Fresh From the Bench: Latest Federal Circuit Court Cases

CASES OF THE WEEK

Intel Corp. v. Qualcomm Inc., Appeal Nos. 2020-1828, -1867 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 28, 2021)‎

The Federal Circuit issued two precedential decisions this week—both arising from IPRs filed by Intel against patents owned by Qualcomm. In our Case of the Week, we focus on the first of those cases. In our Also This Week section below, we cover the second case.

In the first case, the Court again addressed issues of Constitutional standing to appeal an adverse PTAB opinion—an issue we have looked at several times recently. See our write-up of the recent decision in ModernaTx, Inc. v. Arbutus Biopharma Corp. here, and the decision in University of South Florida Research Foundation, Inc. v. FujiFilm Medical Systems U.S.A., Inc. here. The Court also considered issues of claim construction, concluding that the PTAB failed to tie its construction of the phrase “hardware buffer” to the actual invention described in the specification. The Court also provided important guidance to the PTAB of how to resolve claims that are alleged to be indefinite—an area that has never been fully resolved by the Court. See our write-up of a prior decision by the Court addressing that issue here.