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In a recent subject matter eligibility case, the Federal Circuit reversed a district court decision finding that claims covering prenatal DNA testing were patent-ineligible. The Sequenom patents at issue, U.S. 9,580,751 (“the ‘751 patent”) and U.S. 9,738,931 (“the ‘931 patent”), are directed to a method for preparing a DNA fraction from a pregnant human female… Read more »
In Ironworks Patents LLC v. Samsung Electronics. Co.1, the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded the district court’s judgment of noninfringement of claims of U.S. Patent No. 6,427,078 (“the ‘078 patent”) because the district court erred in its construction of the term “camera unit.” While this opinion is nonprecedential, it provides useful insight as to how the… Read more »
In Koninklijke Philips N.V. v. Google LLC et al.,1 the Federal Circuit reaffirmed that the “general knowledge” of a person of ordinary skill in the art can be used to supply a missing claim limitation in an obviousness analysis during inter partes review under 35 USC § 311(b). Google LLC (“Google”) filed a petition with the Patent Trial and Appeal… Read more »
In an opinion focused on claim construction and disavowal, the Federal Circuit in Techtronic Industries co. v. ITC found that a patent’s repeated discussion and focus on providing a passive infrared detector disavowed any products that lack a passive infrared detector.1 The patent at issue (U.S. Patent No. 7,161,319, or ‘319 patent) relates to “movable barrier operators”… Read more »
In the latest turn of events in the Athena v. Mayo Supreme Court petition1, Mayo Collaborative Services filed its opposition brief arguing, in essence, that the Court has already spoken on patent eligibility, the Court should leave policy considerations to Congress, and lower courts are not confused about the law. In this closely watched case, Athena Diagnostics… Read more »
In American Axle & Manufacturing v. Neapco Holdings1, the Federal Circuit was tasked with determining whether claims directed to a method of manufacturing that utilize at least one, and possible other, natural laws, are eligible for patenting under 35 U.S.C. § 101. As detailed in the dissent by Judge Moore, the Federal Circuit appears to do… Read more »
In the wake of several multi-day USPTO outages, the USPTO has transition a critical part of its Patent Application Locating and Monitoring (PALM) application to “a new, more modern, stable and resilient server platform” that “is 1,000 times faster, 20 times more efficient, and far more stable and less prone to failure.”1 The USPTO’s previous… Read more »
In several previous blog posts, we discussed the USPTO’s revised guidance for determining subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101, including a review of potential inconsistencies between the USPTO guidance and Mayo and a recent Federal Circuit decision, which did not defer to the USPTO guidance. We ended on a hopeful note that some combination of the courts,… Read more »
In our January Blog Post related to the January 2019 USPTO Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance (“the Guidance”), and our subsequent Blog Post in February , we noted that it was unclear how the courts will view issued personalized medicine claims examined under the Guidance, as it appeared that the USPTO may want to push the courts to reexamine the… Read more »
In our January 22, 2019 Blog Post related to the January 2019 USPTO Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance (“the Guidance”), we noted that in Prong Two of Step 2A of the Guidance, an Examiner is tasked with evaluating “whether the claim as a whole integrates the recited judicial exception into a practical application of the exception.”1 More importantly, we… Read more »
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