrich and Scott Eads, Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt

Contributors Annie White,  Tyler Hall