Posts Tagged: "patent eligibility"

Ericsson v. TCL Lays Bare the Federal Circuit’s Fundamental Hostility to Patents

It has become difficult to understand why the Federal Circuit does what it does in any number of rulings, but its decisions relating to patent eligibility have set patent law back several generations, turned precedent on its head, ignored the Patent Act passed by Congress, and unnecessarily and inexplicably expanded upon bad Supreme Court precedent. Somewhere along the way, the Federal Circuit lost its footing in a spectacularly demoralizing fashion. Patents must be stopped at all costs—or so they seem to believe—and 35 U.S.C. 101 is the tool du jour.

Senator Thom Tillis: If IP Stakeholders Can’t Find Consensus, Congress Can’t Help

Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) arguably has more pressing issues to focus on than intellectual property at the moment, as the nation scrambles to find solutions to the many economic and health crises caused by the coronavirus pandemic and COVID-19. And yet, Tillis has somehow managed to remain focused on IP, with recent movement in the areas of copyright and trademark modernization, as well as exploration into the implications of Allen et al. v. Cooper, Governor of North Carolina, et al. I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Senator Tillis on the record, discussing his interest in intellectual property, the status of patent eligibility reform, the COVID-19 outbreak, copyright modernization, trademark modernization and the harm done by counterfeiting. Without further ado, here is my conversation with Senator Thom Tillis, Chairman of the Senate IP Subcommittee.

Federal Circuit Holds Banks to Be ‘Persons’ Under the America Invents Act

Recently, the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, holding that the Board correctly determined that the claims 21–24 of U.S. Patent No. 6,754,640 (’640 patent) and claims 1-20 of U.S. Patent 8,768,840 (’840 patent), both owned by Bozeman Financial LLC (Bozeman), are directed to patent ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. To reach this decision, the Federal Circuit first determined the appellees, all 12 of the United States Federal Reserve Banks (Banks), to be “persons” under the America Invents Act (AIA) and, therefore, eligible to petition for post-issuance review under the AIA. See Bozeman Fin. LLC v. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, No. 2019-1018, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 11315 (Fed. Cir. April 10, 2020) (Before Lourie, Dyk, and Moore, Circuit Judges) (Opinion for the Court, Moore, Circuit Judge).  

Uniloc Patent Claims Vindicated Under Alice at Federal Circuit

Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in an opinion authored by Judge Moore, reversed and remanded a decision of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which had found that certain claims of Uniloc’s U.S. Patent No. 6,993,049 were ineligible under Section 101 as being directed to an abstract idea. The Federal Circuit disagreed, holding that the claims at issue were directed to a “patent-eligible improvement to computer functionality.”

The Long Reach of the Mathematics Patentability Exception is Overbroad and Absurd – Part II

In Part I of this series we examined the mathematics exception to patentability and the historical underpinnings of its justification. In Part II, we will continue to examine the case history around patenting of mathematic principles.