Podcast: Blockchain Intellectual Property Considerations for Innovators and Investors
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 US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit determined that it does not have appellate jurisdiction to review noncompulsory patent counterclaims in a case otherwise unrelated to the originally asserted patents. Teradata...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
In 2022, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) did not issue any final written decisions involving design patents. However, it did issue three decisions granting review of challenged design patents and three decisions...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
Main Quest: Does Your Gaming Stream Violate the Copyright Act? Streaming platforms, such as Twitch, Mixer and YouTube Gaming, are quickly becoming household names, with daily viewership rates that rival those of more...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) rejected all pending claims of Mr. Greenstein’s patent application, which was directed to adjusting the amount a person saves and choosing investments with the goal of saving enough...more
Despite the prohibition on patenting “abstract ideas” and the tendency of computer software claims to fall into that category, claims directed at improving faulty software systems may still be patentable if they encompass an...more
Last fall, the PTAB modified its procedures for IPR claim construction, eliminating the use of the broadest reasonable interpretation standard. Since the rule change last year, companies challenging the validity of patents at...more
Over the past half-decade, Congress and the courts have made aggressive efforts to curb the worst abuses of the patent system. In 2013, Congress passed the America Invents Act (AIA), which established the Patent Trial and...more
Addressing the standard for qualifying as a covered business method (CBM) patent and the procedure for analyzing the claims of such patents under 35 USC § 101, the US Court of Appeals found that the challenged claims were...more
In 2014, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, et al., 573 U.S. 208, which significantly altered the patentability of software, business methods,...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently issued three interesting, related opinions interpreting and applying the “technological invention” exception to Covered Business Method Review (“CBM Review”). These...more
As we’ve covered in other summaries, the Federal Circuit continues to define the line between computer-implemented claims that are patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 for being directed to an abstract idea with no...more
Federal Circuit Summary - Before O’Malley, Mayer, and Reyna. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Summary: Claims may be rejected under 35 § U.S.C. 103 based on implicit disclosures of a prior art reference....more
Federal Circuit Summary - Before Prost, O’Malley, and Taranto. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Summary: The PTAB may initially accept an IPR petitioner’s identification of real-parties-in-interest, but...more
In a recent PTAB decision, Petitioners learned the importance of addressing decisions from related IPRs when making arguments before the PTAB. Apple, Inc. and FitBit, Inc. v. Valencell, Inc., Case IPR2017-00319 (PTAB Aug. 6,...more
An expert asserting that a patent claim reciting different features than the prior art is nonetheless “equivalent” to the prior art must address and account for the recited limitations head-on, or otherwise lose persuasive...more
On December 1, 2017, the PTAB denied institution of a covered business method (“CBM”) petition because the challenged patent is directed to a “technological invention” and therefore is ineligible for CBM review under section...more
This third article in the “Surviving Alice” series examines how the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board has responded to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2014 Alice decision. It also shows how applicants can use the PTAB’s...more
In Ex Parte Hafner, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board (the “Board”) reversed the Examiner’s rejection that claims directed to an energy transaction plan were subject-matter ineligible. Ex...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
As many of my readers noticed, I didn't publish any of my own blogs in January and February. As it turned out, I suffered from a peculiar form of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), what I would call SMIAD: Subject Matter...more
The Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Apple, Inc. v. Ameranth, Inc. highlights the potential impact of characterization of recited features as conventional, routine, generic, or known in the field without further...more