What Does the Supreme Court Ruling in Alice v. CLS Mean to a Software Entrepreneur?
It's been a while since I last posted, and I apologize for that. (If interested, here's an alert about what's kept me away: a CFAA trial we wrapped up in late July.) But I am back, so let's look at the latest on the Section...more
The Federal Circuit recently affirmed a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal of patent claims directed to changing the position of components in an image to create the appearance of movement, i.e., animation. The court agreed that the...more
The Federal Circuit has affirmed a lower court decision that patent claims for methods and systems for improving how search results are displayed to users are patent-ineligible. The case is IBM Corp. v. Zillow Group, Inc....more
The U.S. Supreme Court conferred on two patent eligibility cases last week. And, if you are like me, you did not sleep a wink while anxiously awaiting the Court's decision. But if you're reading this, you likely already know...more
AuthWallet asserted a patent directed to methods and systems for processing financial transaction data against Block. Specifically, the claims outline a method for processing financial transaction data using authorization...more
Over the past year, Pebble Tide LLC has asserted its two patents against an array of companies – from banks and insurance companies to entertainment conglomerates – alleging that the defendants infringe patents related to...more
2019 was another milestone year in intellectual property law that resulted in hundreds of decisions by the courts and Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that will affect your company’s litigation, patent prosecution or...more
Plaintiff brought suit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California for alleged infringement of U.S. Patent No. 8,548,902, which related to online loan origination services. The defendant moved for...more
Responding to the invitation from the Supreme Court, the Solicitor General for the United States has filed an amicus brief for the United States in Hikma Pharmaceuticals USC Inc. v. Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. Stakeholders...more
On Friday I will be speaking at the AUTM Eastern Regional Meeting, on a panel discussing patent eligibility issues for life sciences inventions. My topic relates to what the USPTO refers to as “nature-based products,” but...more
On August 9, 2019, the Federal Circuit issued a public opinion in Genetic Veterinary Sciences, Inc. v. LABOKLIN GmbH & Co. KG, finding claims directed to methods for detecting a genetic marker for a canine hereditary disease...more
In Genetic Veterinary Sciences, Inc. v. Laboklin GMBH & Co., the Federal Circuit upheld the district court decision that held claims directed to methods for genotyping a Labrador Retriever invalid under 35 USC § 101 at the...more
In United Cannabis Corp. v. Pure Hemp Collective, Inc., Judge Martinez of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado determined that UCANN's CBD patent was not invalid under 35 USC § 101. The court reached its...more
In Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc., the Federal Circuit distinguished method of treatment claims that involve personalized dosing from the claims invalidated in Mayo v. Prometheus, and found them...more
The USPTO has issued updated guidance for examiners and administrative patent judges (APJs) relating to subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. 101 and examining computer-implemented functional claim limitations under 35...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court ruling that claims directed to the specific field of mass transit were directed to patent-ineligible subject matter under 35 USC § 101 because they...more
The Federal Circuit recently found claims to a specialized graphical user interface (GUI) for trading financial securities eligible in Trading Technologies Int’l v. CQG, No. 2016-2016 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 18, 2017). The Federal...more
A great deal of angst has been generated by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's decision, in Ex parte Itagaki and Nishihara, regarding the panel's application of Section 101 (sua sponte as a new ground of rejection under 37...more
On September 13, the Federal Circuit held that a series of ordered combination of steps related to lip-synch software did not constitute an abstract idea, and was subsequently patent eligible under §101 (McRO, Inc. v. Bandai...more
Intellectual Ventures I LLC ("IV") sued Symantec Corp. and Trend Micro (defendants) for infringement of various claims of three U.S. Patents (Nos. 6,460,050; 6,073,142; and 5,987,610). The District Court held the asserted...more
Over the past two months, the trends I've discussed in my previous blogs on AliceStorm have continued and become more entrenched. In particular, the Federal Circuit has been quite active, issuing nine decisions since late...more
Addressing for the first time the issue of patent validity in the context of an America Invents Act post-grant review, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB or Board) invalidated two livestock patents as unpatentable under...more
Addressing the issue of subject matter eligibility, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s finding that the limitations of the challenged claims, when considered as an ordered...more
Patent owners continue to face an uphill battle at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. According to U.S. Patent Office statistics as of December 31, 2015, a majority (72%) of the 529 Inter Partes Reviews (IPR) proceeding to...more
It's been one year since the Supreme Court's decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. On its face the opinion was relatively conservative, cautioning courts to "tread carefully" before invalidating patents, and emphasizing that...more