Hooper, Kearney and Macklin on Cutting Edge Topics in the False Claims Act
The Federal Circuit's inchoate attempts to fashion a consistent, rational application of the Supreme Court's recent subject matter eligibility jurisprudence, while understandably Herculean in view of the difficulties inherent...more
Federal Circuit (Again) Hands Down Revised Opinion in Response to Petition for Rehearing - Recently the Federal Circuit has begun a practice of withdrawing an original opinion and handing down a substitute opinion in...more
Last week, the Federal Circuit affirmed the rejection by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of claims 1-3 of U.S. Patent Application No. 15/726,162 as being patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The '162 application, which...more
Claims Directed to Selecting Fishing Hooks for Use Are Not Patentable - Christopher John Rudy, represented pro se, appealed from a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board ("Board") affirming the rejection of claims...more
The Appointments Clause: Ensuring That PTAB Decisions Are Subject to Constitutional Checks and Balances In Arthrex, Inc. v. Smith & Nephew, Inc., Appeal No. 18-2251, the Federal Circuit ruled that, under the then-existing...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
Reasonably Continuous Diligence Is Not Negated If an Inventor Works On Improvements or Evaluates Alternatives to the Claimed Invention - In ATI Technologies ULC v. IANCU, Appeal Nos. 2016-2222, -2406, -2608, the Federal...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
Addressing the various factors a court may consider in order to determine whether a claim is “directed to” an abstract idea, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the district court’s dismissal of all claims...more
In Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland Heartlab, Inc. v. True Health Diagnostics LLC, (Cleveland Clinic II)[1], a unanimous panel of the Federal Circuit provided yet another guidepost illustrating what is not...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
A Post-URAA Patent that Issues After but Expires Before a Related Pre-URAA Patent Is Not a Double-Patenting Reference Against the Pre-URAA Patent - In Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. v. Breckenridge Pharmaceutical Inc.,...more
Federal Circuit Summaries - Before Chen, Mayer, and Bryson. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Summary: Claims directed to the abstract idea of rules for playing a dice game are not transformed into patent...more
Federal Circuit Finds Claims Directed to Tabbed Spreadsheets Patent Eligible and Claims Directed to Tracking Changes in Documents Ineligible Under Section 101 - In Data Engine Technologies LLC v. Google LLC, Appeal No....more
Federal Circuit Finds Claims Issued from Reexamination Co-Pending with Appeal Ineligible Where the Changes Did Not Affect Section 101 Eligibility - In SAP AMERICA, Inc. v. InvestPic, LLC, Appeal No. 2017-2081, the...more
Over the last year, several Federal Circuit judges have filed opinions lamenting the state of the case law that interprets the abstract idea exception to patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. For example, Judge Linn...more
Federal Circuit Summary - Before Judges Reyna, Bryson, and Stoll. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. Summary: A claim that recites a specific method for navigating through...more
Federal Circuit Summary - Before Reyna, Wallach, and Hughes. Appeal from the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Summary: When the only unconventional feature of the patent claim is what has already been...more
Federal Circuit Summary - Before Taranto, Plager, and Chen. Appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Summary: A patent claim is directed to an abstract idea where it broadly recites a...more
Federal Circuit Summaries - Before Lourie, O’Malley, and Taranto. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Summary: Claims may be determined patent ineligible on the pleadings...more
In a precedential opinion, the Federal Circuit affirmed the determination by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) in a covered business method review proceeding that the claims of U.S. Patent No. 6,950,807 for providing...more
Claims Directed to Monitoring and Analyzing Data Held to Be Invalid under § 101 - In Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A., Appeal No. 2015-1778, the Federal Circuit upheld the district court’s grant of summary...more