Is Biotech Patentable Subject Matter?
Can You Patent Human Genes? ACLU Says No
Yours, Mine and Ours (not yet!): An Update on the Patentability of Human Genes
There is a belief in some quarters that the most significant barrier to patent subject matter eligibility reform is an implacable opposition by companies in the high tech sector because those companies are convinced that the...more
The cloud of uncertainty over patent eligibility of patents for medical diagnostic methods remains. On Monday, the Supreme Court declined the opportunity to revisit patent eligibility under its two-step Mayo test when it...more
The PTAB Cannot Approve or Deny Certificates of Correction - In Honeywell International, Inc. v. Arkema Inc., Arkema France, Appeal Nos. 2018-1151, -1153, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) does not have the...more
Broad Claim Language and Unpredictability in the Art Lead to Non-Enablement - In Enzo Life Sciences, Inc. v. Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., Appeal Nos. 2017-2498, -2499, -2545, -2546, broad patent claims were invalid as...more
The Federal Circuit’s 2018 decision in Berkheimer v. HP Inc. was likely the most consequential development in patent eligibility since the Supreme Court introduced its two-part eligibility framework in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank...more
Just Because Something May Result From a Prior Art Teaching Does Not Make it Inherent in that Teaching - In Personal Web Technologies, LLC v. Apple, Inc., Appeal No. 2018-1599, the Federal Circuit clarified that the mere...more
Before Wallach, Clevenger, and Stoll. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. Summary: Claims directed to a specific method of treatment for specific patients using a specific compound...more
Federal Circuit Summary - Before Prost, Reyna, and Taranto. Appeal from the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. Summary: An abstract idea cannot be used to supply an inventive concept that renders a claim...more
Federal Circuit Summary - Before O’Malley, Reyna, and Hughes. Appeal from the District Court for the Northern District of California. Summary: Testing for the presence of a bacterium that causes tuberculosis and the...more
Inventors of methods of medical testing have had a rough time since the Supreme Court decided Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Labs. Inc. In the Mayo case, the Court considered whether a method of determining whether...more
The Federal Circuit’s decision in Vanda Pharm. Inc. v West-Ward Pharm. Intl. Ltd. (2016-2707, 2016-2708 April 13, 2018) provided some good news on the subject matter eligibility front for innovators and other stakeholders in...more
My last post focused on definitions for the terms “well-understood,” “routine,” and “conventional”—or W-URC—from the subject matter eligibility test set forth in Mayo and further described in Alice. Those terms relate to one...more
An Obviousness Rejection in Patent-Eligibility Clothing? - In Mayo v. Prometheus, the Supreme Court wrote "[w]e recognize that, in evaluating the significance of additional steps, the § 101 patent-eligibility inquiry and,...more
For the third time in two months, the Federal Circuit took on patent subject-matter eligibility in Amdocs (ISRAEL) Ltd. v. Openet Telecom, Inc. In a divided opinion, the Federal Circuit reversed the district court and held...more
The U.S. patent system has long struggled to strike a balance that both encourages patent rights and prevents patent abuse. Finding that balance requires giving patent owners the right amount of patent enforcement power,...more
In a recent decision from the District of Massachusetts, Judge Indira Talwani denied a motion to dismiss a patent suit under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim due to patent ineligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 . In...more
Since the Supreme Court's decision two years ago in Alice v. CLS Bank, courts and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office have found a large percentage of software and computer-related inventions to claim abstract ideas and not...more
I believe that the opinions of the Federal Circuit do not reflect a deep understanding of science and technology. In this blog I'll focus specifically on the issue of laws of nature. It appears that the Federal Circuit...more
On July 29, 2016, S.D.N.Y. District Judge William H. Pauley III granted defendant PlayerLync, LLC’s (“PlayerLync”) motion for judgment on the pleadings and dismissed plaintiffs Multimedia Plus, Inc. and Multimedia...more
The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware accepted Merck’s arguments that method of treatment patents asserted by BMS against its Keytruda product “touch[] upon a natural phenomenon” such that they should be...more
Mankes v. Vivid Seats Ltd. (No. 2015-1909, 4/22/16) (Taranto, Schall, Chen) - Taranto, J. Vacating judgment on the pleadings dismissing cases for inadequately pleading divided infringement and remanding for...more
FEDERAL CIRCUIT CASES - “Bust!” — Federal Circuit Deals Tough News to Inventors of Card Game - The Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) determination of unpatentability for claims...more
The Federal Circuit has issued six decisions since December 1, 2015, all of course invalidating the patents in suit, four per curiam (Clear With Computers v. Altec Indus; Cloud Satchel v. Amazon.com; Wireless Media...more
Highlights of 2015 and What to Watch in 2016 in The United States - Commil USA, llC v. CiSCo SyStemS, inC. (Supreme Court, may 26, 2015). In May, the Supreme Court held that a good faith belief that an asserted patent...more
After reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its ninth annual list of top patent stories. For 2015, we identified twenty stories that were covered on Patent Docs last year that we believe...more