Court Rejects Review of Ethicon’s Loss Against Covidien

Ethicon’s petition for a full bench hearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was rejected 10-1 after the J&J subsidiary appealed a final decision by the PTAB in its patent battle with Medtronic over surgical stapler patents.

Ethicon appealed a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board final decision, arguing the decision was invalid because the same panel made both the threshold decision and the decision to conduct an inter partes review.

“The current practice of assigning the same PTAB panel to both institute and conduct an inter partes review is not only contrary to the statute, but has the taint of prejudgment,” Circuit Judge Newman wrote in the June 22 dissenting opinion.