Supreme Court Decision Alert - January 20, 2015

Today, the Supreme Court issued one decision, described below, of interest to the business community.

Patent Act—Claim Construction—Standard of Appellate Review

Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., No. 13-854 (described in the March 31, 2014, Docket Report)

In patent litigation, a critical question is often the proper interpretation of terms in a patent claim—a threshold issue that bears substantially on patent validity and patent infringement. Two decades ago, in Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., the Supreme Court held that claim construction is a task for a judge, not a jury; a court, accordingly, must determine how one reasonably skilled in the relevant art would understand the terms of a patent claim.