Posts Tagged: "Dolly Krishnaswamy"

On the method claims, the test, derived from Prometheus, is whether the claims add enough to a natural principle/law of nature/ natural phenomenon to make them go beyond claiming just the natural principle/law of natural/natural phenomenon alone and to ensure practical application. If they do and if that extra stuff isn’t just routine or conventional steps known in the field, the claims are patent eligible. So, are diagnostic method claims acceptable, or what about personalized medicine claims outlining which drugs work better for specific patient populations? How about a kit with instructions? We can look to the PTO Guidelines and to the case history after Prometheus to give us a some tips on what may not be eligible and how put our best foot forward when preparing biotech process patent applications.

We’ve got a couple cases following CLS Bank that give us clues as to what a computer-related claim should look like post-CLS Bank. In the Ultramercial v. Hulu case, Rader and Lourie are surprisingly on the same side. The patent covers a method relating to a user seeing an advertisement before getting exposure to his desired media content. A point that I’ll circle back to in a minute is that there were 11 steps recited in the method claims in Ultramercial. As expected, Rader writes an opinion saying this stuff goes on in a computer so we find it’s patent eligible– think Diehr/CLS Bank logic. What’s interesting is Lourie writes a concurring opinion, using as precedent his oh-so-decisive plurality opinion in CLS Bank. He found that unlike in CLS Bank where intermediation was too abstract a concept and the claims added nothing inventive, in this case the limitations represent significantly more than the underlying abstract idea of using advertising.

Many of you are privy to the problem of excessive patents. You have all seen the articles about yet another cellphone company infringing on yet another patent, but what you’re left with are questions of what all this activity means and how to use that information to act in your best interest– whether you are the CEO of a company…