Posts Tagged: "Professor Jeffrey Lefstin"

Professors Tell SCOTUS to Correct the CAFC’s ‘Profound Misunderstanding’ in American Axle Case

In one of six amicus briefs filed this week in American Axle & Manufacturing v. Neapco Holdings, LLC—the closely-watched Section 101 patent eligibility case involving driveshaft automotive technology—Professors Jeffrey Lefstin and Peter Menell told the U.S. Supreme Court that the Federal Circuit’s 6-6 split decision to deny en banc rehearing in the case “mischaracterized fundamental patent principles and case law on which the modern patent system is built.” The professors added that “current § 101 jurisprudence conflates patent eligibility with the substantive requirements set forth in § 103 and § 112 and is getting more confusing by the day” and that “there is no patent law doctrine more in need of clarification.”

Eileen McDermott

March 4, 2021

Lefstin, Mossoff critique SCOTUS’ sense of history and negative impacts on today’s patent system

“The Supreme Court has told us, and told itself, a particular story — a story based in history to justify its current regime,” Lefstin said near the top of his presentation, which was titled Invention and Discovery: A Fable of History. “But when one starts to inquire into that history, you find the story is quite different than the court has led us to believe.” According to Lefstin, this story and its diversion from a factual basis in history began with the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in Mayo v. Prometheus, the case which established the current legal concept that a further inventive step was required in order to transform a fundamental principle or law of nature into patent-eligible subject matter. “In particular, what the Court has made clear is that if one has made a scientific discovery, one needs something more than known, routine, or conventional activity in order to transform that into a patent-eligible invention,” Lefstin said.

Steve Brachmann

June 11, 2017