Fortress Iron v. Digger Specialties (Fed. Cir., April 2, 2026) 2024-2313
This episode concerns an opinion from the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit regarding a patent dispute between Fortress Iron, LP and Digger Specialties, Inc. The court affirmed a lower court's ruling that two of Fortress's patents were invalid because they failed to name Hua-Ping Huang, an essential coinventor who could not be located. Under 35 U.S.C. § 256, a patent may be corrected to include missing inventors only if all parties receive proper notice and a hearing, a requirement Fortress could not fulfill. The judges rejected the argument that a patent remains valid if…
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