Warsaw Orthopedic, Inc. et al. v. Globus Medical, Inc.
Docket No. 2009-1525
January 26, 2011
LOURIE, BRYSON, PROST
Non-precedential
Globus appealed USDC ED PA judgment that each of Warsaw’s patents related to bone screws was valid and infringed. The FC panel agreed that Warsaw’s claims were not limited to the preferred embodiments of the specification. This is because, for instance, “the ‘Summary of the Invention’ describes various ‘aspects’ of the invention in sufficiently general terms to embrace devices that embody the concept of the invention but are not identical to the particular embodiment that is described in great detail” (e.g., by the detailed description). The panel wrote that the FC has “expressly rejected the contention that if a patent describes only a single embodiment, the claims of the patent must be construed as being limited to that embodiment” (Phillips, FC 2005). The DC decision regarding claim construction was therefore affirmed. Global argued that if the claims are given such a broad construction, then its post-trial JMOL motion of invalidity for anticipation should not have been denied. The panel agreed that certain claims were anticipated by a prior art surgical procedure that had been performed by Globus’ expert witness. Other claims were found not to be anticipated. Thus, the FC panel reversed-in-part and remanded the case for reevaluation of damages.
Federal Circuit summaries 