Opinions — Thursday, May 28, 2026

In Pantech Corporation v. OnePlus Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., the Federal Circuit dismissed consolidated appeals Nos. 2025-1628 and 2025-1629 from the Eastern District of Texas pursuant to a joint stipulation under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 42(b), with each side bearing its own costs.

The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded the PTAB's final written decision that Go1 Pty, Ltd. failed to prove claims 1-16 of OpenSesame's U.S. Patent No. 8,784,113 (directed to an e-learning delivery system) unpatentable under § 103. The disputed limitation required that "upon verifying the validity of the license," the system provides a location designator for accessing content. Go1's obviousness challenge combined Sperle (teaching a learning management system) with Madison (teaching access verification for streaming media), but Madison disclosed the steps in reverse order—first sending a redirector file, then verifying access.

The court held that the Board's rejection of Go1's expert testimony as "conclusory" lacked substantial evidence where the expert explained that the order of performing verification and sending the URL was an obvious design choice involving only two finite, predictable solutions. The Board failed to consider whether such a simple sequential variation fell within the "ordinary creativity" and "technical grasp" of a skilled artisan under KSR, which instructs that when there are a finite number of identified, predictable solutions to a design need, a skilled artisan has good reason to pursue known options. The court emphasized that KSR rejected rigid approaches to obviousness that give little recourse to the knowledge, creativity, and common sense an ordinarily skilled artisan would bring to bear when considering modifications.

The Federal Circuit reversed the district court's denial of EOFlow's judgment as a matter of law motion, holding that Insulet's trade secret misappropriation claim under the Defend Trade Secrets Act was barred by the three-year statute of limitations in 18 U.S.C. § 1836(d). Following a jury trial that resulted in over $450 million in damages (later reduced to approximately $59 million), EOFlow appealed both the liability finding and the district court's permanent injunction barring commercialization of products developed using Insulet's alleged trade secrets. The court first addressed jurisdiction, concluding that although Insulet had dismissed its patent claims "without prejudice" after trial, the dismissal functioned as one with prejudice because the six-year limitations period under 35 U.S.C. § 286 had expired for at least some alleged acts of infringement, preserving Federal Circuit jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1). On the merits, the court applied the discovery rule from Merck & Co. v. Reynolds, 559 U.S. 633 (2010), rather than the more lenient inquiry-notice standard, but concluded that even under Merck's more demanding test, undisputed evidence showed Insulet knew or should have known the facts necessary to plead trade secret misappropriation before the August 3, 2020 critical date (three years before filing suit in August 2023).

The decision clarifies the knowledge threshold triggering the DTSA statute of limitations by establishing that a plaintiff need only know facts sufficient to plead a viable misappropriation claim—specifically, the defendant's access to trade secrets and similarity between those secrets and the defendant's products—not complete details of misappropriation or proof sufficient for trial. The majority synthesized precedent interpreting both the DTSA and the Uniform Trade Secrets Act to confirm that trade secret misappropriation claims may be properly pleaded through circumstantial evidence showing access and similarity, and held that once a plaintiff possesses facts sufficient to make such allegations, the limitations clock begins running regardless of whether the plaintiff conducted further investigation. Judge Prost dissented, arguing the majority improperly conflated the discovery rule with the inquiry-notice standard by starting the limitations period when investigation was warranted rather than when facts supporting the claim were actually discovered, and cautioned that the decision creates uncertainty about how much detail plaintiffs must possess before the statute begins to run.