Podcast: Blockchain Intellectual Property Considerations for Innovators and Investors
Innovators seeking patent protection for software inventions should be aware that all software inventions face patent-eligibility issues. Nevertheless, patent practitioners who are experienced in the art of software patent...more
On July 17, 2024, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published guidance regarding the patent subject matter eligibility of claims concerning technology applicable to artificial intelligence (AI)....more
In a July 16 press release, The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that it issued a guidance update on “patent subject matter eligibility to address innovation in critical emerging technologies including...more
Senior Circuit Judge Bryson of the Federal Circuit, sitting by designation in the District of Delaware, recently granted-in-part and denied-in-part a Rule 12(c) motion for judgment based on patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C....more
The interpretation of 35 U.S.C. 101 has been in flux for over a decade. Please join MBHB Partner Michael Borella, Ph.D., as he discusses its latest iteration, how patent eligibility is currently viewed by the USPTO and...more
Innovators seeking patent protection for entertainment software inventions should be aware that all software inventions face patent-eligibility issues. Nevertheless, patent practitioners who are experienced in the art of...more
On August 2, 2022, Sen. T. Tillis introduced the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (S.4734) in an effort to clarify which inventions are actually patentable and to codify those that are not. Since the Supreme Court handed...more
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is at it again, gaslighting the public in its ongoing crusade against patents. While the EFF does perform some commendable work, mostly in the areas of individual privacy rights, its...more
In the case USADATA Inc. v. DataWidget LLC, No. CV-21-00526-PHX-DLR, 2021 WL 5084283 (D. Ariz. Nov. 1, 2021), the patent at issue is titled, "System and Method for Selling Customer-Specific Data Subsets on a Third-Party...more
A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit highlights the importance of describing any improvements to technology in the specification. In the case of Whitserve LLC v. Dropbox, Inc., WhitServe...more
The Supreme Court's Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l case has been criticized for setting forth a patent eligibility analysis that is unworkably subjective. As a consequence, the validity of particular types of inventions,...more
Stanford University applied for a U.S. patent for statistical methods of predicting haplotype phase. In 2019, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board rejected the application as ineligible subject matter. Last week, a panel of the...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit looked at a patent directed to a data privacy system that described users operating mobile device apps to "socialize, bank, shop, and navigate." As users operate such apps,...more
In 2019, the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah dismissed Simio's lawsuit against FlexSim Software, finding that the asserted patent was ineligible under Section 101. Simio responded by asking the court to vacate...more
This decision is bad. Not an American Axle level of bad, but still quite far from good. Simio sued FlexSim in the District of Utah for alleged infringement of its U.S. Patent No. 8,156,468. FlexSim moved for dismissal on...more
Those waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on Section 101 were, once again, disappointed this week. On Nov. 16, 2020, in the case of WhitServe LLC v. Donuts Inc. et al., case no. 20-325 (U.S. Supreme Court), the...more
The evolution of graphical user interfaces parallels the evolution of computing technology itself. As computers grow more powerful and sophisticated, so does their ability to display cutting-edge representations of...more
Software patents have garnered a lot of attention in recent years due, at least in part, to the proliferation of software-enabled devices, such as smartphones and tablets, and the use of software to control a range of devices...more
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Alice v. CLS Bank, patent stakeholders have faced many difficulties navigating the world of patent-eligibility. Through many Federal Circuit decisions and Guidance given by the U.S....more
WhitServe LLC asserted two patents against Donuts Inc., both of which claimed systems and methods by which providers of professional services, using the internet, could send reminders to clients and obtain responses from...more
Claims for an Interactive 3D Virtual Environment Found Patent Ineligible - In the field of computer gaming, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California recently granted Defendants' Rule 12 motion...more
Late last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit delivered ShoppersChoice.com the affirmation it ordered in Electronic Communication Technologies, LLC (ECT) v. ShoppersChoice.com, LLC. In doing so, the court...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that patent claims directed to a communication system were patent eligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because the claimed invention changes the normal operation of a...more
By reversing the lower court’s ruling that the asserted claims were not patent-eligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 in Uniloc v. LG Electronics, the Federal Circuit resurrected Uniloc’s infringement suit against LG Electronics. It...more
In deciding patent eligibility of computer-implemented claims, courts consider whether the claims merely implement a generic computer or whether they improve the functioning of the computer itself. The Federal Circuit...more