MadStad Eng'g, Inc. v. U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, No. 13-1511 (Fed. Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseMadStad sought a declaratory judgment that the “first-inventor-to-file” provision of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) was unconstitutional and a permanent injunction barring its enforcement. Before the AIA, the PTO typically gave priority to the first to invent; under the AIA priority goes to the first inventor to file a patent application. The named inventor must have invented the invention independently and not derived the idea from another, 35 U.S.C. 102. The district court dismissed for lack of standing. The Federal Circuit affirmed. For MadStad to actually suffer any injury fairly traceable to the AIA, an “acutely attenuated concatenation of events” was required. MadStad failed to prove that any injury was actual or imminent.
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