First up this week, Mark Lemeley of Lex Lumina led an appellate team that scored a big win for replacement auto parts maker LKQ Corp. in a highly anticipated en banc decision from the Federal Circuit. The underlying dispute with GM Global Technology centers on its design patent for an ornamental front vehicle fender, which LKQ was seeking to invalidate on obviousness grounds. The Federal Circuit this week overruled its longstanding Rosen-Durling test for assessing obviousness in design patents and remanded the case for further proceedings. At least one prominent patent observer has said the decision will make it harder to obtain design patents and easier to invalidate them. LKQ was also represented by Mark McKenna of Lex Lumina, Andy Himebaugh, Barry Irwin, Ifti Zaim of Irwin IP as well as former Irwin IP associate Ariel Katz.

A team led by Stuart Singer of Boies Schiller Flexner got a win for Florida Power & Light Co. at the Third District Court of Appeal of Florida in a class action over extended power outages caused by Hurricane Irma in 2017. The appellate court this week held that a state law enacted last year gives Florida’s Public Service Commission exclusive jurisdiction over the “threshold issues relating to disaster preparedness.” The appellate court stayed all proceedings below, where a class previously had been certified, pending the outcome of proceedings at the commission. The utility company had additional counsel from Sashi Bach, Pascual Oliu, Eric Palmer and Alisha Moriceau at Boies Schiller, Luis Suarez, Patricia Melville, Mark Heise, Dorian Daggs, Thomas Ward, and Alvin Davis of Heise Suarez Melville, Digna French of Squire Patton Boggs, and Joseph Ianno Jr. of Florida Power & Light.