Posts Tagged: "101 rejections"

PTAB declares MRI machine an abstract idea, patent ineligible under Alice

In what can be described only as an utterly ridiculous, intellectually insulting, and idiotic decision, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has done the truly absurd. In Ex parte Hiroyuki Itagaki the PTAB has ruled a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine to be patent ineligible because it is an abstract idea, citing the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Alice v. CLS Bank for support.

A Look into Uber’s Patent Prosecution History

Since the Supreme Court’s decisions in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories (2012) and Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l (2014), patent practitioners have struggled in overcoming the newly imposed hurdle of patent eligibility. Uber is no stranger to this struggle. Of the 53 patent applications that Uber has filed since 2012, 27 of these applications have been examined, wherein Uber has received 13 final rejections based on §101. Uber has fought against many of the §101 rejections. However, Uber has thus far been unsuccessful in most of its attempts.

Section 103 Rejections: How Common Are They and How Should You Respond?

There are several major statutory rejections that an applicant can receive during the course of patent prosecution at the USPTO, each one corresponding to the relevant section of the Patent Act: § 101 (subject matter), § 102 (novelty), § 103 (non-obviousness), § 112(a) (specification), and§ 112(b) (definiteness). Any application can receive any one of these rejections, but some are more common than others, especially when considering technology center and the type of technology involved. For example, § 101 rejections are very common in TC 3600 due to the presence of the§ 112(a) Alice-heavy e-commerce art units, while fairly simple inventions are more likely to receive § 102 rejections. In addition to prevalence based on technology type, the type of rejection an applicant can receive can also depend upon where their application is in the prosecution process. When it comes to first final rejections, § 103 rejections are the most common.

Square fights off Alice rejection on payment transfer patent proving financial patents are not dead

U.S. Patent No. 9378491, entitled Payment Transfer by Sending E-mail. This discloses a computer-implemented method which enables the seamless initiation of a payment transfer through e-mail from one mobile device to another without creating an account or logging into a service. The innovative system is designed for both simplicity of use as well as security and authentication in online financial transactions. A final rejection issued by a patent examiner on the ‘491 patent dated December 8th, 2014, doesn’t specifically mention Alice v. CLS, but the case’s effect on the examiner’s decision seemed evident. In arguments made in response to the final rejection, Square’s prosecution team on the ‘491 patent noted that it had amended the claims to make the patentable features of those claims more explicit.

USPTO ‘judgment calls’ to blame for reopening prosecution after complete Board reversal

Robert Bahr, the Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy, responded that “hindsight is great,” and went on to explain that they thought that the rejections that were being appealed to the Board would stand and there would not be a need to bring the cases back and issue Alice rejections. “These are sort of judgments calls you have to make,” Bahr explained. “Sometimes it works out for you and sometimes it doesn’t.”