Patent Law Weblog
Year: 2020
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By Donald Zuhn — Earlier this month, in Sherwin-Williams Co. v. PPG Industries, Inc., Special Master Henry M. Sneath issued a Report and Recommendation in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania that a motion by Defendant PPG Industries, Inc. to partially exclude the opinions of Plaintiff Sherwin-Williams Co.'s expert witness should…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Venue in patent cases has been a topic of recent Supreme Court (TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC) and Federal Circuit (In re Cray) consideration. Last month, the Federal Circuit again considered venue with regard to a motion to transfer and defendant's writ of mandamus challenging the…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Almost three weeks ago, on October 31st, Junior Party the University of California/Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, "CVC") filed its priority motion in Interference No. 106,115, setting forth for the first time its earliest conception date (March 1, 2012) and evidence of that conception for practicing…
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By Michael Borella — One of the more intellectually dishonest aspects of current patent eligibility law is that it allows one to ignore certain claim elements when evaluating claims under 35 U.S.C. § 101. In Mayo v. Prometheus, it was stated that once one has identified a judicial exception to patentability (e.g., a law of…
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McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP will be offering a live webinar entitled "PTAB Top Stories 2020: Discretionary Denials, Motions to Amend, and Arthrex, Oh My!" on November 18, 2020 from 10:00 am to 11:15 am (CT). In this presentation, MBHB attorneys James Lovsin and George "Trey" Lyons, III will take a look at four…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Somewhat remarkably, there is no settled Federal Circuit precedent regarding where a patentee can bring suit against a generic competitor in Hatch-Waxman litigation under 35 U.S.C. § 271(e)(2). While recognizing that this situation has arisen in large part to the disruption created by the Supreme Court in TC Heartland LLC…
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By Michael Borella — This article is Part II of a study on the patent eligibility of graphical user interfaces. Part I was published yesterday. We continue from where we left off, with overviews of a handful of Federal Circuit § 101 decisions addressing claims to graphical user interfaces and a discussion of how the…
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By Michael Borella — I. Introduction 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 information to users. Indeed, an entire field of academia, Human-Computer Interaction, has been established to address how to best allow…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Svante Pääbo created the science of detecting Neanderthal DNA in archeological samples (and living humans) almost single-handedly (see Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes). So it will come as little surprise to many that he published a paper in September describing his discovery of a gene derived from our…
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By Michael Borella — With apologies to David Letterman. If we have learned anything from the last six-and-a-half years of patent eligibility jurisprudence, it is that nobody knows what's going on. Subject matter eligibility is a fundamental requirement for an invention to be patentable. According to 35 U.S.C. § 101, "[w]hoever invents or discovers any…
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