1. Home
  2. |Insights
  3. |Awardees in Multiple-Award Procurements Can Challenge Award Decisions to Fellow Awardees

Awardees in Multiple-Award Procurements Can Challenge Award Decisions to Fellow Awardees

Client Alert | 1 min read | 05.16.16

In Nat’l Air Cargo, Inc. v. U.S. (Apr. 28, 2016), the CFC concluded that awardees in a procurement contemplating the award of multiple IDIQ contracts are interested parties with standing to challenge the validity of the awards to other contract awardees in the procurement. In a significant departure from GAO's stance of the issue, the court held that, even when all task order work under the IDIQ is to be competed at a later date, each awardee suffers a non-trivial injury from the improper addition to the original pool of awardees because the size of the pool has a material impact on the likelihood of winning future task order work.

Insights

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....