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Stephanie Scruggs is an experienced intellectual property attorney primarily focused on complicated patent disputes. Stephanie defends and enforces the IP rights of both U.S. and foreign-based clients in a wide range of industries, including the chemical, biochemical, pharmaceutical, electrical and mechanical fields.

M.S., Chemical Engineering

Patent Registration Number: 54,432

There have been only a few precedential decisions from the Federal Circuit related to obviousness since spring sprung. While these decisions have produced mixed results for the lower courts, clinical study protocols have held up to appellate scrutiny both in the context of motivation to combine and reasonable expectation of success.

Reversed and Remanded to

Last week in Luv n’ Care, Ltd. v. Laurain, the Federal Circuit put the lower court in time out and probably made Eazy-PZ, LLC (EZPZ) cry just a little bit harder. In this precedential decision involving U.S. Patent No. 9.462,903, the appellate panel vacated a Western District of Louisiana judgment of no inequitable

Earlier this week, the Federal Circuit granted Meril Life Sciences safe passage out of the infringement storm — otherwise known as Edwards Lifesciences — continuing to chase it (at least for now). More specifically, a divided panel of the Federal Circuit issued an opinion affirming the Northern District of California’s grant of summary judgment to

The Federal Circuit just “re-issued” its precedential decision in Great Concepts, LLC v. Chutter, Inc. (No. 2022-1212), where it had previously reversed the USPTO’s cancellation of a registered trademark. There was no substantive change in this modified version of the prior opinion where the majority held that the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board lacked

In Corephotonics, Ltd. v. Apple Inc., the Federal Circuit partially signed off on Apple’s win before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) invalidating a number of patents owned by Corephotonics relating to dual-aperture cameras and methods of using the images from both lenses when zooming while capturing video to prevent “jumping” (U.S. Patent

On Wednesday, a divided panel of the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision reversing the USPTO’s cancellation of a registered trademark (Great Concepts, LLC v. Chutter, Inc., No. 2022-1212).  As detailed in the opinion, the majority held that the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board lacked the power to cancel a trademark registration based on

Last week, the Federal Circuit issued another precedential decision on inventorship.  However, unlike in HIP, Inc. v. Hormel Foods Corporation (22-1696) where the appellate panel found the purported inventor’s contribution to be “insignificant in quality . . . [when] measured against dimension of the full invention,” the panel in Blue Gentian, LLC v. Tristar Products,

Last week, the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision affirming a Southern District of Texas denial of FMC Technologies, Inc.’s attorneys’ fees motion. The panel here (comprised of Moore, Clevenger, and Dyk) seems almost as disdainful of FMC’s arguments for exceptionality as a completely different panel did when it affirmed the denial of Pure Hemp’s