"In Dell, the petitioner presented a new argument for unpatentability at the oral hearing that was premised on a previously unasserted portion of the prior art . . .The patent owner “was given no prior notice of that contention,” and “no opportunity . . . to supply evidence” at the oral hearing. Id. The court vacated and remanded the Board’s finding on that claim, concluding that the Board relied on this new argument “alone for an essential part of its anticipation ground of decision.”"

"The notion that G+ had no notice of the “may” language or the arguments surrounding it is one that we squarely reject. The “comb structure” issue was initially raised by G+ . . . And the “may” language is found in Kwak itself . . . “if a TTI includes 2 symbols, a transmission method based on a base sequence may be applied to the structure of FIG. 43 and a different CS index may be applied for each slot” . . . Indeed, G+’s briefing before the Board referenced the same portions of Kwak cited by the Board in its decision. "

"Here, the claims are definite because a skilled artisan would be able, with reasonable certainty, to look at a firearm magazine housing, identify the claimed distances, measure them, and determine if the housing falls within the scope of the claim. That a skilled artisan might not be able to make the design decisions to successfully build an operable magazine housing based on the ’045 patent’s specification goes to the question of enablement, not definiteness. Because the court erred by conflating the standards for these separate legal requirements, it incorrectly concluded the claims were indefinite."

"Three limitations of claim 1 are key to the anticipation analysis: (a) a “biodegradable polymer fiber”; (b) composed of two “phases,” of which (under constructions UT accepts) one is “the polymer portion of the fiber” and the other is “the discrete drug-containing regions dispersed throughout the fiber”; with (c) those phases “being immiscible” . . . Song expressly discloses a biodegradable polymer fiber” . . . Its teachings broadly cover fibers and drugs (not just flavorants) . . . As to the two “phases” limitations of claim 1 . . . Song teaches a “polymer portion of the fiber” . . . As long as “discrete” includes “noncontiguous,” as it plainly does, that is enough for anticipation of the ’296 patent’s “discrete” requirement by Song’s “[non]contiguous” teaching . . . UT’s expert testimony regarding the “second phase,” rather than addressing the claimed location of the drug within the fiber, addresses a particular aspect of how the drug is released from the fiber—an aspect not claimed. . . . Song expressly discloses that the “active agent” and fibrous “wall material . . . must be immiscible with each other” . . . We therefore conclude that BSC was entitled to judgment as a matter of law that claim 1 is invalid for anticipation by Song" (emphasis in original).

"The district court’s decision below characterizes the claim at an impermissibly high level of generality . . . the district court disregarded the claimed advance over the prior art of an improved digital picture frame with a physically separable user interface . . . The district court’s quote of the claim language leaves out the critical claim limitation that the user interface “is physically separable from said at least one digital picture frame” . . . the district court’s erroneous characterization of the claim all but ensured the incorrect conclusion that the claim was not directed to a technological improvement but instead impermissibly claimed only a result. In sum, we conclude that claim 19 of the ’573 patent is not directed to an abstract idea under Alice step one and is therefore patent eligible under § 101."

"Given that the ’104 patent issued over Shenzhen’s ’982 patent, its issuance would suggest there is some patentable difference between each patent’s claimed design, and, by extension, the ’982 patent and defendants’ accused products . . . The district court concluded this undermined Shenzhen’s likelihood of success on its infringement claim, making preliminary injunctive relief inappropriate."

"Shenzhen argues that the district court violated the doctrine of collateral estoppel by allowing the New Defendants to advance arguments regarding the ’104 patent’s issuance that the district court had previously rejected . . . The suggestion that the district court’s denial of reconsideration had collateral estoppel effects that barred the court’s reconsideration of its rationale, or the arguments the district court previously considered, lacks merit . . . “There is no basis for using res judicata or collateral estoppel to prevent a judge from reconsidering an earlier ruling in the same, ongoing case.”"

"Shenzhen is correct that the test for obviousness differs from the test for infringement . . . However, any suggestion that the district court held otherwise is unsupported by the record . . . Rather, the district court noted that the test for anticipation mirrors the test for infringement of design patents . . . we understand the district court to have assessed the strength of Shenzhen’s infringement claim via an analysis rooted in this court’s caselaw holding that anticipation and infringement are the same inquiry for design patents . . . when a design patent issues over an earlier one, the presumption of patent validity suggests that the later claimed design is not anticipated by—i.e., not substantially the same as—the earlier patented design."