The esteemed authors of Patent Docs have written of the need to reconsider the Federal Circuit's approach to section 101 eligibility, given the court's latest expansion and en-banc vote on subject-matter eligibility in AAM v....more
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
In Core Wireless Licensing S.A.R.L. v. LG Electronics, Inc. et al., the Federal Circuit offered rare guidance on the contours of patent eligible subject matter under § 101. The two related asserted patents, both entitled...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
The fate of subject matter eligibility is far from certain today; however, there are a few application drafting takeaways from the Visual Memory case that can help in getting computer implemented inventions to allowance...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
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
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
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
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
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
The Federal Circuit overturned a District Court ruling that a patent directed to automated lip synchronization and manipulation of animated characters’ facial expressions was invalid under Section 101 as being an abstract...more
The Federal Circuit has released its long-awaited opinion in McRo v. Bandai, reversing the lower court’s decision that the claims were ineligible subject matter. McRo’s invention in U.S. 6,307,576 was a method used in 3D...more
Core Wireless Licensing brought an action against LG Electronics in the Eastern District of Texas. Core contended that LG infringed claim 21 of its U.S. Patent No. 7,804,850. LG moved for summary judgment on the grounds...more
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
Recent covered business method (CBM) review decisions by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB or Board) demonstrate that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s Enfish decision (IP Update, Vol. 19, No. 6) will...more