Eight en banc petitions are pending at the Federal Circuit, though two are pro se. The court makes pretty quick work of petitions and so the list has turned over almost completely since my July post.

The wait for a first action on the merits (FAOM) has eased a bit over the past year, but the numbers are still about seven months over target. Most recently, the average application waited about 21 ...

I have been looking at patent applications that appear to be lost within the USPTO digital files. A common pattern is abandonment, followed by revival on petition, but then the file is apparently ...

Range of Motion's cert petition, due Dec. 21, will challenge the plainly dissimilar test and judicial functionality findings for design patents.

In my post on Monday, I created a time series chart showing the average/median wait time for utility patent applications from filing to the first action on the merits. But, that office-wide average ...

Barron v. United States, Nos. 2025-1179, -1459 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 22, 2026). This is not a patent case, but decisions from the Court of Federal Claims are also appealed to the Federal Circuit -- making ...

Supreme Court denies VirtaMove without holding it for Tesla, Kahoot!, Intel, or FedEx. Plus new petitions on post-expiration royalties and § 101.

Fortress Iron has asked the Supreme Court to review the Federal Circuit's decision invalidating two of its cable-railing patents because an omitted coinventor could not be found. Fortress Iron, LP v.

I have been reading a number of PTAB decisions recently. Two new ones from this week caught my attention because they both turned on claim-reading doctrines that the Board raised on its own. The Board ...

The Federal Circuit's 2022 decision in Thaler v. Vidal seemed to settle a fundamental question: only natural persons can be inventors under U.S. patent law. But, the bigger near-term question has ...

Professor John Duffy (UVA) appears to be in line to take over as USPTO General Counsel. GC is the Director's principal legal advisor and runs an office of about 130 lawyers that include the Office of ...

The Federal Circuit’s en banc decision in EcoFactor v. Google marks a significant tightening of standards for admitting patent damages expert testimony. The court (in an 8–2 split) overturned a $20 ...