Posts Tagged: "patent eligibility"

On October 3, the U.S. Supreme Court once again requested the views of the Solicitor General (SG) in a Section 101 case, Interactive Wearables v. Polar Electric Oy. Last summer, there was excitement in the patent community when the SG, whose advice the Court usually follows, recommended granting review in American Axle v. Neapco. Although that petition was ultimately denied, this new case purports to fit the mold of American Axle. This has led some to hope that Interactive Wearables will also get the nod from the SG—and perhaps High Court review. To those eager for a Supreme Court decision that reins in patent eligibility jurisprudence, however, I regret to inform you that Interactive Wearables will not be that case. This case is quite unlike American Axle—and its claimed invention is in the heartland of what should be ineligible subject matter.

It is sometimes said that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. We have found, however, that it is often the slow-and-steady truth that wins the race in our deliberative justice system, which for patents has both administrative and judicial components. Our case-in-point is the Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Cooperative Entertainment, Inc. v. Kollective Technology, Inc., which reversed a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal on patent ineligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. This case demonstrates how an invention that is potentially assailable on eligibility grounds can be given its best chance by a focused, consistent and synergistic patent prosecution and litigation strategy. Thus, it is not coincidental that your authors are a patent litigator and a patent prosecutor, respectively.

Last week, the leadership of the Judiciary Committees and IP Subcommittees from both houses of Congress received letters seeking to address misinformation being presented by critics of the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, a bill proposed by Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) that would abrogate several U.S. Supreme Court rulings on patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Both the Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP) and University of Akron Law Professor Emily Michiko Morris not only supported Congressional passage of Tillis’ patent eligibility bill but also pushed back on criticisms that the bill would enable biotech firms to patent genes as they exist in the human body.

Systemic-level studies and data regarding impact on investment and innovation, as detailed in Part II of this series, are not the only way to demonstrate the substantial harm that the current state of patent eligibility has inflicted on the U.S. innovation ecosystem. Other robust evidence shows that current Section 101 law has harmed innovation by removing the incentives to develop and commercialize particular inventions of public importance. As another form of harm, the vagueness and breadth of the Alice/Mayo framework have also enabled accused infringers to transmogrify Section 101 into a litigation weapon in inappropriate cases that has created unnecessary burdens and costs on innovators and the courts.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued a precedential decision finding that two IBM patents directed to technology that allows users to select and view results on a map were directed to ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. IBM had sued Zillow, alleging that several of the services offered on Zillow’s website and mobile applications infringed the claims. But the district court granted Zillow’s motion for judgment on the pleadings, finding the claims were directed to abstract ideas and lacked any inventive concept. The opinion was authored by Judge Hughes. Judge Stoll dissented in part, explaining that claims 9 and 13 of IBM’s U.S. Patent No. 7,187,389 were plausibly patent eligible and should not have been found ineligible at the pleadings stage.

Alice Corp v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014) sent rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 101 skyrocketing from under 10,000 per year prior to the Alice decision to nearly 35,000 the year the Supreme Court handed down its decision (2014). Peaking at just over 100,000 rejections in 2018, the USPTO’s January 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance (2019 PEG) helped to stabilize and ultimately lower the number of rejections under Section 101 to just over 20,000 in 2021. Though this number may continue to drop – the data on Section 101 rejections for 2022 is not yet complete – one thing is for sure: The number of rejections under Section 101 post Alice still far outnumber the Section 101 rejections made prior to Alice by at least 10,000 per year. As illustrated in Fig. 1 (data gathered using juristat.com), the majority of rejections under Section 101 made since 2014 are still Alice rejections, which leaves room for this number to decrease further.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) would like public comments on how to update the 2019 Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance. The agency is also seeking comments on how to improve the robustness of the patent system overall. This article/video is in (unofficial) response to both of these requests for comments. The current mess surrounding subject matter eligibility in the United States is an offspring of a much deeper problem in patent law, which is that there is practically no standardization in patent practice. In medicine, U.S. doctors are trained by standardized practices through rotations and residency programs such that when they begin practicing, a doctor graduating in Florida will not practice medicine vastly different from a doctor graduating from medical school in California, for instance. Instead, the idea is that all the graduates will approach medical treatment in a standardized way so that the public has a lot more faith in the medical community.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued a precedential decision in part reversing and in part affirming a district court’s dismissal of an inventor’s patent infringement suit against Google under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure12(b)(6). Judge Hughes dissented in part from the majority’s opinion, which was authored by Judge Stoll, explaining that he would have found all of the challenged claims patent ineligible.

The muddled state of patent eligibility law has direct and significant negative consequences for U.S. R&D investment, and for innovation in key fields of medical, economic, and strategic importance to the United States and its citizens. Uncertainty reduces R&D investment, as has been well-documented, and reliable patent protection mitigates uncertainty and generates increased R&D investment. As we explained in Part I of this series, the experts overwhelmingly agree on these points.

Last June, Gene Quinn published an iconic article, “Yu v. Apple Settles It: The CAFC is Suffering from a Prolonged Version of Alice in Wonderland Syndrome,” in which Mr. Quinn evokes Lewis Carrol’s White Queen, “who was known to have sometimes ‘believed six impossible things before breakfast’” to describe the ridiculous nature of the Yu. v. Apple decision. To Judge Taranto’s credit, the Yu v. Apple decision is a remarkable read, so long as one knows nothing of photography and nineteenth century art history. However, in less than three months after Yu. V. Apple, the Federal Circuit would progress from mere fiction to fantasy / science fiction in both the In re Killian case (in which the author served as counsel for Killian) and the more recent case of In re Jason Smith, Appeal 22-1310 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 9, 2022), in which Judges Lourie, Dyk, and Hughes rejected Smith’s claims in an act that is aptly described as “jumping the shark.”

Patent eligibility law in the United States is in a state of disarray that has led to inconsistent case decisions, deep uncertainty in the innovative, investment and legal communities, and unpredictable outcomes in patent prosecution and litigation. These facts have been extensively documented in multiple sources, including: the statements of all 12 active judges of the nation’s only patent court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (confirmed prior to October 2021); the findings and reports of the Executive branch across all recent Administrations; the bi-partisan conclusions of Congressional committees; a robust body of academic studies; and at least forty separate witness statements at the 2019 hearings on this issue before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on IP, including statements from advocates that oppose Section 101 reforms.

The Federal Circuit’s denial of en banc rehearing and the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari review mean the decision in American Axle & Manufacturing, Inc. v. Neapco Holdings LLC, 967 F.3d 1285 (Fed. Cir. 2020), is the latest word on subject-matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. In American Axle, the Federal Circuit applied the Supreme Court’s two-part Alice/Mayo test to hold a method for manufacturing driveline propeller shafts with liners designed to attenuate vibrations invalid as directed to a use of a natural law. The Federal Circuit characterized the claims as simply “[c]laiming a result” without “limiting the claim to particular methods of achieving the result. . . .”  Id. at 1295. The method claims were directed to nonpatentable subject matter because, even though neither the claims nor the specification explicitly referenced a natural law, the method steps required the application of a natural law, “and nothing more.”  Id. at 1297. Although the panel in American Axle stressed its decision was consistent with Supreme Court and Federal Circuit precedent, see 967 F.3d 1295, 1296 (“Our cases as well have consistently rejected such claims as unpatentable.”), its rationale, literally applied, jeopardizes broad categories of patent claims that have traditionally been considered patent-eligible subject matter.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), with Chief Judge Moore writing, today reversed and remanded a district court’s dismissal of an amended complaint in a case where the district court found a patent directed to a method of distributing large video files via a peer-to-peer (P2P) network patent ineligible under Section 101. While the CAFC did not rule on whether the claims are patent eligible, it held that “there are plausible factual allegations that the claims include inventive concepts, and that is enough to preclude dismissal” on a Rule 12(b)(6) motion.

During a session titled “Politics, Policy and Legislation” on Monday at IPWatchdog LIVE 2022, three panelists who have each played a role in shaping patent law over the years discussed recent developments in patent eligibility reform, and congressional interest in so-called patent thickets being fueled by continuation patents and other topics.

Last year, there was a great amount of confidence among those in intellectual property circles that the U.S. Supreme Court might finally provide some much-needed clarity to Section 101 subject matter patentability after a petition for writ of certiorari was filed in American Axle v. Neapco Holdings. On the second day of IPWatchdog LIVE 2022, panelists at the breakout session titled “Where Do We Go From Here on Patent Eligibility After American Axle” discussed what opportunities were left for fixing patent eligibility law after the Supreme Court denied cert in that case.