The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down many patents on the grounds that they are invalid as directed to an abstract idea, relying on the Supreme Court’s Alice decision. In In re Elbaum (Fed. Cir. 12/20/2023) 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 33719, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s rejection of the claims in a patent application as directed to an abstract idea.Continue Reading And Again, Abstract Ideas are Not Patentable!
Have you ever driven away from your home and then had that irritating doubt in your mind as to whether you remembered to close your garage door? I know I have. No matter how hard I try to search my brain’s archives, I really don’t remember whether I closed the garage door even though I close it 99.9% of the time! In that moment, you wish there was a way to check that doesn’t require turning around and going back home to see if you really left the house wide open for anyone to walk in.
Well The Chamberlain Group, Inc. (“Chamberlain”) thought it had patented an invention that could help with this type of problem—a garage door opener that wirelessly transmits information such as whether the door is open or closed. See U.S. Patent No. 7,224,275 (the “’275 Patent”). Specifically, the patent “relates to an apparatus and method for communicating information about the status of a movable barrier, for example, a garage door.”
Continue Reading Federal Circuit Invalidates Garage Door Opener Patent Because It Is an Abstract Idea
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit just highlighted another approach plaintiffs can use to overcome early challenges to the validity of patent claims under 35 U.S.C. §101. What is that approach? It is a classic one: show there is a genuine issue of fact. That approach saved a subset of claims from summary
Apple just escaped a $533 million jury verdict by invalidating the plaintiff’s patents on the grounds that the patents cover abstract ideas.
The case is Smartflash, LLC v. Apple Inc., decided by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals on March 1, 2017. Smartflash owned three patents for technology that limited Internet access to data (video,
The long-awaited decision by the United States Supreme Court on business method patents was issued on June 19, 2014. Unfortunately, the decision raised more questions than it answered. The expectation was that the Supreme Court would clearly explain the difference between unpatentable abstract ideas and patentable software, including business methods. Instead, the Court issued a very narrow decision with broad, but uncertain ramifications. The Court applied a test it has previously relied upon, striking down all of the patents in the case and expressly stating that it was not opining on the patentability of software or business methods in general.
The case is Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, 2014 U.S. Lexis 4303 (U.S. Supreme Court, June 19, 2014). Alice Corporation’s patents were directed to a computer-implemented process of minimizing “settlement risk” – the risk to a party in a financial transaction that the other party would not perform the transaction, by creating an intermediary using “shadow” financial records of both parties. The claims covered the computer system to perform the process, the computerized method itself, and a computer-readable medium with the instructions to perform the method.
Alice Corporation had sued CLS Bank for patent infringement. The district court had granted summary judgment for CLS Bank on the grounds that all of the claims were not eligible for patent protection as they were directed to an abstract idea. A panel of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals had reversed the district court, but then, in an en banc hearing, affirmed the district court in a set of multiple opinions. A plurality of the Federal Circuit found all of Alice Corporation’s claims patent-ineligible, relying on the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 132 S.Ct. 1289 (2012).Continue Reading Business Method Patents: Murkier Water
