The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed an attorneys’ fee award, finding that the district court erred in treating Supreme Court precedent on the patent eligibility of isolated natural products as dispositive of a dispute where additional issues regarding the claimed compositions’ characteristics and utility were involved. The Federal Circuit concluded that the patentee’s unsuccessful eligibility arguments were not exceptionally meritless under 35 U.S.C. § 285. ChromaDex, Inc. v. Elysium Health, Inc., Case No. 25-1227 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 30, 2026) (Prost, Chen, Stoll, JJ.) (nonprecedential).
ChromaDex and the Trustees of Dartmouth College (collectively, ChromaDex) owned patents directed to dietary supplement compositions containing isolated nicotinamide riboside (NR), a form of vitamin B3, formulated for oral administration to increase nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) biosynthesis. NR occurs naturally in cow’s milk, but only in trace amounts bound to a whey protein that prevents its bioavailability. Milk nevertheless increases NAD+ biosynthesis through another compound, tryptophan.
ChromaDex sued Elysium Health for patent infringement. The district court granted summary judgment that the asserted claims were ineligible under § 101 because they were directed to a product of nature, and the Federal Circuit affirmed (ChromaDex I).
Elysium subsequently sought attorneys’ fees under § 285, arguing that ChromaDex had pursued its infringement claims without meaningfully addressing the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, which held that merely isolating naturally occurring DNA does not render it patent eligible. The district court agreed, characterizing Myriad as dispositive and faulting ChromaDex for citing the decision only once in its summary judgment opposition. The district court awarded Elysium more than $9.1 million in attorneys’ fees, including $3.9 million incurred before the claim construction hearing. ChromaDex appealed.
The Federal Circuit concluded that the district court erred by treating Myriad as resolving the entire eligibility dispute. Although Myriad established that isolating NR from milk was insufficient, standing alone, to confer patent eligibility, ChromaDex had advanced a broader argument. Relying on the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision in Diamond v. Chakrabarty and the Federal Circuit’s 2019 decision in Natural Alternatives International v. Creative Compounds, ChromaDex argued that isolating NR made it bioavailable, giving the claimed compositions markedly different characteristics and significant utility compared with naturally occurring milk. ChromaDex also supported its position with expert testimony.
The Federal Circuit explained that rejecting ChromaDex’s eligibility arguments in ChromaDex I required analysis beyond Myriad. In particular, the Court considered whether the claims required a particular quantity of isolated NR, whether they attributed increased NAD+ biosynthesis to the isolated NR, and whether the district court’s construction of “isolated” necessarily required bioavailability. The Court also considered that milk itself increases NAD+ biosynthesis through tryptophan. None of these issues was resolved by Myriad alone.
Regarding the attorneys’ fee award, the Federal Circuit emphasized that an unsuccessful legal position does not necessarily make a case exceptional under § 285. The relevant inquiry is the substantive strength of the party’s position, not whether it ultimately prevailed. Because ChromaDex’s eligibility arguments required substantive analysis and were not exceptionally meritless, the district court abused its discretion in awarding fees.
The Federal Circuit also rejected Elysium’s request for a remand on attorneys’ fees, finding that neither the district court’s analysis nor the existing record supported an exceptional-case determination. The Court declined to permit further proceedings to develop new arguments supporting the fee award.
Practice note: An unsuccessful patent eligibility argument does not, by itself, justify attorneys’ fees under § 285. For claims involving naturally occurring products, patentees should identify and substantiate characteristics or utility that distinguish the claimed invention from the natural product, rather than relying solely on isolation. Even if those arguments ultimately fail, their substantive strength may defeat a finding that the case is exceptional.
