Patent Law Weblog
recent posts
- Why the Alice Test is Stupid, Part IV: The Usefulness Paradox
- Teva Capitulates to Federal Trade Commission Coercion
- USPTO Issues Memoranda on Subject Matter Eligibility
- USPTO Revokes Guidance on AI-Assisted Inventorship, But Rules Remain Basically the Same
- Why the Alice Test is Stupid, Part III: Eligible Independent Claims Can Have Ineligible Dependent Claims
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Category: Patentable Subject Matter
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Federal Circuit Calls "No Bet" on Beteiro's Asserted Patents By Andrew Velzen — Recently, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued an opinion in Beteiro, LLC v. DraftKings Inc.[1] This case is yet another case where the Federal Circuit upheld invalidity under § 101. Here, the patents in question were directed to…
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By Michael Borella — As required by President Biden's Executive Order 14110 ("Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence"), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has published an update to its subject matter eligibility guidance for examiners regarding inventions employing artificial intelligence (AI). As this is the first update to the USPTO's…
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By Kevin E. Noonan – A consequence (predominantly negative) of the Supreme Court's recent foray into defining (however inadequately) the contours of patent-eligible subject matter is to give the district courts (and to a somewhat lesser extent, the Patent and Trademark Office) free rein to apply any Supreme Court precedent (no matter how archaic, ill-defined or incoherently…
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By Donald Zuhn –- After reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its 17th annual list of top patent stories. For 2023, we identified ten stories that were covered on Patent Docs last year that we believe had (or are likely to have) a significant impact on patent practitioners and…
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By Kevin E. Noonan – Not surprisingly, the Federal Circuit visited upon Plaintiff/Appellant PureCircle two of the Four Horsemen of the Biotech Patent Apocalypse* in a decision affirming the District Court's invalidation of the claims asserted against Defendant SweeGen in PureCircle USA Inc. v. SweeGen, Inc. To recap, PureCircle sued SweeGen for infringing U.S. Patent Nos. 9,243,273…
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By Michael Borella — The storied case of American Axle v. Neapco Holdings has entered a new chapter — not the final chapter but the plot has thickened considerably. As a recap, Judge Stark, then of the District Court for the District of Delaware, found all asserted claims of U.S. Patent No. 7,774,911 invalid under…
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By Kevin E. Noonan – Einstein's aphorism that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome is a hallmark of madness (or at least an inability to learn from the past) inevitably comes to mind when perusing the recent history of attempts to persuade, cajole, or shame the Supreme Court to…
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By Kevin E. Noonan – "Hope springs eternal [in the human breast]" (Alexander Pope) and "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results" (the latter attributed variably to Albert Einstein and Werner Erhart) are two aphorisms that irresistibly come to mind with the recent filing of a petition for certiorari by…
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By Michael Borella — The patent statute requires that, to be patentable, the subject matter of an invention must be at least one of a process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter. It is hard to find examples of things that do not fall into these broad categories, though signals in motion and…
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By Michael Borella — The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) organizes its examining corps into technical centers (TCs). Each TC is dedicated to one or more general technical fields. In some cases, one TC may include two or more unrelated fields, while some fields (software, for example) are represented in multiple TCs. Currently there…
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