Patent eligibility is a bit of a mess these days. Ever since the Supreme Court handed down the Alice v. CLS Bank decision six years ago, the distinction between what might be subject matter that can be patented and what is...more
Post-Alice, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) is aggressively rejecting software claims under the Alice two-part test, the parameters of which many examiners are still trying to understand. Not...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
On January 10, 2018, the Federal Circuit added Finjan, Inc. v. Blue Coat Sys., Inc., No. 2016-2520 (Fed. Cir.), to its Enfish jurisprudence and upheld the subject matter eligibility of a software patent directed to...more
At a recent Knobbe Martens and Bugnion SpA Seminar, Vlad Teplitskiy presented on patentable subject matter in the U.S. ...more
It has now been over three years since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its transformative patent decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. During that time, the Federal Circuit has issued only a precious few decisions upholding...more
The Federal Circuit recently decided a patent subject-matter eligibility case relating to computer memory in Visual Memory LLC v. Nvidia Corp. In a divided opinion, the Federal Circuit reversed the district court and held...more
On August 4, 2017, the U.S. District Court in the District of Massachusetts found U.S. patent 7267820 (the ‘820 patent), owned by Athena Diagnostics, Inc., to be directed to non-patentable subject matter, and therefore...more
Visual Memory v. Nvidia reverses the grant of a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), ruling that the claims recite an enhanced computer memory system and not an abstract idea under § 101. In Georgetown Rail v. Holland, the...more
In Nichia the Circuit affirms the denial of a permanent injunction because Nichia failed to prove irreparable injury. In RecogniCorp the panel throws out as not being directed to patentable subject matter claims directed to...more
In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court established the current framework for determining patent-eligible subject matter in Alice. The Alice framework is a two-part test, with step one requiring a determination regarding whether a...more
In Zircore, LLC v. Straumann Manufacturing, Inc. (E.D. Tex. 2017), as in many patent litigations since Mayo, Myriad, and Alice, the defendant moved to dismiss the infringement allegations contending that the patents in suit...more
In recent years, software patents have come under fire from legislation (the American Invents Act) that has generally made patents easier to invalidate, and from court decisions (the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice v. CLS...more
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is pleased to present its 2016 Patent Litigation Year in Review. WSGR’s patent litigation practice is nationwide in scope and has received national recognition in recent years, with our...more
As technologies advance, the Patent Office (as well as the Nation’s courts) must utilize Section 101 of the Patent Act to place reasonable limitations on patent eligibility to ensure that our patent system balances the...more
In the wake of Alice the waters of eligibility under section 101 can be challenging to navigate, and particularly so for those seeking to obtain or enforce software patents. A two-part test for eligibility is the standard,...more
Since the Supreme Court decided Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l in 2014, patent practitioners and the courts alike have struggled to find clarity in the patent eligibility framework of 35 U.S.C. § 101. For the Federal Circuit...more
On November 10, 2016, Judge David C. Godbey of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas held that two video upload patents were invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The patents, owned by Youtoo...more
If you have talked about patenting inventions lately, you might have been told that software per se is not eligible for patenting and that you should protect your business’s intellectual property (IP) using copyrights, trade...more
The issue of patent eligible subject matter under 35 USC § 101 affects many different types of inventions including those which incorporate software technology for controlling conventional machines and devices. Although the...more
Synopsys brought a patent infringement action against Mentor Graphics in the Northern District of California, alleging infringement of various claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 5,530,841, 5,680,318, 5,748,488, and 6,836,420. Claim...more
In recent cases addressing patent eligibility of software patent claims, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reached different conclusions in different cases, based on the Alice two-step inquiry. Most notable was...more
The Federal Circuit's recent decision in McRO has been interpreted by many in the patent community as a further signal that the so-called "pendulum" is swinging back to a more favorable position for patentees. There is some...more
Anecdotally, there seems to be a loosening up regarding the application of § 101 by the District Courts. The 2014 Supreme Court decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l has been referred to as sounding a death knell for...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