Skinny Label Patent Infringement: How Hikma v. Amarin Could Reshape Generic Drug Law
The Supreme Court is poised to decide one of the most consequential questions in pharmaceutical patent law: when does a generic drug’s marketing create skinny label patent infringement liability? Continue reading…
What Is a Markman Hearing? Claim Construction Explained
A Markman hearing is a federal pretrial proceeding at which the district judge construes the disputed terms of a patent’s claims as a matter of law. The name comes from Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 517 U.S. 370 (1996) (unanimous; claim construction is a question of law allocated to the judge), in which the Supreme Court held that claim construction is “exclusively within the province of the court.” Id. at 388–89. The judge’s constructions govern summary judgment and bind the jury’s infringement analysis at trial. Appellate review runs under Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 574 U.S. 318 (2015): de novo on the ultimate legal construction, clear-error on subsidiary fact-findings.
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What Is the PTAB? A 2026 Guide for In-House Counsel
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is the administrative tribunal within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that adjudicates contested post-grant patent validity proceedings and ex parte appeals from examiner rejections. Created by the America Invents Act of 2011, Pub. L. No. 112-29, § 7, the Board is an executive-branch administrative tribunal within the USPTO, staffed by Administrative Patent Judges (APJs) sitting in three-judge panels under 35 U.S.C. § 6; the appellate path runs to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit under 35 U.S.C. § 319 and § 141, with a 63-day filing window under 37 C.F.R. § 90.3. Continue reading…
Federal Circuit Rejects Challenge to PTAB Timing, Affirms Ford’s IPR Victories
On December 23, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed three decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) finding claims of fuel-management patents asserted by Ethanol Boosting Systems, LLC (“EBS”) unpatentable as obvious.
Winter Is Coming for AI Outputs: SDNY Allows AI Copyright Claims to Proceed
On October 27, 2025, Judge Sidney H. Stein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied OpenAI’s motion to dismiss authors’ output-based copyright infringement claims in In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation.