Patent Law Weblog
Category: Patentable Subject Matter
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By Michael Borella — A computer does just three things: receives information in the form of bits, transforms this information, and provides output based on the information as transformed. The receiving may take place by way of various types of input modalities, such as keyboards, touchscreens, mice, audio microphones, video cameras, network interfaces, sensors, and…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The Federal Circuit affirmed a decision by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) rejecting claims for failure to satisfy the subject matter eligibility standard under 35 U.S.C. § 101, in ex parte examination of claims to methods and related computing systems for genetic haplotyping…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) has been busy letter writing lately (see "Sen. Tillis Sends Letter to President Regarding Next USPTO Director"), and spent a good portion of 2019 being busy trying to convince his colleagues in Congress to address the morass over subject matter eligibility that has arisen in the…
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Chicago patent attorneys Kevin E. Noonan, Michael S. Borella, Aaron V. Gin, and Adnan M. "Eddie" Obissi have filed an amicus brief supporting Supreme Court review of the Federal Circuit's decision to invalidate claims of American Axle's U.S. Patent No. 7,774,911 under 35 U.S.C § 101. The Attorneys (who are all Patent Docs authors or…
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Signal Processing Claims for Decrypting Encrypted Information Found Patent Eligible By James Korenchan — Last week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division ruled that Defendant Apple, Inc. (hereinafter "Apple") failed to show that claims related to signal processing are patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Plaintiff Personalized Media…
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By Donald Zuhn –- After reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its 14th annual list of top patent stories. For 2020, we identified eight 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 Michael Borella — 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 the pleadings under 35 U.S.C. § 101, on the grounds that the…
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By Michael Borella — Adaptive Streaming, the owner of U.S. Patent No. 7,047,305, sued Netflix in the Central District of California for alleged infringement. Netflix moved to dismiss the case on the pleadings under Rule 12(b)(6), asserting that the claims did not meet the subject matter eligibility requirements of 35 U.S.C. § 101. The District…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The transcendental conundrum in patent law in these times is how to overcome the misinterpretation of the Supreme Court's decisions on patent eligibility law by district courts and the Federal Circuit. That these courts cannot overcome the precedential tangle they have created is firmly established by the Court's own decisions;…
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By Michael Borella — One would think that inventions relating to computer game software would easily meet the requirements for patent eligibility, as these inventions fundamentally involve technological processes and require computer implementation. But that is not always the case. Under current interpretations of the eligibility standard, not only does the language of the actual…
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