Can You Patent Human Genes? ACLU Says No
AMERICAN AXLE & MANUFACTURING v. NEAPCO HOLDINGS LLC - Before Dyk, Moore, and Taranto. Appeal from the District Court for the District of Delaware. Summary: Claims directed to a law of nature, without more, may not be...more
Federal Circuit (Again) Hands Down Revised Opinion in Response to Petition for Rehearing - Recently the Federal Circuit has begun a practice of withdrawing an original opinion and handing down a substitute opinion in...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
Case Summary- On March 17, 2020, the Federal Circuit found that patents claiming methods of preparing an extracellular fraction of cell-free DNA that is enriched in fetal DNA were patent eligible and not invalid under 35...more
This month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has handed down a pair of opinions concerning Section 101 in the field of pharmaceuticals and life sciences. In both cases, the district courts held claims of the...more
The latest Federal Circuit decision on subject matter eligibility in the life sciences came down (by a divided court) in favor of eligibility, in Illumina, Inc. v. Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. The claims at issue fell into the...more
Ever since the Supreme Court's decision in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories was handed down in 2012, diagnostic method claims have been routinely invalidated by the district courts and those decisions...more
The PTAB Cannot Approve or Deny Certificates of Correction - In Honeywell International, Inc. v. Arkema Inc., Arkema France, Appeal Nos. 2018-1151, -1153, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) does not have the...more
Just Because Something May Result From a Prior Art Teaching Does Not Make it Inherent in that Teaching - In Personal Web Technologies, LLC v. Apple, Inc., Appeal No. 2018-1599, the Federal Circuit clarified that the mere...more
Before Wallach, Clevenger, and Stoll. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. Summary: Claims directed to a specific method of treatment for specific patients using a specific compound...more
In Athena Diagnostics Inc. v. Mayo Collaborative Services, LLC, the Federal Circuit has once again held that claims directed to a diagnostic method are invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101 for being directed to ineligible subject...more
Federal Circuit Finds Claims Directed to Tabbed Spreadsheets Patent Eligible and Claims Directed to Tracking Changes in Documents Ineligible Under Section 101 - In Data Engine Technologies LLC v. Google LLC, Appeal No....more
Federal Circuit Summary - Before O’Malley, Reyna, and Hughes. Appeal from the District Court for the Northern District of California. Summary: Testing for the presence of a bacterium that causes tuberculosis and the...more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently issued a memo providing examination guidance on the subject matter eligibility of the method of treatment claims. The memo discussed the recent Federal Circuit...more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently published a new revision to the Ninth Edition of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) (Revision 08.2017). This revision added a number of chapters...more
In Ex Parte Timothy, the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) affirmed the Examiner’s rejection of personalized medicine treatment claims. This decision highlights the PTAB’s willingness to invalidate claims that it...more
The White House recently announced the Cancer Moonshot Task Force, an effort to “focus on making the most of Federal investments, targeted incentives, private sector efforts from industry and philanthropy, patient engagement...more
Denying a petition for en banc rehearing, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit confirmed the panel’s decision that Sequenom’s patent claiming “a method of detecting paternally inherited nucleic acid” is an...more