PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Trending Now: An IP Podcast - Artificial Intelligence Patents & Emerging Regulatory Laws
John Harmon on the Evolving Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Intellectual Property
What You Should Know About Seeking Patent Protection in Vietnam
JONES DAY PRESENTS®: Artificial Intelligence: The Growing Role of AI on Patents
Drafting Software Patents In A Post-Alice World
On April 16, 2025, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) denied institution of inter partes review (IPR) for several claims of U.S. Patent No. 7,187,307, owned by Universal Connectivity Technologies, Inc. HP Inc., Dell...more
The Federal Circuit in Voice Tech Corp. v. Unified Patents, LLC, No. 2022-2163 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 1, 2024) (Lourie, Chen, and Cunningham), affirmed the PTAB’s determination that claims of Voice Tech Corp.’s (“Voice Tech”) U.S....more
Avoiding § 101 Eligibility Issues in Internet-Centric Method Claims - In Weisner v. Google LLC, Appeal No. 21-2228, the Federal Circuit held that the specific implementation of an abstract idea, such as improving Internet...more
Summary: A patentee’s allegation that computer method claims made data analysis more efficient, without reference to the function or operation of the computer itself, was not sufficient to overcome a challenge under 35 U.S.C....more
GENUINE ENABLING TECHNOLOGY LLC V. NINTENDO CO., LTD - Before Newman, Reyna, and Stoll. Appeal from the Western District of Washington. Summary: A finding of prosecution disclaimer must be supported by an unambiguous...more
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
COSMOKEY SOLUTIONS GMBH & CO. KG V. DUO SECURITY LLC - Before O’Malley, Reyna, and Stoll. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. Summary: Patent claims directed to...more
UNIVERSAL SECURE REGISTRY LLC v. APPLE INC. Before Taranto, Wallach, and Stoll. Appeal from U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. Summary: A patentee’s reference to existing known methods and techniques in...more
On January 13, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in the following cases...more
It is often said that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” The same basic principle applies to patent infringement—as a defendant in a Texas patent case recently discovered, much to its chagrin. The US District for the...more
Rocksmith sued Yousician Oy, alleging infringement of its patent entitled "interactive guitar game." The patent discloses software for learning to play the guitar and provides an "effective way to provide interactive method...more
NetSoc filed suit against several online dating platforms, alleging infringement of its patent entitled "Method and System for Establishing and Using a Social Network to Facilitate People in Life Issues." The defendants moved...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
In Japan, the Intellectual Property High Court (IPHC) established in 2005 has jurisdiction to handle intellectual property cases as second instance, and registered IP cases appealed against trial decisions of the Japan Patent...more
With its Alice and Mayo opinions, the U.S. Supreme Court dramatically changed how patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 is defined. ...more
In an appeal from the Northern District of Florida, Voter Verified, Inc. asked the Federal Circuit to reverse the lower court’s dismissal of its patent infringement lawsuit against Election Systems & Software, LLC. ...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
In a new twist in competitor-based lawsuits involving cloud computing, Centripetal Networks, a relative newcomer, filed a patent lawsuit against industry incumbent and Fortune 100 Company Cisco in the U.S. District Court for...more
Automated Tracking Solutions, LLC, (“ATS”) appealed findings of invalidity for failing to claim patent-eligible subject matter by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. In a decision rendered...more
Many people have misperceptions about what intellectual property (IP) protects, and some common IP misconceptions are debunked below. (1) Ideas Cannot Be Patented. Only inventions can be patented. The legal...more
The Federal District Court in Delaware recently denied a motion to dismiss a patent infringement case involving a video game networking technology patent based on the patent allegedly being invalid for lack of...more
On January 18, 2017 the Federal Circuit issued an opinion in Trading Technologies Int’l., Inc. v. CQG, Inc., its first decision finding a user interface to be patent eligible subject matter. The court designated the opinion...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