Opinions — Friday, October 2, 2026

The Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's determination that claims 1–33 of Inari Agriculture's U.S. Patent No. 11,371,055 are unpatentable for lack of enablement in a post-grant review brought by Pioneer Hi-Bred International. The patent claims a genus of enzymes defined by dual herbicide-degrading function and structural limitations (85% sequence identity to a disclosed sequence and an AAD-12 motif), covering approximately 2.4 × 10^106 species while disclosing only two examples. The principal issue on appeal was whether the Board erred in relying on Pioneer's own post-priority-date experimental data—showing that only two of eight tested enzymes meeting the structural limitations exhibited the claimed function—to establish lack of enablement.

The court held that post-priority-date evidence is permissible to demonstrate lack of enablement, distinguishing In re Hogan and In re Entresto as involving later-developed technology that did not exist at the priority date, whereas here all tested variants could have been created as of the priority date. Applying Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi's principle that "the more one claims, the more one must enable," the court found substantial evidence supported the Board's conclusion that the massive disparity between claimed scope and disclosed examples, combined with Pioneer's experimental data contradicting predicted structure-function correlation, rendered the claims not enabled. The court reviewed the Board's crediting of Inari's expert witness for abuse of discretion and its enablement finding for substantial evidence, rejecting Pioneer's forfeiture and evidentiary arguments.