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Robert Sachs

is president at Robert R. Sachs PC. He is frequent commentator and speaker on patent eligibility. He started his own firm in 2017, leaving Fenwick & West LLP in San Francisco after 27 years of doing software patent prosecution and strategy for Silicon Valley clients. He is Vice Chair of the Intellectual Property Owners Association Section 101 Task Force and was one of the principle authors of the IPO’s proposed Section 101 legislation.

Recent Articles by Robert Sachs

Alice: Benevolent Despot or Tyrant? Analyzing Five Years of Case Law Since Alice v. CLS Bank: Part II

In Part I of this analysis, I discussed litigation trends before and after the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice Corp Pty Ltd v. CLS Bank Int’l., which turned five this year. In Part II, I will break down the data further by examining how the court decide Section 101 motions according to the underlying patented technology. Your interpretation of these facts depends on your point of view—a suitably post-modern outcome for some, less so for others. If you are a rights holder or licensor who depends on the objective certainty of patent rights, then the numbers are merely a grim confirmation that bad patents and bad science make for bad law. The consistency that Alice brings to litigation is, at best, the epistemic certainty that a patent on just about any kind of technology can be subject to a motion to dismiss for ineligible subject matter—and that nearly 60% of such attacks succeed in the district courts and are then affirmed over 85% of the time on appeal to the Federal Circuit.

Alice: Benevolent Despot or Tyrant? Analyzing Five Years of Case Law Since Alice v. CLS Bank: Part I

It’s been five years since the Supreme Court remade the law of patent eligibility in Alice Corp Pty Ltd v. CLS Bank Int’l. As we all know, in Alice the Supreme Court dictated that patent-eligible subject matter is determined based on a two-step test. The application of this test under Queen Alice’s reign has drastically altered the patent landscape. Over 1,000 patents have been invalidated by the federal courts and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), while over 60,000 patent applications have been abandoned before the USPTO following rejections for patent ineligible subject matter. Patents and portfolios in many fields – particularly software and biotechnology – have declined in value or simply become unsaleable at any price. Defenders of Queen Alice and her critics go back and forth endlessly, driven by differing permutations of ideology, technology, judicial philosophy and business goals. I have contributed my share to those discussions, no doubt. But today, let’s get down to data and see what has really happened under Queen Alice’s rule.