Posts Tagged: "patent eligible"

Without any legitimate statutory precedent or authority the Supreme Court is wrecking the U.S. economy just as sure as snow is white and water is wet. Unfortunately, a terribly divided Federal Circuit is causing their own brand of destruction. We are entering a dark time for patents; one that will have a significant deleterious effect on the U.S. economy…. While the Supreme Court is assaulting patent rights vis-a-vis patent eligibility, the United States Court of Appeals is assaulting patent rights from a different angle — obviousness. The Federal Circuit has long been infatuated with de novo review, which means that they get to do whatever they want and give absolutely no deference to the district court and/or jury, but lately the Federal Circuit has ratcheted it up a notch.

Recently I had the opportunity to interview Bob Zeidman, the president and founder of Zeidman Consulting, who is also the president and founder of Software Analysis and Forensic Engineering Corporation, Zeidman is an software expert. In fact, in addition to consulting with lawyers and technology companies, he is an testifying and consulting expert witness. The premise of our conversation was the upheaval in the patent industry thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice v. CLS Bank. In part 1 of our conversation we discussed the decision and ways that attorneys can build a specification to satisfy the Alice standard. In part 2 of our 3 part discussion, which appears below, we wrap up our discussion of the Alice decision and dive into a discussion about the fact that many in the computer science world don’t believe what they do to be particularly innovative or even special.

Modern software tools allow people to turn fairly abstract ideas into reality. That’s the beauty of software. You can start describing things in such a high level and yet output what I consider an innovative invention. And so how do we separate abstract ideas that are unpatentable from an actual software implementation is going to be really difficult. And I don’t think this ruling helps…. One of the reasons there’s an explosion in software patents is that it’s really easy to create a software patent without having written the code. And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. But I do know, I have seen patents where there have been code snippets that don’t work. And I think that’s one thing to be careful of.

Judge Michel: “[I]t’s bad news at least for the reason that it will create total chaos. No one will know what is eligible and what is not eligible so there will be no predictability, no consistency, and that by itself will create delays and costs and discourage progress that the Constitution was trying to promote by encouraging Congress to create the patent system. Consider the decision makers. You’ve got 9,000 patent examiners, 250 or so board members, approximately 1,000 district judges, and a few other people, the International Trade Commission, the Federal Circuit, and so on. So you’re talking about 10,000 decision makers. I don’t see any way they can apply the Alice standard in a way that’s fair or consistent or predictable. And all the other people who are involved in advising economic actors and business leaders are similarly faced with chaos and uncertainty, delay and extra costs.”

From a patent challenger’s perspective, Alice further reinforces the need to evaluate whether an early dispositive motion under § 101 can end the litigation. In crafting such motions, it is important to clearly define the abstract idea and to demonstrate how it is merely well-understood, routine, conventional activity. Additionally, it may be helpful to articulate how the claims do not recite any technological improvement. Another strategy is to petition the PTO to institute a covered business method (CBM) patent review. A CBM proceeding may be preferred as the evidentiary burden is lower compared to district court litigation. Currently, the PTO has taken the position that § 101 is an available basis for challenging claims in a CBM proceeding. However, please note that the availability of §101 is being challenged at the Federal Circuit.

A troubling aspect of the analysis in the Alice opinion is the suggestion that an invention, once patent eligible, can become patent ineligible simply based on the passage of time and public adoption. Dialogue in the oral argument as well as statements in the Court’s opinion suggest this line of reasoning, which arguably originated in Bilski, has become an accepted principal . . . An invention may initially be susceptible to patenting but may later become ineligible for patenting (as opposed to becoming unpatentable due to lack of novelty or obviousness) as it becomes more adopted, ubiquitous, successful or commonplace. Ubiquity, it would seem, is now the touchstone not only for patentability but for patent eligibility too.

Over the last several days I have heard of an alarming trend from the United States Patent and Trademark Office — Patent Examiners are canceling Notices of Allowance and yanking previously granted claims back into prosecution while citing the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank. In some instances granted claims are being pulled back into prosecution only to be rejected as lacking patent eligible subject matter even after the issue fee has been paid. This is an alarming trend that seems to be building steam as virtually everyone who operates in this space is now seeing this happen and/or they are seeing supplemental office actions issued where the pending office action never rejected claims based on patent eligibility grounds.

With the Supreme Court’s most recent foray into the patent-eligibility world in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, we now have a complete and utter disaster as to what data processing claims can (or more unfortunately cannot) survive scrutiny by Our Judicial Mount Olympus under 35 U.S.C. § 101. I once had respect for Justice Thomas’ view on patent law jurisprudence, having considered his substandard opinion in Myriad on the patent-eligibility of certain “isolated” DNA claims to be an “isolated” aberration. But having now read his mind-boggling Opinion for the Court in Alice Corp., I’ve now thrown my previously “cheery” view of Thomas’ understanding of patent law jurisprudence completely into the toilet. I have even less kind words to say about the three Justices that signed onto Justice Sotomayor’s disingenuous concurring opinion that accepts retired Justice Steven’s equally disingenuous suggestion in Bilski that 35 U.S.C. § 273 (in which Congress acknowledged implicitly, if not explicitly the patent-eligibility of “business methods” under 35 U.S.C. § 101) is a mere “red herring.” See Section 273 is NOT a Red Herring: Steven’s Disingenuous Concurrence in Bilski.

Ray Niro: “The Administration has become a shill for Google — you even have a Google person running the Patent Office. So you have a situation where any number of patents, tens of thousands of patents, are going to be affected by Alice and also by the Limelight decision on split infringement.”

He says he has seen the below form paragraph twice within a week. Most alarming, in one case the form paragraph came in the form of a supplemental office action, but the original office action, which was outstanding, didn’t have any patent eligibility rejections under 35 U.S.C. 101… Clearly this form paragraph does not come from the initial guidance the USPTO sent to examiners. In that initial guidance Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy, Andrew Hirshfeld, told patent examiners that “the basic inquiries to determine subject matter eligibility remain the same as explained in MPEP 2106(I).” Therefore, USPTO told patent examiners that while the framework of the analysis had changed the substance of the analysis had not changed.

The Supreme Court’s Alice decision has again left the IP bar without a clear, repeatable test to determine when exactly a software (or computer-implemented) claim is patentable versus being simply an abstract idea “free to all men and reserved exclusively to none,” Funk Brothers Seed Co. v. Kalo Inoculant Co., 333 U.S. 127, 130 (1948). This is perhaps not surprising as Alice is a case more about so-called “business method” patents than software patents! (In fact, three justices in a succinct, 116-word concurring opinion indicated that they would impose a per se ban on patenting business methods!) With respect to software patents, however, we still find ourselves with a myriad of USPTO Section 101 guidelines, flowcharts and presentation slides – the latest of which is a March 4, 2014, 19-pager which may very well get fatter after Alice!

EDITORIAL NOTE: This article is a continuation of Alice, the Illusory Death of Software Patents. We can return to the beginning of the analysis and revisit preemption. As stated, the Court sees § 101 as protecting the big ideas that are fundamental to commerce, science, and technology, patents that would preempt and “block” innovation. The Court realizes that every patent…

With apologies to the great humorist, the report of the death of software patents is an exaggeration. The Court set forth a two-step test grounded in Bilski v. Kappos and Mayo v. Prometheus. While the Court may not have defined a clear boundary for so called “abstract ideas” specifically, it did squarely place this case within the “outer shell” of the law set forth in Bilski and Mayo. In doing so it articulated an approach that focuses not on finding the boundary line, but rather on the core properties of an ineligible patent claim.

At least initially, the USPTO instructions to examiners seems extremely patentee friendly, which I must say comes as a surprise given the largely anti-patent rhetoric that has come from the White House over the last 16 months. Indeed, the USPTO has told examiners that the reason Alice’s claims were determined to be patent ineligible was because “the generically-recited computers in the claims add nothing of substance to the underlying abstract idea.” Hirshfeld also told examiners: “[T]he basic inquiries to determine subject matter eligibility remain the same as explained in MPEP 2106(I).” Therefore, nothing has changed as far as the USPTO is concerned.

On Thursday, june 19, 2014, the United States Supreme Court issued its much anticipated decision in Alice v. CLS Bank. In a unanimous decision authored by Justice Thomas the Supreme Court Court held that because the claims are drawn to a patent-ineligible abstract idea, they are not eligible for a patent under Section 101. In what can only be described as an intellectually bankrupt opinion, the Supreme Court never once used the word “software” in its decision.