Case Study: UCB, Inc. v. Watson Labs. Inc.
This case study follows a complex pharmaceutical patent case. The plaintiff sought to enforce a patch that delivered Parkinson's disease treatment. The defendant, who had developed a similar device, put forth a litany of defenses. These included procedural defenses such as prosecution history estoppel and narrow claiming, as well as substantive defenses that it did not infringe and that the original patent was invalid due to prior art and obviousness. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, the premier patent court in the country, systematically analyzed these claims. Through this case study, we review or learn the elements of many doctrines applied in patent law cases and discuss an example of how they are applied.
The case can be found here: