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Podcast: The Briefing - A Prototypical Corporate Salesperson is Not Patentable
Ways to Amend the Claims in the Patent Invalidation Proceedings
Patent Right Evaluation Report in China’s Patent System
Stages of Patent Invalidation Proceedings
The U.S. Supreme Court has once again been urged to revisit 35 U.S.C. § 101, the statute governing patent eligibility. Audio Evolution Diagnostics, Inc. (AED) filed a petition for writ of certiorari, challenging the Federal...more
Two bills recently introduced in Congress could significantly affect the current patent litigation landscape. The bipartisan bills are titled the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2023 and the Promoting and Respecting...more
On July 31, 2020, in American Axle v. Neapco, the Federal Circuit split 6-6 on the question of whether to grant en banc review of a panel decision on patent eligibility seen by many as an unwarranted extension of the...more
There is little rhyme nor reason in the cases the Supreme Court decides to review. But the Court has patterns in its case selection that do (to some degree) probe what the Justices think are important questions. One pattern...more
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
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
Knobbe Martens Partners Paul Conover, Irfan Lateef, and Curtis Huffmire presented "Patent Law Update for Medical Device Companies 2018" at the MedTech Innovation Summit in San Francisco, CA on November 28, 2018. This session...more
In 2014, the United States Supreme Court in a landmark decision in the field of Patent Law (Alice Corp. v. CLS Int’l) invalidated software patents related to mitigating settlement risk. Relying on the now-infamous Section...more
I was reminded of this question, often posed by my dad to remind me not to become a slave to statistics, by two dramatic things that happened last week. On the one hand, at the IAM 2017 Patent Law and Policy conference in...more
Arbitration - Waymo v. Uber Technologies, 870 F.3d 1342 (Fed. Cir. 2017) - Waymo sued Uber and others for trade secret misappropriation and patent infringement. Uber contends that Waymo should be compelled to...more
An Obviousness Rejection in Patent-Eligibility Clothing? - In Mayo v. Prometheus, the Supreme Court wrote "[w]e recognize that, in evaluating the significance of additional steps, the § 101 patent-eligibility inquiry and,...more
While the Supreme Court decisions in Myriad and Mayo have been applied to diagnostic-type claims, method of treatment patents were thought to be safe from the recent judicial expansion of the patent-(in)eligibility doctrine....more
On April 5, 2016, the Federal Circuit heard oral arguments in Rapid Litigation Mgmt. Ltd. v. CellzDirect Inc., where the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois held invalid claims directed to a “method of...more
It comes as no surprise that Sequenom has filed a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court, asking the Court to review the Federal Circuit decision that upheld the district court decision that held its diagnostic method...more
Clare v. Chrysler Group LLC (No. 2015-1999, 3/31/16) (Prost, Moore, Wallach) - Moore, J. Affirming summary judgment of non-infringement of patents related to storage compartment for pickup trucks. The Court rejected...more
With the explosion of 35 U.S.C. § 101 challenges since Alice v. CLS Bank,1 litigants and courts are well familiar with its applicable two-part inquiry. Overlaying and shaping the Alice inquiry, however, are the parties’...more
PTAB Ignores District Court Claim Construction, Finds Patent Invalid - On February 19, 2016, the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in the Covered Business Method (CBM) patent...more
Last year I christened the post-Alice impact on patents #Alicestorm, riffing on the hashtag #hellastorm used to refer to the Pineapple Express storms the drenched the Bay Area in December 2014. This year we have El Niño...more
The Federal Circuit has issued six decisions since December 1, 2015, all of course invalidating the patents in suit, four per curiam (Clear With Computers v. Altec Indus; Cloud Satchel v. Amazon.com; Wireless Media...more
Judge Gaughan of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss after finding three Cleveland Clinic Foundation diagnostic patents invalid under 35 USC § 101. While the...more
Patent Claims (and Specification) Lacking in Detail Fail under 35 U.S.C. § 101 - The Federal Circuit issued an opinion on December 28, 2015 in the case captioned Vehicle Intelligence and Safety LLC v. Mercedes-Benz USA,...more
Last week, Appellee Natera, Inc. filed its response to the petition for rehearing en banc filed by Appellants Sequenom, Inc. and Sequenom Center for Molecular Medicine, LLC in August (see "Sequenom Requests Rehearing En...more
On Monday, Appellee Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. filed its response to the petition for rehearing en banc filed by Appellants Sequenom, Inc. and Sequenom Center for Molecular Medicine, LLC in August. In its response, Ariosa...more
USPTO SealAs the fallout from the Supreme Court's Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l case makes its way through the federal courts and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), applicants and patentees continue to struggle...more
Earlier this summer, in Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. v. Sequenom, Inc., the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision by the District Court for the Northern District of California granting summary judgment of invalidity of the asserted...more