Posts Tagged: "TLI Communications LLC"

A Guide to Software Patent Eligibility at the Federal Circuit

The Alice/Mayo framework is the decisional approach adopted by the United States Supreme Court for determining whether a patent claim exhibits, such as software patent claims, embody patent eligible subject matter… Over the last six months the Federal Circuit has provided a great deal of clarity, with 9 judges (Judges Moore, Taranto, Hughes, Chen, Newman, O’Malley, Reyna, Stoll, and Plager) signing on to decisions that found software patent claims to be patent eligible. What follows is a a summary of the significant developments over the last six months.

How to Patent Software in a Post Alice Era

In a nutshell, if you are going to write a patent application in such a way that at the end of the it the reader is left wondering what the innovation is, what the problem being solved is, or the technical particulars on how the innovation actually solves the problem, you should not expect a patent. In other words, if you write your patent applications without actually defining the technological solution and how it is implementing the desired functionality you describe, and how that is an improvement, you will not get a patent because the claims will be patent ineligible. On the other hand, if you write your patent applications to describe (and claim) an invention that is adequately described so that someone of skill in the art will understand what is innovative (i.e., how and why), thick with technical disclosure and explanation as to how computer functionality is being improved, or even generic components are working in unconventional ways, then you will get a patent because your claims will be patent eligible.

FREE WEBINAR: Drafting Patent Applications to Overcome Alice

Join us on Thursday, November 3, 2016 at 2pm ET for a discussion on drafting patent applications to overcome Alice, with JiNan Glasgow of Neopatents and Gene Quinn of IPWatchdog. In addition to taking as many of your questions as possible we will address the following: (1) Brief overview of Alice, Enfish, TLI Communications, BASCOM, McRo and FairWarning IP. (2) What these most recent Federal Circuit cases teach about drafting software patents. (3) How to cope with being unexpectedly assigned to an Art Unit.

Federal Circuit Provides Additional Insight on §101 Protections for Software Patents

In a September 13, 2016 decision relating to subject matter eligibility of software patents under 35 U.S.C. § 101, the Federal Circuit vacated the district court’s order granting Defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c), and held that McRO’s patents were eligible for protection under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The disputed patent claims recited a method for “automatically . . . producing accurate and realistic lip synchronization and facial expressions in animated characters.” The McRO patents identified that a problem in the prior art was that animators, even using the assistance of computers, had to manually manipulate the character model for lip movement. The McRO patents solved this problem by using rules to automatically depict more realistic synchronization of lip movements and speech.

Using a European technical effect approach to software patent-eligibility

Unlike Judge Chen’s breadth-based approach, Judge Hughes appears to adopt the proposal of using the European technical effect ( or “technological arts”) analysis to determine whether a U.S. claim is patent-eligible… The CAFC decides that the above claim indeed is related to an improvement to computer functionality itself, not on economic or other tasks for which a computer is used in its ordinary capacity. This once again approaches the “technical problem” analysis of European law, which at least has the advantage of possessing something of a legal principle about it, as opposed to being a tautology.