Opinions — Thursday, April 2, 2026

The Federal Circuit affirmed the Northern District of Indiana's grant of summary judgment invalidating Fortress Iron, LP's U.S. Patents 9,790,707 and 10,883,290 for omission of a coinventor and denial of Fortress's motion to correct inventorship under 35 U.S.C. § 256(b). Fortress sued Digger Specialties, Inc. for infringement of patents covering pre-assembled vertical cable railing panels. During litigation, the parties agreed that Hua-Ping Huang, a former employee of Fortress's Chinese supplier, was an omitted coinventor, but Fortress could not locate Huang to obtain his consent for inventorship correction under § 256(a). Fortress sought judicial correction under § 256(b), which permits courts to order correction "on notice and hearing of all parties concerned." The court held that Huang, as an agreed-upon omitted coinventor, qualifies as a "party concerned" under § 256(b) entitled to notice and opportunity for hearing, relying on Chou v. University of Chicago, 254 F.3d 1347 (Fed. Cir. 2001). Because Fortress could not satisfy this prerequisite, the court could not order correction, and the patents remained invalid for incorrect inventorship.

The decision establishes that an omitted coinventor is a "party concerned" under § 256(b) regardless of whether correction would adversely affect the coinventor's interests or whether the coinventor would have constitutional standing to bring his own § 256(b) action—distinctions Fortress urged the court to adopt. The holding forecloses any argument that listing one true inventor suffices for validity when multiple coinventors exist, reasoning that such an interpretation would render § 256(b)'s savings provision meaningless surplusage. The court rejected Fortress's reliance on § 101's permissive language ("whoever invents . . . may obtain a patent") and the repeal of pre-AIA § 102(f), emphasizing that § 100(f) defines "inventor" in the joint invention context as "the individuals collectively" and that longstanding precedent invalidates patents for nonjoinder of actual inventors. The practical consequence is unforgiving: patentees who cannot locate and provide due process to omitted coinventors face patent invalidity with no judicial remedy, placing substantial risk on proper inventorship diligence during prosecution and heightened obligations in managing inventor relationships with third-party suppliers and collaborators.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's determination that claims 1–20 of Centripetal Networks' U.S. Patent 10,284,526, directed to methods and systems for network security using selective decryption, are unpatentable as anticipated or obvious. The court addressed only the anticipation ground based on the Cisco IronPort reference (IPUG), rendering the other grounds moot. Centripetal challenged the Board's claim construction of "corresponding action" and its determination that IPUG qualified as a prior art printed publication.

The court applied substantial evidence review to uphold the Board's construction that "corresponding action" encompasses allowing a packet to proceed without further intervention, rejecting Centripetal's superfluity argument by explaining that the "allowing" action occurs temporally and functionally before the subsequent re-encryption and transmission steps. The court also sustained the Board's printed publication determination under Jazz Pharmaceuticals, finding substantial evidence of public accessibility based on an archived webpage dated before the priority date and expert testimony that persons of ordinary skill would have searched for and located vendor product documentation like IPUG. The decision illustrates how broadly functional claim language will be construed absent specification-based limitations and how modest evidence of online availability can establish printed publication status.