Globus Medical came away from the Federal Circuit with a clean sweep on Friday. In a precedential opinion in Moskowitz Family LLC v. Globus Medical, Inc., No. 2024-1696, the appeals court left every contested ruling from the district court standing: the summary judgment of noninfringement, the construction of the claim term “universal,” and the refusal to unwind a defense jury verdict through judgment as a matter of law. Judge Prost wrote for a panel that also included Judges Schall and Stoll.
Three patents on spinal fusion hardware drove the case. U.S. Patent No. 8,353,913 describes an implant position tool that works with the implant and screw guide to achieve a precise screw trajectory. U.S. Patent No. 9,889,022 covers an apparatus for facilitating bone and screw fusion, built around a bidirectional screw system for the spine. U.S. Patent No. 10,478,319 describes an expandable implant meant to sit between two vertebral bodies, encourage bone fusion, and maintain anterior column height. Four claims reached the appeal: claims 1 and 10 of the ‘913 patent, claim 47 of the ‘022 patent, and claim 1 of the ‘319 patent.
Moskowitz Family LLC sued in November 2019, accusing a group of Globus products of infringing those three patents and several others. At the Markman stage, Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania read “universal” to describe a spacer built for insertion anywhere in the spine, cervical, thoracic, or lumbar, through any approach. Moskowitz asked the court to clarify that ruling and was turned down. It then dropped claim 15 of the ‘913 patent, which uses “universal” in the claim body, while pressing ahead on claims where the word appears only in the preamble.
That choice set up Globus’s summary judgment motion on the ‘913 and ‘022 patents. Moskowitz took the position that the preambles were not limiting, while conceding that it could not prove infringement if they were. The district court held the preambles limiting and entered judgment for Globus on both patents. The remaining case went to a jury on claim 1 of the ‘319 patent and two other patents that never reached the appeal. The fight over the ‘319 patent narrowed to whether Globus’s devices met a limitation requiring a gripper to cooperate with a handle. The jury found no infringement and rejected the invalidity attack, and the court later denied Moskowitz’s post-trial motion.
On the preamble question, Moskowitz argued the language supplied no antecedent basis, no structure, and nothing fundamental to the invention. The Federal Circuit saw it the other way. In the ‘913 patent, terms the claim body relies on, including the intervertebral cage and the screw guides, appear first in the preamble, a strong signal under circuit precedent that the preamble is doing real work. Claim 47 of the ‘022 patent failed for a related reason: read alone, the body never sets out a complete invention. The panel also leaned on the shared specification, which frames the invention as a universal bidirectional screw system usable across spinal regions and surgical routes. Because the drafter used preamble and body together to define what was invented, that combined definition marks the patent’s boundaries. A fallback argument built on TomTom, Inc. v. Adolph also failed, since “universal” is woven into the rest of the preamble rather than reciting a mere intended use, and would be limiting even taken by itself.
Moskowitz fared no better attacking the construction. Its position was that the district court had demanded a one-size-fits-all device capable of serving every patient and every part of the spine, which it called physically impossible. It offered “stand-alone” as an alternative. The panel disagreed, citing specification passages covering all three spinal regions and posterior, anterior, and lateral approaches. As the court described them, the patents merge spacer and transvertebral screw fusion functions without locking in a size, a position, or an insertion technique. That adaptability is what earns the label. With noninfringement conceded under the construction, summary judgment stood.
The ‘319 patent turned on trial evidence rather than claim language, since neither side sought a construction of “cooperating” and the jury instructions reflected its ordinary meaning. Reviewing under Third Circuit standards, the panel found ample support for the verdict. Globus’s expert described cooperation as requiring action and reaction between the two components, and the company’s director of product development testified that the handle does nothing to operate the gripping mechanism. Moskowitz’s expert said little on the point and never defined the term, leaving the jury free to discount him.
A final argument about curtailed rebuttal testimony also failed. The trial judge had asked Moskowitz in advance what its expert would clarify, and nothing it identified touched the cooperating limitation.
SOURCE: https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1696.OPINION.9-11-2026_2754043.pdf
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