Posts Tagged: "USPTO"

EPO Patent Index 2020 Underscores Sharp Rise of China as Global Tech Giant

On March 16, the European Patent Office (EPO) released the Patent Index 2020, which gives the public a snapshot view of the filing activities going on at the EU’s patent granting agency during the past year. Total patent application filings declined only slightly during 2020 to just over 180,000 patent applications, a reduction of 0.7% compared to the EPO’s 2019 patent filing totals. Despite a 4.1% decrease in patent application filings at the EPO, the United States still held the top spot among individual countries with 44,293 EPO patent filings. Patent application filing totals also dropped in Germany (down 3% to 25,954 filings) and Japan (down 1.1% to 21,841). The United States, Germany and Japan were ranked first, second and third, respectively, in the EPO Patent Index 2020.

Patent Filings Roundup: Canon(ball) Runs to the ITC; District Court Filings Spike

Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) filings held at 25 this week, with one post grant review (PGR) and 24 inter partes reviews (IPRs); district court patent filings jumped significantly, however, to 95, with Cannon’s lengthy scorched-earth filings against dozens of competitors making up the bulk of that jump. The IPRs were propped up by a handful of Samsung-filed petitions against Aquis; Samsung also continued to trickle out petitions against Ericsson related to the now-infamous FRAND 5G rate case ping-ponging between China and the Eastern District of Texas. Hisense and LG filed a number of IPRs related to a semiconductor dispute with Polaris, and Qualcomm continued to battle Vector Capital-backed Monterey Research at the Board over non-practicing entity (NPE) semiconductor assertions, earning institution on at least three of the IPRs they’ve filed to date. And Amazon is having mixed luck with IPRs against a failed voice technology company they have a long history with.

Seven Years After Alice, 63.2% of the U.S. Patents Issued in 2020 were Software-Related

As an update to my posts from 2017, 2019, and 2020, it has now been more than seven years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank decision. Yet the debate still rages over when a software (or computer-implemented) claim is patentable versus being simply an abstract idea “free to all men and reserved exclusively to none” (as eloquently phrased over 73 years ago by then-Supreme Court Justice Douglas in Funk Bros. Seed Co. v. Kalo Inoculant Co.). Further, it has been 10 years since famed venture capitalist Marc Andreessen wrote an influential op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal titled “Why Software Is Eating the World.” This digital transformation where software is “eating the world” is undeniable.

CAFC Says Appellate Review of PTAB Institution Denials is Limited to ‘Extraordinary Circumstances’

On March 12, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) granted Janssen Pharmaceuticals’ motion to dismiss Mylan Laboratories’ appeal and denied Mylan Laboratories’ request for mandamus relief, holding that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear Mylan’s appeal and that Mylan had failed to qualify for mandamus relief. In 2019, Janssen Pharmaceuticals sued Mylan Laboratories in district court for infringing U.S. Patent No. 9,439,906 (the ‘906 patent). In response, Mylan Laboratories petitioned the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (Board) for inter partes review (IPR) of the ‘906 patent, raising four grounds for the unpatentability of certain claims, all based on 35 U.S.C. §103. In opposition to the institution of the IPR, Janssen Pharmaceuticals argued that the IPR “would be an inefficient use of Board resources,” due to two co-pending district court cases: the suit against Mylan Laboratories and another against Teva Pharmaceuticals, arguing “that both actions would likely reach final judgment before any IPR final written decision.”

CAFC Affirms PTAB Rejection of Stanford Haplotype Phasing Patent Claims Under Alice

On March 11, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed the decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to hold the rejected claims from Leland Stanford Junior University (Stanford) were not patent eligible because the claims are drawn to abstract mathematical calculations and statistical modeling. The examiner rejected claims 1, 4 to 11, 14 to 25, and 27 to 30 of U.S. Application Nos. 13/445,925 (‘925 application), “methods and computing systems for determining haplotype phase,” for involving patent ineligible subject matter. The CAFC applied the two-step framework under Alice v. CLS Bank to determine whether the claims were patent eligible.