Posts Tagged: "SCOTUS"

From a patent challenger’s perspective, Alice further reinforces the need to evaluate whether an early dispositive motion under § 101 can end the litigation. In crafting such motions, it is important to clearly define the abstract idea and to demonstrate how it is merely well-understood, routine, conventional activity. Additionally, it may be helpful to articulate how the claims do not recite any technological improvement. Another strategy is to petition the PTO to institute a covered business method (CBM) patent review. A CBM proceeding may be preferred as the evidentiary burden is lower compared to district court litigation. Currently, the PTO has taken the position that § 101 is an available basis for challenging claims in a CBM proceeding. However, please note that the availability of §101 is being challenged at the Federal Circuit.

A troubling aspect of the analysis in the Alice opinion is the suggestion that an invention, once patent eligible, can become patent ineligible simply based on the passage of time and public adoption. Dialogue in the oral argument as well as statements in the Court’s opinion suggest this line of reasoning, which arguably originated in Bilski, has become an accepted principal . . . An invention may initially be susceptible to patenting but may later become ineligible for patenting (as opposed to becoming unpatentable due to lack of novelty or obviousness) as it becomes more adopted, ubiquitous, successful or commonplace. Ubiquity, it would seem, is now the touchstone not only for patentability but for patent eligibility too.

Over the last several days I have heard of an alarming trend from the United States Patent and Trademark Office — Patent Examiners are canceling Notices of Allowance and yanking previously granted claims back into prosecution while citing the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank. In some instances granted claims are being pulled back into prosecution only to be rejected as lacking patent eligible subject matter even after the issue fee has been paid. This is an alarming trend that seems to be building steam as virtually everyone who operates in this space is now seeing this happen and/or they are seeing supplemental office actions issued where the pending office action never rejected claims based on patent eligibility grounds.

With the Supreme Court’s most recent foray into the patent-eligibility world in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, we now have a complete and utter disaster as to what data processing claims can (or more unfortunately cannot) survive scrutiny by Our Judicial Mount Olympus under 35 U.S.C. § 101. I once had respect for Justice Thomas’ view on patent law jurisprudence, having considered his substandard opinion in Myriad on the patent-eligibility of certain “isolated” DNA claims to be an “isolated” aberration. But having now read his mind-boggling Opinion for the Court in Alice Corp., I’ve now thrown my previously “cheery” view of Thomas’ understanding of patent law jurisprudence completely into the toilet. I have even less kind words to say about the three Justices that signed onto Justice Sotomayor’s disingenuous concurring opinion that accepts retired Justice Steven’s equally disingenuous suggestion in Bilski that 35 U.S.C. § 273 (in which Congress acknowledged implicitly, if not explicitly the patent-eligibility of “business methods” under 35 U.S.C. § 101) is a mere “red herring.” See Section 273 is NOT a Red Herring: Steven’s Disingenuous Concurrence in Bilski.

Recently I interviewed Ray Niro. Our wide ranging discussion touched on all things patent, we first discussed the announcement that Niro, Haller & Niro is now doing patent infringement defense on a flat fee basis. We wrap up our discussion of this new defense business model for the patent litigation industry below. We then transition into a discussion about fee shifting in patent litigation, first discussing the recently failed patent reform and then moving into a discussion of the Supreme Court fee shifting cases from the October 2013 term.

The Supreme Court’s Alice decision has again left the IP bar without a clear, repeatable test to determine when exactly a software (or computer-implemented) claim is patentable versus being simply an abstract idea “free to all men and reserved exclusively to none,” Funk Brothers Seed Co. v. Kalo Inoculant Co., 333 U.S. 127, 130 (1948). This is perhaps not surprising as Alice is a case more about so-called “business method” patents than software patents! (In fact, three justices in a succinct, 116-word concurring opinion indicated that they would impose a per se ban on patenting business methods!) With respect to software patents, however, we still find ourselves with a myriad of USPTO Section 101 guidelines, flowcharts and presentation slides – the latest of which is a March 4, 2014, 19-pager which may very well get fatter after Alice!

With apologies to the great humorist, the report of the death of software patents is an exaggeration. The Court set forth a two-step test grounded in Bilski v. Kappos and Mayo v. Prometheus. While the Court may not have defined a clear boundary for so called “abstract ideas” specifically, it did squarely place this case within the “outer shell” of the law set forth in Bilski and Mayo. In doing so it articulated an approach that focuses not on finding the boundary line, but rather on the core properties of an ineligible patent claim.

At least initially, the USPTO instructions to examiners seems extremely patentee friendly, which I must say comes as a surprise given the largely anti-patent rhetoric that has come from the White House over the last 16 months. Indeed, the USPTO has told examiners that the reason Alice’s claims were determined to be patent ineligible was because “the generically-recited computers in the claims add nothing of substance to the underlying abstract idea.” Hirshfeld also told examiners: “[T]he basic inquiries to determine subject matter eligibility remain the same as explained in MPEP 2106(I).” Therefore, nothing has changed as far as the USPTO is concerned.

Using an all too familiar “logical” construct, the Supreme Court determined that what Aereo did was not a public performance within the meaning of the Copyright Act, but was still infringement because it was a public performance. This construct, which often appears in patent cases, is logically absurd, but without anyone to review the Court’s decisions they seem completely comfortable rendering internally inconsistent and logically flawed decisions, particularly when dealing with intellectual property. The Supreme Court likely struggles with intellectual property because the Court is simply not comfortable with technology. In the past…

On Thursday, june 19, 2014, the United States Supreme Court issued its much anticipated decision in Alice v. CLS Bank. In a unanimous decision authored by Justice Thomas the Supreme Court Court held that because the claims are drawn to a patent-ineligible abstract idea, they are not eligible for a patent under Section 101. In what can only be described as an intellectually bankrupt opinion, the Supreme Court never once used the word “software” in its decision.

The Supreme Court reversed a decision from the Ninth Circuit that held that within the realm of labeling for food and beverages, a Lanham Act claim asserting that the label is deceptive and misleading is precluded by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). This case arose relating to the belief of POM that claims made by the Coca-Cola Company were misleading with respect to a juice blend sold by Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid division. The juice sold by Coca-Cola prominently displays the words “pomegranate blueberry,” but in truth the product contains only .3% pomegranate juice and only .2% blueberry juice.

In a decision barely reaching 11 pages, a unanimous Supreme Court in Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Technologies reversed and remanded the Federal Circuit’s per curiam majority ruling in Akamai Technologies and McKesson Technologies. That the Supreme Court overturned the Federal Circuit’s per curiam majority ruling is not a surprise. But what is truly shocking are the factually inaccurate statements, as well as the problematical reasoning that appears in Justice Alito’s opinion for this unanimous Supreme Court. With all due respect, Alito’s opinion is an abysmal ”comedy of errors.”

Akamai argued Limelight ”provides instructions and offers technical assistance” to its customers regarding how to tag. The Federal Circuit dodged the question about whether there was direct infringement under 35 U.S.C. 271(a), but instead found that there was induced infringement under 35 U.S.C. 271(b). The problem with this ruling was that it was a legal impossibility. Well settled law had long stood for the proposition that there can be no induced infringement if there is not indirect infringement. Thus, this bizarre ruling by the Federal Circuit had those in the patent community scratching their head. It was easy to predict a Supreme Court reversal.

The district court determined that the term was indefinite, the Federal Circuit reversed. According to the Federal Circuit, a claim is indefinite “only when it is not amenable to construction or insolubly ambiguous.” Under that standard, the majority determined, the ’753 patent survived and was not indefinite. The Supreme Court characterized this test as the Federal Circuit tolerating “some ambiguous claims but not others.”