Ninth Circuit Allows Individuals to Use Devices to Decrypt Satellite Television Signals By Nick Bramble — Edited by Wen Bu DirecTV, Inc. v. Huynh Ninth Circuit, No. 05-16361, September 11, 2007 Slip Opinion Faced with the question of how to resolve a provision of the Federal Communications Act banning the assembly and modification of devices primarily designed for the unauthorized decryption of satellite signals, the Ninth Circuit held on September 11 that this provision applies only to “assemblers, manufacturers, and ... Read More...

European Court of First Instance rejects Microsoft challenge to European Commission decision Edited by Johnathan Jenkins Judgment T-201/04 Full opinion European Court of First Instance summary and press release On September 17, the European Court of First Instance rejected Microsoft’s challenge to the European Commission’s 2004 determination that Microsoft “abused a dominant market position” by: refusing to supply competitors with proprietary “interoperability information” necessary to develop products that would compete with Microsoft workgroup server products, and bundling Windows Media Player ... Read More...

Stronger 1st Amendment Review of Expansions in Copyright Protection? By Nick Bramble On September 5, the 10th Circuit handed down its opinion in Golan v. Gonzales, No. 05-1259 (10th Cir. Sept. 4, 2007). The court held that the implementation of the Berne Convention on Copyrights (the Uruguay Round Agreements Act § 514) may violate the 1st Amendment by removing some materials–books, films, and songs, mostly–from the public domain and placing them under copyright protection. Generally, the court’s ruling would expand ... Read More...

Federal Circuit Narrows Willful Infringement Standard, Clarifies Waiver Issue With Respect to Opinion Letters By David Lawson In Re Seagate Technology, LLC Federal Circuit, Miscellaneous Docket No. 830, Aug. 20, 2007 Slip Opinion On August 20, the Federal Circuit, en banc, changed its standard for evaluating the willfulness of patent infringement for the purpose of awarding enhanced damages under 35 U.S.C. § 284, making it much more difficult for patentees to demonstrate willful infringement. The court also clarified the application ... Read More...

Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co., Ltd. (“SMC”)
Federal Circuit, No. 05-1492, July 5, 2007
Slip Opinion

On July 5, in the latest decision in a nearly-twenty-year saga which has cumulatively proven enormously important in defining the scope of the doctrine of equivalents, the Federal Circuit (Dyk, J.) held that an existing equivalent can be foreseeable at the time of a patentee’s amendment, even if it would have been impossible for an observer of ordinary skill in the art to foresee at the time of amendment that the equivalent would ultimately satisfy the tests for equivalence. In the court’s words:

An equivalent is foreseeable if one skilled in the art would have known that the alternative existed in the field of art as defined by the original claim scope, even if the suitability of the alternative for the particular purposes defined by the amended claim scope were unknown.

Slip Op. at 21.

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