Posts in Federal Circuit

As in the U.S., when drafting claims in China, one must describe the invention sufficiently to enable a person skilled in the art to make and use the claimed invention. For software patents, a flow chart and explanation should be included, along with drawings and description of associated hardware. Portions of the source code may be included for reference. Software claims may be drafted as either method or apparatus claims. However, Justin Shi, patent attorney at Sony Mobile Communications in Beijing, warns that apparatus claims may be deemed invalid if they are phrased only in means-plus-function language and fail to describe the apparatus or its embodiments.

In order to fabricate a case or controversy where clearly none existed, the farmers — AFTER filing the declaratory judgment action — sent Monsanto a letter, which asked Monsanto to expressly waive any claim for patent infringement they may ever have against the farmers and memorialize that waiver by providing a written covenant not to sue. The farmers explained that without such a covenant, they would at risk. With such a disingenuous attempt to fabricate declaratory judgment jurisdiction you really need to ask yourself exactly who the evil party is here! To ask for such a ridiculously broad covenant not to sue was nothing more than grandstanding. Thus, Monsanto understandably refused to provide a blanket covenant not to sue for any and all actions both known and unknown that maybe undertaken by the farmers.

Despite the turmoil surround software patent eligibility I believe with great certainty that software will remain patent eligible in the United States. The extreme decisions of the PTAB and viewpoints of those on the Federal Circuit opposed to computer implemented methods will not prevail because they are inconsistent with the Patent Act and long-standing patent law jurisprudence. After all, the Supreme Court itself explicitly found software patent eligible in Diamond v. Diehr. In the meantime, while we wait for the dust to settle, we need to engage in a variety of claiming techniques (i.e., methods, computer readable medium, systems claims, means-plus-function claims and straight device claims). Thus, if you are interested in moving forward with a patent application it will be advisable to file the application with more claims than would have been suggested even a few months ago. Patent attorneys also must spend increased time describing the invention from various viewpoints, which means specifications should increase in size. This all means that there is no such thing as a quick, cheap and easy software patent application – at least if you want to have any hope of obtaining a patent in this climate.

This is an exceptional case; IA Labs brought an objectively baseless claim, which the Court finds was brought in bad faith. Interaction Laboratories, Inc. — the original ‘226 patent holder — developed a product known as the Kilowatt that embodied the invention of the ‘226 patent. It was sharply apparent that the Kilowatt had been publicly demonstrated at trade shows, disclosed in numerous publications, and offered for sale more than one year prior to the filing of the patent application. Thus, the ‘226 patent was, without question, statutorily invalid pursuant to the on-sale bar. Since IA Labs knew of these invalidating activities before it sued Ninetendo for infringement, the Court can only conclude that it sued on the ‘226 patent in bad faith…

The Supreme Court on June 24, 2013, called for the views of the Solicitor General on petitions to review the Federal Circuit’s en banc decision on joint infringement of process patents. That decision held that induced infringement of a process patent claim may be found even though no single entity performed all of the claimed steps as long as claim steps are performed collectively by multiple parties

In Ultramercial I and II, the patentee (Ultramercial) asserted that U.S. Pat. No. 7,346,545 (the ‘545 patent) was infringed by Hulu, LLC (“Hulu”), YouTube, LLC (“YouTube”), and WildTangent, Inc. (“WildTangent”). The ‘545 patent relates to a method for distributing copyrighted products (e.g., songs, movies, books, etc.) over the Internet for free in exchange for viewing an advertisement with the advertiser paying for the copyrighted content. WildTangent’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim was granted by the district court based on the claimed method being patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101

Flying under the AMP v. Myriad radar recently was Federal Circuit’s Organic Seed Growers v. Monsanto. In Organic Seed Growers, the Federal Circuit denied declaratory relief to a band of more than 60 farmers, seed vendors, and agricultural organizations from California to Florida (and even Canada) seeking to invalidate 23 of Monsanto’s patents relating to various technologies for genetically modified seeds. The band of agriculturists grows, uses, or sells conventional seeds that do not incorporate Monsanto’s technologies. Many have organic certifications, and generally eschew transgenic seeds and glyphosate-based herbicides such as Monsanto’s Roundup® herbicide.

Last Tuesday evening Chief Judge Rader was on a panel with U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh of the United States Federal District Court for the Northern District of California. Law.com reports that Jude Koh took a shot at Chief Judge Rader’s NY Times op-ed article, calling it “a little bit unfair.” Koh took issue with the articles suggestion that District Court Judges have the ability to shift fees in frivolous patent cases. According to Law.com, Judge Koh went on to explain that attorneys fees can only be awarded in “exceptional cases,” which she explained was “a really high bar.” Her final dig at the Chief was saying: “We can’t cite a New York Times editorial as authority.”

Alexsam, Inc. v. IDT Corporation is a non-remarkable patent infringement decision with a remarkable dissent. What is noteworthy about the case is not the majority opinion, but the dissent by Judge Haldane Robert Mayer. Mayer’s dissent discusses why the patent is invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101, which is curious because the 101 issue was not raised by the defendants during the appeal nor even mentioned during oral arguments. While Mayer’s dissent is not a binding opinion, if another judge on the panel signed on to Mayer’s reasoning then the patent would have been held invalid based on an issue not raised during the appeal.

From an end-user’s perspective, it shouldn’t matter whether the normalization is done in hardware, in software or in a combination of hardware and software. And from the perspective of an interface designer, one would expect to be able to protect an invention that takes raw data from human input and causes a computer to scroll “intuitively” irrespective of whether implemented in hardware, software or a combination thereof. But therein lies our current §101 case law predicament.

n the case of Bowman v. Monsanto Co., Farmer Bowman may have believed that the “third time” would be “charm.” In two prior cases, Monsanto Co. v. Scruggs[1] and Monsanto Co. v. McFarling,[2] the Federal Circuit had ruled in favor of Monsanto, the owner of the patented Roundup Ready® soybeans, and against Farmer Scruggs and Farmer McFarling. Even so, Farmer Bowman, as probably did his legal counsel, may have believed that the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc.[3] would undermine the Federal Circuit’s view that patent exhaustion didn’t apply to Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready® soybeans. But in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court affirmed the Federal Circuit’s 2011 ruling[4] that Farmer Bowman’s unlicensed planting of these patented Roundup Ready® soybeans (sold for commodity use only) was an infringing use that was not subject to the doctrine of patent exhaustion. Alas, Farmer Bowman found no solace in Quanta.

Why have claims if the claims don’t matter. Essentially Judge Lourie, and the Canadian Patent Office too, are saying ignore the claims and read the specification to determine what the innovation is and then without regard to the language of the claims make your determination. Under this viewpoint claims are simply irrelevant. Yet we know that claims are not irrelevant, and such a view is directly contrary to the Patent Act itself. Ignoring claims is utterly ridiculous given inventions are not patentable. Patent claims are supposed to be evaluating NOT the entirety of the invention. The sine quo non of patents are the claims. It is black letter law that the claims define the exclusive right granted. Ignoring the claims shows reckless disregard for the well established law and is nothing short of judicial activism.

The first thing that any student of the Federal Circuit likely notices when reading CLS Bank is that Judge Lourie not only joined the dominant concurrence, but he also wrote the opinion. The same Judge Lourie who wrote the first opinion in Mayo, after which the Supreme Court asked the Federal Circuit to reconsider, and who then wrote the second opinion in Mayo. The same Judge Lourie who wrote the first opinion in Myriad, after which the Supreme Court asked the Federal Circuit to reconsider, and who then wrote the second opinion in Myriad[12]. All of those opinions interpret §101 broadly. What changed?

All the Judges rely on the same Supreme Court precedents in Gottschalk v Benson, Parker v. Flook, Diamond v. Diehr, Bilski v. Kappos, and Mayo v. Prometheus. All the Judges recognize the same judicial exception to statutory subject matter under §101 for laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas. All the Judges recognize that a claim must include “meaningful limitations” that go beyond an abstract idea. Hollow field-of-use limitations and insignificant pre or post-solution activity don’t count. However, this is where their similarities end.

While the Supreme Court has done away with the “useful, concrete and tangible result” test from State Street Bank v. Signature Financial, in Bilski v. Kappos, 8 out of 9 Justices (i.e., everyone except Justice Scalia) signed onto an opinion that recognized that the patent claims in State Street displayed patent eligible subject matter. Indeed, the dissenters in Bilski specifically acknowledged that the claims at issue in State Street did not deal with processes, but dealt with machines. See Footnote 40 of the Steven’s dissent. The import of this is that machines are specifically patent eligible subject matter, so if the claims of State Street are to machines then claims that are similarly configured would also be directed to machines and therefore patent eligible.