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"Should Have Known" Standard Applied to CDA Statute of Limitations

Client Alert | 1 min read | 02.28.13

In what seems likely to be a major landmark in the evolving interpretation of the CDA statute of limitations, the ASBCA has held that the statute began to run in 1999, when a DCMA price analyst had all the information the government needed to recognize that it had a claim for an alleged CAS violation, even though the responsible CO may not have been aware of the claim until an audit report was issued in 2006. The ASBCA held that, in the absence of any evidence of trickery or concealment, the government "should have known" that it had a claim based on the contractor's 1999 cost proposal that appeared to be inconsistent with its disclosed accounting practice and that the government could not unilaterally extend the statute of limitations by failing to perform an audit that put the CO on actual notice that there might be a claim.


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Client Alert | 2 min read | 11.14.25

Defining Claim Terms by Implication: Lexicography Lessons from Aortic Innovations LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corporation

Claim construction is a key stage of most patent litigations, where the court must decide the meaning of any disputed terms in the patent claims.  Generally, claim terms are given their plain and ordinary meaning except under two circumstances: (1) when the patentee acts as its own lexicographer and sets out a definition for the term; and (2) when the patentee disavows the full scope of the term either in the specification or during prosecution.  Thorner v. Sony Comput. Ent. Am. LLC, 669 F.3d 1362, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2012).  The Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Aortic Innovations LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corp. highlights that patentees can act as their own lexicographers through consistent, interchangeable usage of terms across the specification, effectively defining terms by implication....