Patent Law Weblog
Category: Patentable Subject Matter
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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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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 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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By Michael Borella — One of the more frustrating aspects of current patent-eligibility law is that it lends itself all too easily to mischief. In particular, given that the eligibility test under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as interpreted by the courts is poorly-defined, conclusory reasoning frequently rears its ugly head. Such reasoning is sometimes found…
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By Circuit Judge Paul R. Michel (Ret.) and John T. Battaglia — The esteemed authors of Patent Docs have written of the need to reconsider the Federal Circuit's approach to section 101 eligibility, given the court's latest expansion and en-banc vote on subject-matter eligibility in AAM v. Neapco (Fed. Cir. July 31, 2020). Is It…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The Federal Circuit's inchoate attempts to fashion a consistent, rational application of the Supreme Court's recent subject matter eligibility jurisprudence, while understandably Herculean in view of the difficulties inherent in that precedent, raises questions regarding the value of having a "specialized" Circuit Court for the purpose of harmonizing U.S. patent…
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August 23, 1891 WASHINGTON, DC In a unanimous panel ruling, the Federal Circuit has found that the calculating machine of U.S. Patent No. 388,116 fails to meet the eligibility requirements of 35 U.S.C. § 101. Inventor W.S. Burroughs of St. Louis described the machine as "mechanically assisting arithmetical calculations." Particularly, it includes "one or more…
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Federal Circuit Hands Down Modified Opinion in Illumina, Inc. v. Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. By Kevin E. Noonan — Earlier this year, the Federal Circuit (somewhat surprisingly) found claims of two Sequenom patents directed to methods for detecting fetal DNA in maternal blood to satisfy the subject matter eligibility requirements of Section 101 (see "Illumina, Inc.…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Last week, the Federal Circuit took the opportunity presented in an appeal from judgment on the pleadings in XY, LLC v. Trans Ova Genetics, LC to distinguish claims directed toward a patent-eligible invention from invalidation under the Supreme Court's imperfectly applied Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l (2014) test. The…
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