Posts Tagged: "printed matter doctrine"

Federal Circuit Relies on Printed Matter Doctrine in Affirming Examiner’s Rejection of Claims Under 35 U.S.C. § 101

The examiner concluded the claims were directed to the abstract idea of rules for playing a game, which fell within the realm of methods of organizing human activities. The examiner further found the claims were unpatentable as obviousness over old and well known to dice games, applying the printed matter doctrine… Marco also contended that its claimed method of playing a dice game could not be an abstract idea because it recites a physical game with physical steps. The Court rejected this argument “because the abstract idea exception does not turn solely on whether the claimed invention comprises physical versus mental steps.” Since the only arguably unconventional aspect of the recited method of playing a dice game was found to be printed matter, thus falling outside the scope of § 101, the rejected claims did not recite an “inventive concept” sufficient to “transform” the claimed subject matter into a patent-eligible application of the abstract idea.

Robert Schaffer & Joseph Robinson & Dustin Weeks

January 10, 2019

Federal Circuit expands printed matter doctrine to include information and mental steps

In Praxair Distribution v. Mallinckrodt Hospital Products, Praxair petitioned for inter partes review of claims 1-19 of the ’112 patent, which the Board instituted. The Board held that claims 1-8 and 10-19 would have been obvious over four prior art references. However, claim 9 survived. Praxair appealed from the Board’s decision regarding claim 9, and Mallinckrodt cross-appealed regarding claims 1-8 and 10-11. The Federal Circuit affirmed the Board’s decision holding claims 1-8 and 10 unpatentable as obvious. Judge Newman concurred in judgment of unpatentability of claims 1-11, but disagreed with the Court’s view of the “printed matter doctrine” and its application to “information” and “mental steps.”

Robert Schaffer & Joseph Robinson

May 27, 2018

Printed Matter Doctrine Implicates Matter That Is Claimed for What it Communicates

The Court held that printed matter must be claimed for what it communicates, and it is only afforded patentable weight if the claimed informational content has a functional or structural relation to the substrate. In this case, the Court held that the Board erred in finding that the origins of the web assets made them printed subject matter, because nothing in the claim called for the origin to be part of the web asset.

Joseph Robinson & Robert Schaffer

January 22, 2016

Jumping Down the Rabbit Hole: Federal Circuit Ducks the Patent-Eligibility Issue in King Pharmaceuticals

With an opportunity to render some order out of the Bilski chaos, the Federal Circuit instead completely ducked the patent-eligibility issue clearly presented in King Pharmaceuticals. The Federal Circuit then created (and I do mean “created”) the new “an anticipated method claim doesn’t become patentable if it simply includes an informing step about an inherent property of that method” doctrine. With this new “doctrine,” we have now “jumped down the rabbit hole” into a surreal “Bilski in Patentland” world.

Eric Guttag

August 3, 2010