Date:
June 4, 2009
After 17 years of conflict in its precedent, the Federal Circuit expressly overruled its 1991 decision in Scripps Clinic & Research Foundation v. Genentech, Inc., holding in Abbott Laboratories v. Sandoz, Inc. that a product-by-process claim is only infringed when each of the claimed steps in the process are performed by accused infringer, even if the accused infringer produces the same product by any other process.