IP Blog
issue preclusion
How Is Collateral Estoppel Applied to Patent Invalidity?
A California court has held that a defendant is collaterally estopped from asserting patent-ineligibility under 35 USC § 101 because the defendant, in prior litigation, lost a post-trial motion in which it evidently raised other theories of patent invalidity, even if not § 101 invalidity. XpertUniverse, Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc., No. 17-cv-03848-RS (N.D. Cal. May 8, 2018). Notably, the...
CAFC: Alice Not a Change in Law Preventing Issue Preclusion
A Federal Circuit panel (Judges Lourie, Newman, and Reyna) has rejected a district court’s statement that Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l., was “an intervening change in the law” that would “exempt a potential application of issue preclusion.” However, after finding that patent-eligibility was not previously litigated, the court held that issue preclusion did not prevent a determination that claims...
Alice Changed Law, No Issue Preclusion on Patent-Eligibility
Where a patent had survived a challenge under 35 U.S.C. § 101 in prior litigation between the parties, issue preclusion did not prevent a court from revisiting the question, and invalidating the patent claims, because, the court said, Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l., 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014), represented a change in the law. Voter Verified, Inc. v. Election...