Federal Circuit Confirms That WARF Cannot Revive Apple Suits, Broadens Preclusion Standards

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), a nonprofit patent management arm of the University of Wisconsin, has seen another key setback in its litigation against Apple. In 2018, the Federal Circuit overturned a $506M judgment for the plaintiff in the first of two cases, holding that Apple had not literally infringed the asserted patent through the provision of certain mobile chips based on the plain and ordinary meaning of a key claim limitation. Now, the Federal Circuit has affirmed a 2022 ruling that the company could not revive that first suit based on a doctrine-of-equivalents (DOE) theory, concluding in an August 28 precedential decision that WARF had waived that theory by agreeing not to raise it at trial. The Federal Circuit additionally held that a second WARF suit targeting newer versions of the accused Apple processors, also under a DOE theory, was precluded by the outcome of the first case—in the process expanding the standards governing issue