Patent Firm Rebuked by Federal Circuit for Making New Arguments

The Federal Circuit upheld a district court’s pre-trial dismissal of WSOU Investment LLC’s patent suit against Seattle tech firm, F5 Inc.

The court said the patent firm’s lawyers attempted on appeal to make a brand new argument about how to interpret a key claim from its US Patent No. 7,548,945, one it hadn’t made before the US District Court for the Western District of Washington.

“We have long applied a very strong rule forbidding an appellant to urge a construction on appeal that asserts a different claim scope from what it urged in the tribunal being reviewed,” wrote Judge ...