The United States Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s decision, holding that AstraZeneca’s labeling change of its antipsychotic medication Seroquel was not entitled to an additional period of market exclusivity.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed that patents are unenforceable in case of inequitable conduct before the patent office.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit addressed the issue of inequitable conduct during patent prosecution. Upon affirming the majority of a district court’s findings of inequitable conduct, it remanded the case for a determination of whether the incidents of inequitable conduct justified the sanction of rendering the patent unenforceable.

The Supreme Court in this case decided that patent holders do not have an automatic right to a permanent injunction in case of patent infringement. Instead, the decision whether or not to grant an injunction or an alternative remedy has to be decided on a case-by-case basis taking into account a traditional four-factor test.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided that reverse payment settlement agreements are not immune from antitrust scrutiny. It opted for the antitrust “rule of reason” approach in order to determine whether such agreements violate antitrust law, rejecting thereby both the “scope of patent” test and the “presumptive illegality” approach.

The case concerns liability of parties for anticompetitive behavior, more specifically for pay-for-delay agreements. Even though Barr’s anticompetitive agreement with Warner Chilcott was later dissolved, the District Court upheld the FTC’s complaint, which sought to prevent Barr from engaging in similar conduct in the future.

The case concerns the analysis of obviousness, when the prior art teaches structurally and functionally similar chemical compounds, proving a definite range and variables for a solution of stability.  The Appeal Court held that prior art ranges for solutions of structurally and functionally similar compounds that overlap with a claimed range can establish a prima facie case of obviousness. If one of the predictable solutions leads to an anticipated success, the outcome was obvious to try.

The Federal Circuit ruled on the Supreme Court’s broad interpretation of the regulatory review exemption to patent infringement, also known as the Bolar exemption. The Federal Circuit reversed its previous decision of infringement, holding that Merck’s preclinical development activities that were ultimately not the subject of a submission to United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were still exempt from infringement under the regulatory review exemption.  

The Supreme Court of the United States found that in a suit involving illegal restraint of trade, the validity of a patent could be subject to challenge if the patent is directly involved in the anti-trust violation.

The Supreme Court ruled that once the patent holder has authorized a sale all of its patent rights in that item are exhausted, regardless of any post-sale contractual restrictions or the location of the sale.