A recent decision by a San Francisco federal district court judge imperils the way many significant patent portfolios are developed. In Sonos v. Google, Judge William Alsup held that two patents asserted by Sonos against...more
4/9/2024
/ Appeals ,
Disclosure Requirements ,
Google ,
Patent Applications ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Portfolios ,
Patents ,
Popular ,
Sonos ,
Trial Court Orders ,
USPTO
The European Patent Office and participating European Countries have established a Unified Patent Court and a European patent with unitary effect (also called a Unitary Patent) that will come into effect on June 1, 2023. ...more
In 2019 the Federal Circuit reached the extraordinary conclusion, in American Axle & Manufacturing, Inc. v. Neapco Holdings LLC, that a patent for a method of making a drive shaft was invalid because it was directed to a...more
In Cosmokey Solutions Gmbh & Co. KG v. Duo Security LLC, on October 4, 2021, the Federal Circuit jumped straight to Step Two of the Supreme Court’s two-step method for determining patent eligibility and upheld a user...more
Ending a struggle between two tech titans stretching over more than a decade, the Supreme Court held in a 6-2 opinion that Google’s copying of key portions of the Application Programming Interface (API) of Oracle’s Java SE...more
5/6/2021
/ Application Programming Interface (APIs) ,
Copyright ,
Copyright Infringement ,
Fair Use ,
Google ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
IP License ,
Java ,
Oracle v Google ,
Software Developers ,
Transformative Use
In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, decided by the Supreme Court on April 27, the principle at stake was whether, under the copyright law, a state legislature can have the rights of an “author” in publishing an annotated...more
6/2/2020
/ Annotated Case Law ,
Appeals ,
Copyright ,
Copyright Infringement ,
Copyrightable Subject Matter ,
Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org Inc ,
Government Edicts Doctrine ,
Legislative Duties ,
Reaffirmation ,
Reversal ,
SCOTUS ,
Statutory Code ,
The Copyright Act
In a remarkable decision, Allen v. North Carolina, the Supreme Court held on March 23 that the state of North Carolina can lawfully plunder a videographer’s copyrighted videos and photographs of the recovery of Blackbeard’s...more
4/28/2020
/ Abrogation ,
Allen v Cooper ,
Authors ,
Binding Precedent ,
Congressional Intent ,
Copyright ,
Copyright Infringement ,
Copyright Ownership ,
Copyright Remedy Clarification Act ,
Eleventh Amendment ,
Fourteenth Amendment ,
Lack of Authority ,
SCOTUS ,
Sovereign Immunity
The Director of the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has been asked to upgrade the status of two recent decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), which determined that two medical innovations are eligible to be...more
4/8/2020
/ Abstract Ideas ,
Appeals ,
Director of the USPTO ,
Innovation ,
Life Sciences ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
Pharmaceutical Patents ,
Precedential Opinion ,
Reversal
In a breathtaking decision, the Federal Circuit has ruled that a patented method of making an automobile drive shaft is not eligible to be patented because it is “directed to a natural law.” In so ruling, the court has...more
11/22/2019
/ Automotive Industry ,
CLS Bank v Alice Corp ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Dissenting Opinions ,
Manufacturers ,
Manufacturing Method Patents ,
Myriad-Mayo ,
Patent Invalidity ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
Product of Nature Doctrine ,
SCOTUS ,
Section 101 ,
Section 112
In a remarkable collection of opinions that have no direct effect on the law, the Federal Circuit has implicitly given its support to efforts in Congress to override the Supreme Court’s decision in Mayo v. Prometheus, which...more
On April 17, 2019, Senators Tillis (R-NC) and Coons (D-DE), along with a bipartisan group of three members of the House of Representatives, announced the release of a framework on Section 101 patent reform. Senators Tillis...more
5/23/2019
/ Abstract Ideas ,
AIPLA ,
Biotechnology ,
CLS Bank v Alice Corp ,
Computer-Related Inventions ,
Intellectual Property Owner’s Association (IPO) ,
Judicial Exception ,
Mayo v. Prometheus ,
Novelty ,
Obviousness ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
Product of Nature Doctrine ,
Proposed Legislation ,
SCOTUS ,
Section 101 ,
Section 102 ,
Section 103 ,
Section 112
In Data Engine Technologies LLC v. Google LLC, holding patent-eligible a spreadsheet provided with tabs to facilitate navigation, the Federal Circuit continued, in late 2018, to refine the law of patent eligibility of...more
In a notice of proposed rulemaking announced January 4, 2019 and published in the Federal Register on January 7, 2019, Director Andrei Iancu of the Patent and Trademark Office has seized the initiative in proposing clear...more
In a second notice of proposed rulemaking (besides the one for patent eligibility) announced January 4, 2019 and published in the Federal Register on January 7, 2019, the Patent and Trademark Office has proposed guidelines...more
1/23/2019
/ Claim Construction ,
Computer-Related Inventions ,
Means-Plus-Function ,
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) ,
Patent Applications ,
Patents ,
Proposed Guidance ,
Section 112 ,
Software Patents ,
USPTO ,
Written Descriptions