In Ex parte Desjardins ¹⁾, the USPTO’s Appeals Review Panel (ARP) reversed a PTAB panel’s new § 101 rejection of claims directed to methods for training machine learning models to avoid catastrophic forgetting. While the panel accepted that the claims recite some abstract mathematical concepts, it held that, viewed as a whole, they integrate those concepts into a “practical application” — specifically, improving how machine learning models are trained to sequentially learn multiple tasks while preserving prior knowledge, reducing storage requirements, and lowering system complexity. The ARP emphasized that innovations improving the functioning of the machine learning model itself can be patent-eligible under Enfish and related cases, and cautioned against categorically dismissing AI advancements as mere “algorithms.”

• Summary and analysis

On March 10, 2025, the Federal Circuit, in Sierra Wireless v. Sisvel,²⁾ clarified how claims with alternative conditions must be construed. The Board had treated alternative method claim limitations as mutually exclusive and therefore satisfied if the prior art disclosed either one. The Federal Circuit rejected that reasoning, holding instead that where a claim recites multiple steps in the conjunctive, a method must perform both steps when their respective conditions arise. The court emphasized that conditional or alternative outcomes do not relieve the claim of requiring each recited step; they operate together when their triggering conditions apply. This opinion effectively supersedes the PTAB's precedential ruling in Ex Parte Schulhauser.

The opinion also reinforces procedural rigor at the PTAB: expert testimony on anticipation and obviousness must come from at least a person of ordinary skill in the art as defined by the Board. Because the Board credited testimony from a declarant who lacked the required qualifications without making a specific finding that his experience sufficed, the Federal Circuit vacated the decision for abuse of discretion.

Click here for court holdings:

• Summary and analysis
• Oral arguments: AICT

On September 2, 2025, the Patent Office Professional Association, representing nearly 9,000 patent examiners, along with the National Weather Service Employees Organization, sued the Trump administration for declaratory and injunctive relief in opposition to the President's August 28th executive order stripping the National Weather Service, the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, and the U.S. Patent and trademark Office employees of their collective bargaining rights under the Federal Service Labor Management Relations Statute. The Complaint seeks to overturn multiple Executive Orders as unlawful and ultra vires, restore collective bargaining rights and agreements, and stop the administration from retaliating against them for exercising their First Amendment rights to petition and advocate on behalf of their members.

• POPA's press release
• Summary and analysis

In Global Health Solutions LLC v. Selner, the CAFC issued its first precedential opinion on derivation proceedings under the America Invents Act, clarifying their distinct role in the first-to-file regime. The court emphasized that AIA derivation is not a replay of pre-AIA interferences; rather, the inquiry centers on whether the first-filer’s conception was independent or derived from another. The panel also confirmed that an inventor may prove conception without actual reduction to practice, provided the invention is defined with sufficient clarity.

Click here for holdings:

• Analysis
• Oral Argument: AICT

In PowerBlock Holdings, Inc. v. iFit Inc., the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal of PowerBlock’s claims under § 101, holding that claims directed to selectorized dumbbells with motorized weight selection were not abstract ideas. The court emphasized that claim 1 recited a specific mechanical configuration—nested weight plates, a movable selector, and an electric motor physically coupled to move the selector—that constituted a “technological improvement” rather than a result-oriented abstraction. Unlike prior cases involving “do it on a computer” patents, the claims here were directed to a concrete machine with defined structural limitations. The court also rejected iFit’s argument that conventional dumbbell components should be ignored, clarifying that § 101 does not allow old elements to be read out of the eligibility inquiry. Because the claims as a whole recited a specific implementation of a mechanical improvement, they were patent-eligible at Alice step one.

Court holdings

• Summary
• Summary and takeaways
• Summary
• Oral Arguments: AICT

The Patent Office released an internal memo reminding examiners that “a claim does not recite a mental process when it contains limitation(s) that cannot practically be performed in the human mind, for instance when the human mind is not equipped to perform the claim limitation(s)” and further ”[c]laim limitations that encompass AI in a way that cannot be practically performed in the human mind do not fall within [the mental process] grouping.” With respect to Step 2A prong 2, the memo reminds examiners that “Step 2A Prong Two considers claims as a whole” (emphasis in original).

• Summary and analysis, takeaways
• Decoding the memo
• Analysis

In Mondis Technology Ltd. v. LG Electronics Inc., the Federal Circuit reversed a jury verdict upholding the validity of U.S. Patent No. 7,475,180, finding claims 14 and 15 invalid for lack of written description. The court emphasized that when the face of a patent shows the claimed limitation is unsupported—as confirmed by the patentee’s own expert—no reasonable jury could find otherwise, even without contrary expert testimony from the challenger. It also rejected arguments that the presumption of validity allows a patentee to rest without evidence in such a posture, and held that an examiner’s allowance of an amendment does not itself supply substantial evidence of § 112 compliance. The case serves as a caution that unsupported claim amendments and trial omissions can be fatal, regardless of jury findings.

Court Holdings:

• Summary
• Oral arguments: AICT

In Colibri Heart Valve LLC v. Medtronic Corevalve LLC, the CAFC (echoing an earlier decision involving Medtronic, Cross Medical) reversed a jury verdict and the trial judge's holding that Colibri's reliance on the doctrine of equivalents was improper under the Supreme Court's Festo decision. During prosecution of the '294 patent, the applicant withdrew a claim a claim directed to retracting an outer sheath due to a § 112 written description rejection, even though the Examiner did not reject a similar claim directed to pushing out the valve from the outer sheath. Cancellation of the claim directed to retracting the sheath triggers Festo, and therefore barred Colibri from asserting DoE.

• Summary (cross-post)
• Oral arguments: AICT

In Agilent Tech. v. Synthego Corp. the Federal Circuit, in a precedential opinion, upheld an IPR ruling that a contested prior art reference was enabling, and therefore valid prior art.

Stated the court (internal citations omitted):

• Summary with takeaways (“Prior art enablement arguments have rarely succeeded . . .”).
• Summary and practice note.
• Detailed summary
• Oral arguments: AICT

In POSCO Co. Ltd., v Arcelormittal, the Acting Director noted that “[t]he fact that the Board previously determined related claims to be unpatentable—prior to the issuance of the cchallenged cliams in this proceeding—tips the balance against discretionary denial.”

• Summary and analysis (cross-post)

In Eye Therapies, LLC v. Slayback Pharma, LLC, the Fec. Cir., in a precedential opinion, reversed the PTAB's construction of “consisting essentially of,” on the basis of prosecution history estoppel in which the applicant had argued the phrase excludes a combination with an unclaimed eomponent.

Read more:

• Analysis
• Summary
• Summary
• Summary and takeaways
• Oral arguments: AICT

In In re: Xencor, Inc., the Fed. Cir., in a precedential opinion, upheld the Appeals Review Panel's ruling that § 112 requires that the specification provide support for the admitted prior art preamble to a Jepson claim as well as the novel subject matter recited after the transitional phrase (e.g., “wherein the improvement comprises”).

• Analysis
• Summary (cross-post)
• Oral Arguments: AICT

In Ecofactor, Inc. v. Google LLC., J. Moore, writing for a majority of the en banc court, found that the expert witness testimony of David Kennedy to be unreliable and therefore inadmissible. Stated the court:

Judges Reyna and Stark dissented in part, arguing:

This criticism is answered in footnote 6 of the majority opinion, which sates, “The three licenses Mr. Kennedy interpreted are in fact contracts. The question presented focused on whether Mr. Kennedy's expert opinion about the interpretation of the licenses satisfies rule 702 and Daubert. Interpretation of the licenses is fairly included within the question presented.”

Read more

Blogs:

• Summary of en banc and dissenting opinions
• Nice summary
• Summary and takeaway
• Summary of arguments
• Oral arguments: AICT

An increasing volume among patent professionals and USPTO watchers are sounding the alarm that the dismantling of the U.S. government has reached the Patent Office, with big changes occurring now and potentially bigger changes in the near future:

• Hiring freezes
• Backlog increases
• Low morale among examiners
• Leadership exodus

President Trump's pick to become the next Director of the USPTO, John Squires, wants to improve efficiency and produce “born strong” patents. At his Senate confirmation hearing on May 21, 2025, Squires stated:

• Discussion of hiring freeze and likely impact on backlogs
• Summary of changes, practice tips
• Review of Squires' Senate Hearing
• DOGE threatens . . . U.S. Trademark System
• Thoughts on DOGE by Randall Rader ("a real way forward")
• Bio of John Squires

The USPTO implemented significant new and increased fees. Widespread fee increases of 5% or around 5% are included plus targeted fee adjustments in excess thereof.

• Fee Setting and Adjusting portal
• Final Rule

In Recentive Analytics, Inc. v. Fox Corp. the Federal Circuit held that claims that do no more than apply established methods of machine learning to a new data environment are not patent eligible.

Read more

• Analysis and discussion
• Summary
• Oral arguments

The USPTO announced that, effective May 13, 2025, patents will grant in two weeks from the date of Issue Notification, down from a current processing time of an average of about three weeks.

In In re Riggs, the Federal Circuit vacated PTAB's assertion that a previously filed patent application qualifies as prior art based on the earlier filing of a provisional application. Stated the court: “to claim priority to the provisional filing date, the portion of the application relied on by the examiner as prior art must be supported by the provisional application.”

• Summary (cross-post )
• Summary and analysis (cross-post)

Kyle W. Kellar of Womble Bond Dickinson surveyed recent PTAB decisions post the rescission of Vidal's “Interim Guidelines” memorandum by the PTO regarding discretionary denials of IPR petitions. “In short, recission of the Interim Guidelines has had no impact, yet” according to Kellar.

Read more

Blogs:

• Survey (Cross-post)

In C. R. Bard Inc. v. Atrium Medical Corp.,³⁾ the 9th Circuit found that a provision of a patent license, which requires a $3.75M minimum royalty payment until expiry of the last licensed patent, was not a violation of the Brulotte Rule. The Brulotte rule originates in the Supreme Court ruling Brulotte v. Thys Co., 379 U.S. 29 (1964), and held that patent holders may not contract for royalties on any use of a patented invention that occurs after the patent has expired.

Read more

• Summary and implications

In Fujifilm Corp. v. Kodak GmbH, before the Düsseldorf Local Division of the UPC, the court held that it has jurisdiction to render infringement and enforcement decisions implicating the UK, which is not a UPC or EU member state, because:

• “Pursuant to Art. 4(1) Brussels Ibis Regulation, persons domiciled in a Member State [as Kodak is], whatever their nationality, shall be sued in the courts of that Member State. All the Defendants are domiciled in Germany.”
• “[I]n relation to claims against defendants domiciled in a Member State, all the bases for jurisdiction contained in Brussels Ibis Regulation also apply to the UPC and the same is true for the applicable case law of the ECJ. [. . .] Under the Brussels Ibis Regulation, the transferring Contracting Member State does indeed have jurisdiction over third state patent infringement actions in accordance with the case law of the ECJ. . . . The jurisdiction of the UPC is therefore not more limited than that of a national patent infringement court, as not all EU Member States have become Members of the UPCA.”

• Summary and strategic considerations (Cross-post) (“[T]his decision provides an opportunity to bring all infringement claims before a single court and obtain a comprehensive relief in a single forum, whether or not the claims in question relate to UPC or non-UPC contracting member states.”)

In Novartis Pharma. v. Torrent Pharma, the Fed. Cir. reversed the District of Delaware court's finding that the patent at issue failed to meet the written description requirement because it fails to describe the accused product which, while within the scope of the claims, includes improvements not mentioned in the patent. The court reasoned that, “A specification adequately describes an invention when it reasonably conveys . . . that the inventor had possession of the claimed subject matter as of the filing date.” The Fed. Cir. also uphold the lower court's finding that the claims were enabled because “enablement is judged as of the priority date.”

• Summary and practice tips (Cross-post)

In Omni Medsci, Inc. v. Apple Inc. (Aug. 2, 2021), the Federal Circuit held that an employment agreement stating “Patents . . . acquired as a result of or in connection with . . . research, or other educational activities conducted by members of the University staff . . . shall be the property of the University.” The majority opinion (with J. Newman dissenting) concluded that the language “is most naturally read as a statement of intended disposition and promise of a potential future assignment, not as a present automatic transfer.

Read more

* Summary and analysis

In Lighting Defense Group LLC v. Shanghai Sensi Electronic Engineering Co. Ltd. et al. ⁴⁾, the failure of a licensed third party to mark products as patented triggered 35 U.S.C. § 287. LDG licensed its patent in May of 2020 and argued that opposing party SANSI was liable for infringement prior to that date, i.e., prior any legal requirement to mark. Based on the plain meaning of the statute, the court disagreed.

Read more

• Summary

Additional blurbs are accessible in categorized lists by accessing the Index link on the left (or, for small-format screens, below).