The U.S. Supreme Court in January issued its opinion in Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. v. Sandoz,13-854, which changed the level of deference the Federal Circuit must show to district court claim construction orders—in part.
For more than two decades, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has reviewed claim construction on a de novo basis; in other words, as a pure question of law without showing any deference to the district court. The de novo review standard resulted in a high rate of reversal by the Federal Circuit in claim construction decisions. This caused uncertainty, and the existing standard had been under attack even before being explicitly confirmed in Cybor Corp. v. FAS Technologies, 138 F.3d 1448 (1998).
