Tag Archives: Res Judicata

When the Federal Circuit denied the Request for Panel Rehearing and Rehearing en banc in In re Baxter, the court let stand its two decisions that affirmed conflicting rulings on the validity of the same patent. In Fresenius USA, Inc. v. Baxter Int’l, Inc., 582 F.3d 1288 (Fed. Cir. 2009), the court affirmed the district court decision that upheld the validity of claims 26-31 of U.S. Patent 5,247,434, while in its May 17, 2012 decision in In re Baxter, the court affirmed the USPTO Board decision that the claims were invalid as obvious. Parallel litigation and USPTO proceedings involving the same patent may become more rare now that the America Invents Act (AIA) has replaced inter partes reexamination with inter partes review and placed restrictions on parallel litigation proceedings, but still could arise from pending inter partes reexamination proceedings or from ex parte reexamination proceedings, which are not subject to the same restrictions.Continue reading this entry