Michael Leachman and Robert Waddell, partners on the firm's intellectual property team, received a favorable ruling in their representation of Weeks Marine, Inc. as the defendant in a patent dispute over amphibious excavators.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the Eastern District of Louisiana’s grant of summary judgment of invalidity against the patent asserted by Wilco Marsh Buggies and Draglines Inc. Both the district court and the appellate court found Wilco’s amphibious excavator patent to be invalid due to an on-sale bar under 35 U.S.C. §102 arising from the 1993 sale of a substantially similar amphibious excavator sold by a company called DredgeMasters.

Michael was quoted in a Law360 article, noting that Weeks Marine had consistently maintained from the outset of the litigation that the patent was invalid due to multiple pieces of prior art disclosing the purported inventive feature of the Wilco patent.