On March 27, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision in Rady v. The Boston Consulting Group affirming a lower court’s invalidation of patent claims covering improvements to physical asset provenance via blockchain. The ruling, though marked non-precedential, arguably expands the application of the abstract idea exception to patentability under 35 U.S.C. § 101 for blockchain technologies even when those patents are claiming the use of specialized, non-generic computer hardware.
Attorneys who believe they are too busy to spend time marketing themselves are always going to be career limited, and if they are given too much authority within the firm structure, they will ultimately destroy the firm. Attorneys who do not market themselves have a job because rainmakers bring in the work for them to do. But work dries up for a variety of reasons, sometimes because the rainmaker moves on to another firm that better appreciates their contribution, because of an economic downturn, or because another lawyer or firm has stolen away your clients. Whatever the reason, when work dries up, the lawyers who are the workers of the firm have little to do, become dead weight and are the first to be sent packing—at least that is what happens if the firm wants to succeed.
In a lengthy, precedential opinion authored by Judge Taranto, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday, March 27, affirmed a district court’s decision invalidating the claims of two of Trading Technologies’ (TT’s) patents as being patent ineligible under Section 101 and also clarified the application of a 2018 Supreme Court ruling on foreign damages. Harris Brumfield, as Trustee for Ascent Trust, is the successor to TT, which sued IBG LLC in 2010 for infringement of four patents: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,766,304; 6,772,132; 7,676,411; and 7,813,996. All of the patents’ specifications describe “assertedly improved graphical user interfaces for commodity trading and methods for placing trade orders using those interfaces.”
The Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which administers the Department for Promotion of Industry & Internal Trade, published changes to its 2003 Patent Rules in its Official Gazette on March 15, 2024. These rules are known as the 2024 Patent (Amendment) Rules (hereinafter “Amendment”). This article analyzes key provisions of the Amendment in light of U.S. patent rules and practices.
We are less than 24 hours out from 2024 and, after reflecting on what mattered in 2023 and other year-in-review recaps, it is now time once again to ponder what lies ahead. From exciting patent legislation to Supreme Court trademark and copyright cases that could have big implications, here is what the IPWatchdog community will be keeping on its radar in the new year.
This week in Other Barks & Bites: OpenAI faces another lawsuit, this time from two journalists alleging copyright infringement; the International Trade Commission (ITC) makes its case before the CAFC to reimpose an import ban on Apple Watches; and OpenAI tells the UK government that it could not make ChatGPT without copyrighted material.
On December 27, less than one week before the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Seattle Kraken defeated the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2024 Winter Classic, a lawsuit was filed in the Western District of Washington against the Kraken. The lawsuit alleges that Seattle’s NHL franchise wore an infringing jersey during the Winter Classic, and has sold infringing merchandise, after shutting out the legitimate business interests of a passionate Seattle-area fan who revived that city’s championship legacy more than 90 years after the previous franchise folded.
On March 27, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential ruling in Inline Plastics Corp. v. Lacerta Group, LLC, on appeal from the District of Massachusetts. Judge Richard Taranto authored the opinion and held that an improper jury instruction given at trial by the district court required vacatur of the court’s final judgment that Inline’s patent claims were invalid for obviousness. The Federal Circuit remanded that portion of the case for a new trial so that the jury can properly consider each objective indicia of nonobviousness raised by Inline at trial.
In a precedential decision authored by Chief Judge Moore, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday partially reversed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ruling that certain claims of Virtek Vision International’s patent on a method for aligning a laser projector were unpatentable, finding the Board erred as a matter of law in its analysis. The court also affirmed the PTAB’s finding that other claims were not proven unpatentable. Aligned Vision challenged various claims of Virtek’s U.S. Patent No. 10,052,734, which is titled “Laser Projector with Flash Alignment,” arguing claims 1, 2, 5, 7, and 10–13 would have been obvious over prior art references titled Keitler and Briggs (Ground 1), and over Briggs and another reference, Bridges (Ground 3). It also argued claims 3–6 and 8–12 would have been obvious over Keitler, Briggs, and ‘094 Rueb (Ground 2), and over Briggs, Bridges, and ‘094 Rueb (Ground 4).
A number of individual consumers have filed suit against Apple, Inc. in California and New Jersey courts, piggybacking on the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) March 21 complaint accusing Apple of “broad-based, exclusionary conduct” amounting to monopolization of the smartphone market. The DOJ’s sweeping complaint included a number of U.S. states as plaintiffs and charged Apple with “thwart[ing] innovation” and throttle[ing] competitive alternatives via its practices around the iPhone platform.
On December 28, agricultural tech developer Inari filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) urging the appellate court to deny a petition for rehearing en banc of the court’s August ruling in In re Cellect. Inari’s brief highlights that the Federal Circuit’s application of the obviousness-type double patenting (ODP) doctrine to legislatively-prescribed patent term adjustments (PTA) is critical to the success of companies like Inari who build upon technologies once patent protections expire.
On day one of the new year, we continue the IPWatchdog tradition of asking readers what they would like to see happen if their every IP wish could come true. Some commenters stuck with more realistic asks, such as for patent eligibility reform to move forward or that an extension of the waiver of IP rights under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) will be opposed. Others went out on a limb by pulling for a new central patent court based in Hawaii or that congress will get its act together, for instance. Of course, the most popular dream articulated below is once again that patent eligibility certainty will be restored, either by the courts or congress.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in two cases that are challenging the so-called Chevron deference doctrine, which says courts should defer to administrative agencies’ interpretation of the statutes delegated to them when there is an ambiguity. While the conservative justices’ questioning largely leaned in favor of scrapping the doctrine, Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson pushed back on the petitioners’ arguments, predicting chaos, and the U.S. Solicitor General said overruling such a foundational doctrine would result in “endless litigation.”
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