provisional application Archives

provisional application

Claim construction misstep undoes injunction

by Joshua Revilla | Aug 14, 2025 | Patents

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded a preliminary injunction (PI), finding that the district court improperly construed a claim term based on references cited in a provisional application but omitted from the asserted patents. FMC Corp. v. Sharda USA, LLC, Case No. 224-2335 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 21, 2025) (Moore, Chen, Barnett, JJ.)

FMC owns two patents claiming priority to a provisional application concerning insecticides and miticides compositions. The patents specifically cover formulations comprising bifenthrin and a cyano-pyrethroid. Sharda currently markets an insecticide product known as Winner, which contains both bifenthrin and a cyano-pyrethroid.

FMC sued Sharda for patent infringement on its two patents and sought a temporary restraining order (TRO) and a PI. The district court denied both motions but issued a claim construction for the term “composition.” Instead of applying the term’s plain and ordinary meaning, the district court interpreted “composition” narrowly to mean “stable compositions, rather than the well-known unstable compositions that produce ineffective results as discussed throughout the prosecution history.” In reaching this construction, the district court relied on statements made in the provisional application and disclosures found in a separate, non-asserted FMC patent that claimed priority to the same provisional application. However, these disclosures were absent from the asserted patents themselves, appearing only in the provisional application and the non-asserted patent.

FMC renewed its motion for a TRO, which the district court granted and later converted into a PI. In issuing the PI, the district court again relied on its narrow construction of the term “composition” as a key point in rejecting Sharda’s invalidity defenses. Sharda appealed.

Sharda argued that the district court erred in both its construction of “composition” and its determination that Sharda failed to raise a substantial question regarding the patents’ validity. The Federal Circuit first addressed Sharda’s challenge to the district court’s construction of the term “composition,” which had been limited to stable compositions based on disclosures in the provisional application and a non-asserted patent. The Court acknowledged that while the provisional application contained multiple references to “stability,” all such references were deliberately removed from the common specification of the two asserted patents. As a result, the specifications of the asserted patents did not simply carry forward the language of the provisional application but instead reflected a substantive evolution.

Citing its 2024 decision in DDR Holdings, LLC v. Priceline.com LLC, the Federal Circuit emphasized that such omissions are legally significant. The Court concluded that a person of ordinary skill in the art, considering the deliberate removal of all references to stability, would not interpret the term “composition” as limited to stable formulations. Because FMC chose to revise the asserted patents’ written descriptions to exclude any mention of stability, the district court erred in importing a stability limitation from the provisional application and non-asserted patent into the claims. Accordingly, the Federal Circuit held that the district court improperly grafted a “stability” requirement onto the term “composition.”

The Federal Circuit also found fault with the district court’s [...]

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Detour Ahead: New Approach to Assessing Prior Art Rejections Under § 102(e)

by Benjamin Ediger, Ph.D. | Apr 3, 2025 | America Invents Act, Patents

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit established a more demanding test for determining whether a published patent application claiming priority to a provisional application is considered prior art under pre-America Invents Act (AIA) 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as of the provisional filing date, explaining that all portions of the published patent application that are relied upon by the US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) to reject the claims must be sufficiently supported in the provisional application. In re Riggs, Case No. 22-1945 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 24, 2025) (Moore, Stoll, Cunningham, JJ.)

Several inventors who work for Odyssey Logistics filed a patent application directed to logistics systems and methods for the transportation of goods from various shippers by various carriers across different modes of transport (e.g., by rail, truck, ship, or air). PTO rejected the application under § 102(e) in view of Lettich, which claimed the benefit of a provisional application (Lettich provisional), and as obvious in view of Lettich in combination with the Rojek reference.

The inventors appealed the Lettich rejections to the Patent Trial & Appeal Board, arguing that Lettich did not qualify as prior art under § 102(e). The Board initially agreed with the inventors, but the Examiner assigned to the application requested a rehearing, asserting that the Board applied the incorrect standard for § 102(e) prior art. The Board ultimately issued its decision on the Request for Rehearing, stating that it had jurisdiction over the Examiner’s request and that the Examiner’s arguments regarding Lettich’s status as prior art under § 102(e) “[we]re well taken.” The Board amended its original decision “to determine that Lettich is proper prior art against the instant claims.” The Board then reviewed and affirmed the Examiner’s anticipation and obviousness rejections. The inventors appealed.

The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded the Board’s decision. With respect to whether Lettich qualified as § 102(e) prior art, the Court found that the Board’s analysis was incomplete. The Court concluded that the Board correctly applied the test set forth in the Federal Circuit’s 2015 decision in Dynamic Drinkware v. National Graphics by determining that the Lettich provisional supported at least one of Lettich’s as-published claims. However, the Court found that this test was insufficient because all portions of the disclosure that are relied upon by the PTO to reject the claims must also be sufficiently supported in the priority document. Although the PTO asserted that the Board had conducted this additional analysis, the Federal Circuit disagreed and vacated and remanded for the Board to determine whether the Lettich provisional supported the entirety of the Lettich disclosure that the Examiner relied on in rejecting the claims.

Change Between Provisional and Nonprovisional Application Is Lexicography

by Dexter Hamilton | Dec 19, 2024 | Patents

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court judgment of noninfringement, finding that deleting a portion of a definition between a provisional application and a nonprovisional application was evidence that the patentee intended to exclude the deleted language from the claim scope. DDR Holdings, LLC v. Priceline.com LLC and Booking.com B.V., Case Nos. 23-1176; -1177 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 9, 2024) (Chen, Mayer, Cunningham, JJ.)

DDR owns a patent directed to an e-commerce system involving “‘three main parties’ aside from the end consumer: merchants, hosts, and outsource providers.” The specification describes merchants as “the producers, distributors, or resellers of the goods to be sold through the outsource provider.”

DDR sued Priceline for infringement of four patents. In response, Priceline sought inter partes review (IPR), after which three of the challenged patents were found to be unpatentable. The Patent Trial & Appeal Board found that the fourth challenged patent was patentable over the cited prior art. Although the Board’s determination did not turn on the meaning of the term “merchants,” the Board construed “merchants” as “producers, distributors, or resellers of the goods or services to be sold.” In doing so, the Board applied the then applicable “broadest reasonable interpretation” standard.

In the district court case, Priceline proposed that, consistent with the specification, “merchants” should be construed as only including purveyors of goods, while DDR sought to also include purveyors of services. The district court agreed with Priceline and adopted a construction that excluded services. Following the district court’s claim construction, the parties stipulated to noninfringement, agreeing that the court’s construction was case-dipositive in Priceline’s favor on the issue of infringement. DDR appealed.

The Federal Circuit affirmed. The Court reviews “claim construction based on intrinsic evidence de novo and review[s] any findings of fact regarding extrinsic evidence for clear error.” With only two exceptions, the Court gives terms “their plain and ordinary meanings to one of skill in the art when read in the context of the specification or during prosecution.” The exceptions are “when a patentee sets out a definition and acts as his own lexicographer” and “when the patentee disavows the full scope of a claim term either in the specification or during prosecution.”

Here, the provisional application for the asserted patent discussed merchants as both “producers of ‘goods’ in one instance, and ‘products or services’ in another.” The asserted patent did not mention services in relation to merchants, instead limiting “merchant” to purveyor of goods. The Federal Circuit found that a skilled artisan would interpret the deletion of the reference to “products or services” between the provisional application and the asserted patent as “indicat[ing] an evolution of the applicant’s intended meaning of the claim term.” The Court found that this was reinforced by the description that limited merchants to purveyors of goods.

DDR argued that incorporating the provisional application by reference into the specification resulted in “one document” and therefore no deletion took place. However, the Federal Circuit did not find this argument persuasive, explaining [...]

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Family Matters, but Only Sometimes if Claim Construction Is Involved

by Amol Parikh | Nov 10, 2022 | Patents

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a district court’s claim construction, explaining that the use of a restrictive term in a definition in an earlier application does not reinstate that term in a later patent that purposely deletes the term, even if the earlier patent is incorporated by reference. Finjan LLC v. ESET, LLC, Case No. 21-2093 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 1, 2022) (Prost, Reyna, Taranto, JJ.)

Finjan filed a lawsuit against ESET for infringement of five patents directed to systems and methods for detecting computer viruses in a “downloadable” through a security profile. Each of the asserted patents was part of the same family, and each claimed priority to the same provisional application. The term “downloadable” appeared in the claims of all the asserted patents but was defined slightly differently in the various patents in the family. The original provisional application defined “downloadable” as “an executable application program which is automatically downloaded from a source computer and run on the destination computer.” Two of the non-asserted patents in the family defined “downloadable” as “applets” and as “a small executable or interpretable application program which is downloaded from a source computer and run on a destination computer.” Two of the asserted patents defined “downloadable” as “an executable application program, which is downloaded from a source computer and run on the destination computer.” The two asserted patents incorporated by reference one of the non-asserted patents. The other three asserted patents did not include a definition of “downloadable,” but they incorporated by reference one of the asserted patents and one of the non-asserted patents that defined “downloadable.”

The district court construed the term “downloadable” as used in the asserted patents to mean “a small executable or interpretable application program which is downloaded from a source computer and run on a destination computer.” The district court based its construction on the incorporation by reference of one of the non-asserted patents, reasoning that although the patent family contained “somewhat differing definitions,” these definitions “can be reconciled.” In particular, the district court found that based on the definitions and examples included throughout the various patents in the family tree, the term “downloadable” in the asserted patents should be construed to include the word “small” as defined in the non-asserted patent. ESET moved for summary judgment of invalidity due to indefiniteness based on the word “small” as used in the adopted construction of “downloadable.” The district court granted the motion. Finjan appealed.

The Federal Circuit began by reciting the well-known maxim that claims must be read in light of the specification, which includes any patents incorporated by reference since those patents are “effectively part of the host patents as if they were explicitly contained therein.” However, the Court explained that “incorporation by reference does not convert the invention of the incorporated patent into the invention of the host patent.” Instead, the disclosure of the host patent provides context to determine what impact, if any, the patent incorporated by reference will have on the [...]

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