Legislative Exclusions of Software (21st Century Cures Act) -
The 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act), signed into law on Dec. 13, 2016, was designed to accelerate medical product development and bring new innovations...more
Co-authored by: Phillip Wolfe In Cellspin Soft, Inc. v. Fitbit, Inc., the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) rendered an important decision declaring that the presumption of validity under § 282 includes the...more
The Promise of Digital Therapeutics -
According to Wikipedia, digital therapeutics can be defined as a treatment or therapy that utilizes digital health technologies to spur changes in patient behavior. ...more
More Americans than ever before are suffering from mental and emotional distress. In the United States, the mental health problem is exacerbated by issues across infrastructure, government and culture. However, because the...more
On Jan. 4, 2019, the USPTO announced revised guidance relevant to Section 101 rejections (“2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance”). The 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance explains that a...more
In Finjan v. Blue Coat Systems, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rendered a decision containing interesting rulings on patentable subject matter (affirming the District Court determination that certain claims were...more
In Visual Memory v. NVIDIA (Fed. Cir. 2017), the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s holding that Visual Memory’s U.S. Patent No. 5,953,740 is drawn to patent-ineligible subject matter. Instead, the court ruled that...more
On July 25, the USPTO published a new report titled “Patent Eligible Subject Matter: Report on Views and Recommendations From the Public.” The report attempts to synthesize public comments on the appropriate boundaries of...more
In Amdocs v. Openet Telecom, the Federal Circuit reversed a district court ruling that the claims of several patents were invalid under 35 USC § 101. Judge Plager authored the opinion for the court, and he was joined by Judge...more
Earlier this year, the Federal Circuit ruled en banc in Lexmark v. Impression, the most significant exhaustion ruling since the Supreme Court’s Quanta decision. In response to Impression’s cert. petition, the Supreme Court...more
In Bascom Global Internet v. AT&T Mobility LLC, Bascom Global sued for infringement of US Patent No. 5,987,606, titled “Method And System For Content Filtering Information Retrieved From An Internet Computer Network,”...more
This is an update to my recent article about the Federal Circuit’s decision in Enfish v. Microsoft.
In a memo to the Patent Examining Corps dated May 19, 2016, Deputy Commissioner Robert Bahr said that the Enfish...more
On May 5, 2016, the USPTO released an update to its examiner guidance on patent subject matter eligibility. The update includes a new set of life science examples, a memorandum to the patent examining corps with instructions...more
The notion of strategic claim drafting, which experienced patent practitioners understand, is all about writing specific, narrowly defined claims to cover the strategically important “choke points” in a value chain. The...more
The recent decision in In re Smith (Fed. Cir. 2016), in which the Federal Circuit affirmed the rejection of claims 1-18 as being ineligible for patent under 35 USC § 101, represents another example of the shrinking scope of...more
As previously reported, on December 15, 2014, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published a document titled “2014 Interim Guidance on Patent Subject Matter Eligibility” (Interim Guidance). This Interim Guidance was...more
On December 15, 2014, the USPTO published a document titled “2014 Interim Guidance on Patent Subject Matter Eligibility” (Interim Guidance). The new Interim Guidance follows the previous preliminary examination instructions...more
As reported here last month, the USPTO recently issued a memorandum to the Examination Corps, entitled “Preliminary Examination Instructions in view of the Supreme Court Decision in Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank...more
On June 25, 2014, the USPTO issued a memorandum to the Examination Corps, entitled “Preliminary Examination Instructions in view of the Supreme Court Decision in Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, et al.”...more