Our Patent Case Summaries provide a weekly summary of the precedential patent-related opinions issued by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the opinions designated precedential or informative by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
Socket Solutions, LLC v. Import Global, LLC
No. 2025-1121 (Fed. Cir. (S.D. Fla.) Aug. 4, 2026). Opinion by Moore, joined by Prost and Seeborg (sitting by designation).
Socket Solutions owns a patent directed to an indoor electrical wall outlet cover that permits use of a wall outlet while concealing the outlet contact openings. Socket Solutions sued Import Global for infringement and also moved for a preliminary injunction, which the district court granted. Import Global appealed.
The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded based on the likelihood of success factor for a preliminary injunction, ruling that the district court erred in construing the claim terms “backplate” and “pin.” As to “backplate,” the Federal Circuit rejected the district court’s approach, which had focused on a “backplate” in relation to the “frontplate” or a wall outlet. The Federal Circuit explained that, instead, “a construction that focuses on ‘cover’ thickness most naturally aligns with the specification” and thus is the correct construction. Here, the specification “explicitly defines ‘cover’ thickness in relation to the ‘backplate,’” and the Federal Circuit construed the term accordingly.
Next, for the claim term “pin,” the Federal Circuit agreed with Import Global that the district court erred in construing “pin” as a means-plus-function limitation under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f). The court explained that because the term does not use the word “means,” there is a presumption that § 112(f) does not apply. The presumption was not overcome because the patent’s written description “defines ‘pin’ in structural terms,” and “the parties do not dispute ‘pin’ in the context of the [asserted] patent is understood by skilled artisans to be a structure.” The Federal Circuit thus ruled that “‘pin’ should be given its plain and ordinary meaning as understood by a skilled artisan.”
Because the Federal Circuit remanded on the likelihood of success factor, the court did not reach Import Global’s arguments that the district court erred in analyzing irreparable harm. The Federal Circuit did, however, hold that “the court erred to the extent it relied on a presumption of irreparable harm when a clear showing of patent validity and infringement has been made.” The Federal Circuit noted that “this presumption cannot be justified after eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388, 393–94 (2006).” Although eBay and subsequent Federal Circuit precedent involved permanent injunctions, the court saw “no reason to depart from their holdings in the preliminary injunction context.”
Ex parte Baurin, et al.
Appeal No. 2024-002920 (PTAB ARP Aug. 6, 2026). Opinion by Squires, joined by Deshpande and Ankenbrand.
The Appeals Review Panel (ARP) sua sponte reheard a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision reversing an Examiner’s rejections of pending claims directed to antibody-like binding proteins.
The Examiner had rejected the claims based on obviousness-type double patenting (OTDP). The Board reversed, focusing its ruling on a combination of two references—“Klein” and the ’922 patent. The Board ruled that the ’922 patent could not serve as an OTDP reference against the claims at issue. The Board reached its decision not because the claims were nonobvious over the ’922 patent (which was undisputed) but because the claims at issue were “earlier-filed, earlier-expiring claims” that, if issued, “would not … extend the life/term of the later-filed and later-expiring ’922 patent claims.” Thus, the Board reasoned, the underlying purpose of OTDP was not implicated.
The ARP reversed and reinstated the Examiner’s OTDP rejections, explaining that “improper term extension … is not the only rationale underpinning the OTDP doctrine.” The ARP noted that courts have also recognized “a second policy rationale behind OTDP: preventing harassment from separate lawsuits brought by multiple assignees asserting patents covering the same invention or obvious variants thereof.” And “current Office guidance instructs examiners to consider both rationales when making OTDP rejections.”
The ARP concluded that “the Board erred in dismissing the anti-harassment rationale as inadequate to support the Examiner’s OTDP rejections.” In so ruling, the ARP noted that “the Federal Circuit has repeatedly recognized” the anti-harassment rationale, and under that rationale, the ARP deemed itself “compelled to reverse the Board and sustain the rejections for OTDP.”
The ARP also questioned the continued significance of the anti-harassment rationale, stating that, “if, contrary to our conclusion here, the Federal Circuit’s precedents should not be read as permitting OTDP rejections based on the anti-harassment rationale where no term-extension concern is apparent, the Office would welcome that clarification from the court.” The ARP then, on pages 20–31 of the opinion, took “this opportunity to provide [its] thoughts about the continued significance of examining for OTDP at the Office, and to propose a possible framework for an approach to OTDP that is reasonably administrable by examiners and more predictable to our stakeholders, should the Federal Circuit clarify that OTDP rejections cannot be based solely on the anti-harassment rationale.”