Medivis Revives Challenge to Augmented-Reality Headset Patent

The Federal Circuit gave medical-software company Medivis Inc. another chance to challenge the validity of a patent a rival company accused it of infringing through sales of an augmented-reality tool called SurgicalAR.

The court took issue with an administrative tribunal’s analysis of Medivis’ argument that a patent belonging to Novarad Corp.—US Patent No. 11,004,271—isn’t obvious in light of earlier inventions. Specifically, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s March 2024 decision ruled a skilled artisan wouldn’t have been motivated to combine earlier ideas included in an international patent application and a user guide for a German company’s three-dimensional biomedical data-viewing ...