This summer the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued several decisions on software patent eligibility that should make you wonder. It had seemed everything was settling down, and practitioners and innovators were figuring out what the Court wanted. Then this summer the Court suggested that no matter the amount of physicality in a claim the claim can still be abstract. Going further, even if the claim passes muster as being novel and non-obvious it can still lack an inventive step under the second step of Alice where one hunts for the inventive concept.

In one particular decision the Federal Circuit determined that a wireless garage door opener was unpatentable because it is abstract. Are wireless inventions now all in jeopardy?

How far are patent practitioners supposed to read these latest cases, which were authored by members of the Court previously believed to have a more liberal view of what is patent eligible?

Join Gene Quinn, President and CEO of IPWatchdog, Inc., for a wide-ranging discussion of the state of patent eligibility in the computer software arts. Joining Gene will be Bob Stoll, Co-Chair of the IP Practice Group at Drinker Biddle, and former Commissioner for Patents at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, as well as David Hall, Partner with Sage Patent Group.

In addition to answering the aforementioned questions, the panel will discuss:

• What do these most recent Federal Circuit patent eligibility decisions mean?
• Is there any way to make sense of the Federal Circuit’s most recent patent eligibility jurisprudence once you get past the unfortunate rhetoric?
• What is the Federal Circuit trying to say and what should patent practitioners and innovators be doing today when filing?
• Does the USPTO’s Berkheimer memo and 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance have any continued relevance?