A group of patent practitioners told the Supreme Court on Thursday that a case involving a patent for a type of content player would be a better vehicle for unraveling the patent eligibility problem than American Axle & Manufacturing v. Neapco Holdings, which has been awaiting a brief of the U.S. Solicitor General for about one year now. The case is Interactive Wearables, LLC v. Polar Electro Oy and Polar Electro, Inc. Interactive Wearables petitioned the High Court in March 2022.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Friday directed Judge Alan Albright’s Waco Division of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas to transfer a case brought by CPC Patent Technologies PTY Ltd against Apple to the Northern District of California. The CAFC said the district court erred in weighing the convenience of the witnesses factor as only slightly favoring transfer, noting that the court has historically rejected the view that this factor should be based solely on the distance the witness would have to travel.
Patent filings were average this week, with 21 Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) petitions and 77 district court patent complaints filed (and 67 terminated). In the district courts, Joao, Cedar Lane, and DynaIP campaigns added a fair number of defendants, some interesting competitor-competitor cases cropped up, and Wepay Global Payments LLC continued its single-design-patent campaign, adding Wells Fargo. This week also saw a few discretionary denials, as detailed below.
On April 19, exercise equipment developer Jump Rope Systems filed a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) seeking an initial hearing en banc to challenge a consent judgment entered in a patent infringement case filed in the Southern District of Ohio. Jump Rope Systems is asking the full Federal Circuit to overturn its own decision in XY, LLC v. Trans Ova Genetics, L.C. (2018), arguing that preclusive effect cannot be given to invalidity determinations issued by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) because XY conflicts with U.S. Supreme Court rulings on collateral estoppel doctrine.
Germany’s Federal Patent Court has set aside a decision by the country’s Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) that refused a patent application naming an artificial intelligence (AI) as the inventor. The decision was first rendered in November 2021 following oral argument, but the fully written opinion was only delivered March 31, and was published in German on the court’s homepage on April 19, 2022. The application was filed on October 17, 2019, and is titled “Food Container”. It named the applicant as Stephen L. Thaler and the inventor as “DABUS – The invention was autonomously generated by an artificial intelligence.”
On April 18, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) reversed and remanded the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California’s decision dismissing Apple Inc.’s complaint for declaratory judgment of noninfringement for lack of personal jurisdiction. Apple brought the complaint against patent owner Zipit Wireless, Inc. The CAFC found the district court erred in interpreting precedential cases as applying a bright-line rule that patent infringement notice letters and related communications can never form the basis for personal jurisdiction.