Patent Law Practice Center

Requests for Reexamination of 27 Vesta Medical Patents Among those Filed Week of 8/1/11

Here is the latest installment of Reexamination Requests from Scott Daniels, of Reexamination Alert and Practice Center Contributor…

It was a quiet week on the new reexamination front, except that CareFusion requested reexamination of 27 Vesta Medical patents related to disposal of medical waste.  This does not appear, however, to have been done with hostile intent since Vesta is a subsidiary of CareFusion.

Hostile intent was clearly in evidence, on the other hand, when SAP America requested reexamination of a new Wellogix patent (see inter partes Request No. (1)).  For good measure, on the same day, SAP filed a declaratory judgment action against the same Wellogix patent.

Finally, Reexamination was requested against an Intellectual Ventures patent related to field-programmable gate arrays (see ex parte Request No. (32)).  Last December IV sued Altera and two other companies for infringing on that patent, as well as four other patents.  Since reexamination has now been requested against all five IV patents-in-suit, one or more of the parties might now seek a stay of the litigation pending completion of the reexaminations.  (more…)