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Software Patents Computer-Related Inventions

Seyfarth Shaw LLP

101 Whack-a-Mole – Yet Another Software Patent Falls Victim to Section 101

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In 2014, the Supreme Court upended U.S. patent law in the landmark ruling for Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International.  The Alice decision established new standards for determining whether inventions, especially those related...more

Bodman

New Patent Office Guidance Clarifies Application Requirements for Design Patent Protection of Computer-Generated Images, Icons and...

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published new guidance in the Federal Register on November 17, 2023, that clarifies the requirements for design patents of computer-generated images, icons, and graphical user interfaces. ...more

Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP

USPTO Guidance on Design Patents Including a Computer-Generated Electronic Image

The USPTO has prepared soon to be published supplemental guidance for design patent examination for computer-generated electronic images. This guidance relates to determining whether a design patent claim including a...more

AEON Law

Split Decision on Patents for Restricting Access to Computer Files

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A Federal Circuit judge, sitting by designation in the District of Delaware, granted-in-part and denied-in-part a Rule 12(c) motion by the defendant for judgment based on patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The case...more

Quarles & Brady LLP

Recent Trends in Article of Manufacture of Design Patent Claims: GUIs Remain King

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This article supplements our previous post with updated 2021 data. U.S. design patents continue to grow in popularity. Although 2021 saw a slight downtick in the number of issued design patents compared to the previous...more

Knobbe Martens

Federal Circuit Review - October 2021

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No Assembly, No Infringement – Federal Circuit Declines to Expand the “Final Assembler” Theory of Direct Infringement In Acceleration Bay LLC v. Take-Two Interactive Software, Appeal No. 20-1700 the Federal Circuit held that...more

Quarles & Brady LLP

Recent Trends in Article of Manufacture of Design Claims: A Modern Digital Popularity Contest

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Over the last 20 years, the total number of design patents issued per year in the United States has erupted. As illustrated in the graph below and further highlighted in this animated graph, in the 30 year period between the...more

Fox Rothschild LLP

How To Patent Software And Computer-Implemented Business Methods In The US And Abroad

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It is well known that in the U.S., abstract ideas, laws of nature, natural phenomena, and products of nature are all excluded from patenting under 35 U.S.C. § 101. This article briefly outlines various U.S. approaches to...more

Holland & Knight LLP

C.D. California: Online Loan Origination Patent Is Abstract and Invalid Under Section 101

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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

McDermott Will & Emery

Data Processing Software Checks Out as Patent Eligible

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Addressing an issue of software subject matter eligibility, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s judgment on the pleadings under 35 USC § 101, finding claims related to error checking...more

Seyfarth Shaw LLP

California Appellate Court Rules Publication of Trade Secrets, Even Without Owner Consent, Eviscerates Protection

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It is axiomatic that in order for information to be considered a trade secret, it must have been kept secret. But what if the trade secret is disclosed without the owner’s consent? Such was the issue in Intellisoft, Ltd. v....more

Fox Rothschild LLP

Federal Circuit Finds Software License Verification Technology Patent-Eligible Under Section 101

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A new Federal Circuit decision found the claims of a patent directed to software license verification to be eligible for patenting under Section 101 of the Patent Act. In Ancora Technologies, Inc. v. HTC America, Inc., the...more

Dechert LLP

Federal Circuit Decisions Raise Bar for Invalidating Patents on Section 101 Grounds Before Trial

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Two recent Federal Circuit decisions in the U.S., both penned by Judge Moore, significantly raise the bar for accused infringers seeking to invalidate patents on § 101 grounds before trial. Although one prior Federal Circuit...more

Miles & Stockbridge P.C.

New Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions in India

On July 3, 2017, revised Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions (CRIs) were released. The full text of the guidelines may be found here. ...more

Knobbe Martens

Federal Circuit invalidates Affinity’s content-delivery patents for failing to disclose implementation of claimed functions

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The Federal Circuit recently decided two related cases concerning media content delivery patents1 owned by Affinity Labs of Texas, LLC. In both cases, the Federal Circuit held that the patents do not cover patent-eligible...more

Knobbe Martens

Boilerplate – New Consideration in View of Patent Subject Matter

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Can boilerplate language describing possible variations to an invention ever impact validity of a patent? Many software patents include standard “boilerplate” text describing many ways to implement an invention, such as by...more

Troutman Pepper

Federal Circuit Highlights Claim Construction in Patent Eligibility Analysis

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The case demonstrates that the eligibility analysis is highly fact-specific and dependent on properly construed claims. In McRO, Inc. v. Bandai Namco Games America Inc., a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the...more

Fenwick & West LLP

AliceStorm in the Dog Days of Summer

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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

McDermott Will & Emery

Indefiniteness of Means-Plus-Function Claims

Addressing both the circumstances that lead to a claim limitation invoking a means-plus-function construction and indefiniteness issues for means-plus-function claims, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed...more

McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP

Of Technical Tools and Problems: Going Beyond the Two-Prong Alice Test

It is abundantly clear that the Supreme Court's 2014 Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank decision has significantly changed the patent-eligibility landscape for business methods and some types of software inventions. For instance, in...more

Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP

The Government Whittles Away at Life Sciences Patents

The current U.S. Supreme Court has been noted for its hostility to patent holders in general, but the Supreme Court has been especially hostile to any sort of life sciences or software invention. The Court has attempted to...more

Fenwick & West LLP

The Mind as Computer Metaphor: Benson and the Mistaken Application of Mental Steps to Software (Part 1)

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Of the three recognized judicial exceptions to Section 101—laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas—none has proved more resistant to reasoned judicial analysis than the last. From its inception in Gottschalk v....more

Fenwick & West LLP

The Mind as Computer Metaphor: Benson and the Mistaken Application of Mental Steps to Software (Part 3)

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Part III. Functionalism: A Philosophical Argument In Support Of The Functional Equivalence Of Mental Steps And Computer - Even if UDC did not support the Solicitor General’s argument that “the functions themselves are...more

Fenwick & West LLP

The Mind as Computer Metaphor: Benson and the Mistaken Application of Mental Steps to Software (Part 2)

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The fictional form of the mental steps doctrine arose in Benson, where the Court stated: A digital computer, as distinguished from an analog computer, is that which operates on data expressed in digits, solving a problem...more

Seyfarth Shaw LLP

Trade Secrets or Patents – Why Software Presents No “One Size Fits All” Solution

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There are many ways to obtain intellectual property protection for software creations. Many keep the software code confidential and maintain the software as a trade secret....more

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