IP Law Bulletin

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank in 2014, there has been an increasing trend in district courts granting pretrial dispositive motions to effect early dismissal of patent infringement cases under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Last month, however, the Federal Circuit issued two patent-friendly decisions that preclude such early dismissal when there are factual disputes that underlie the ultimate legal conclusion of patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. 

Last month, the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California ruled that the Federal Circuit’s somewhat bare pleading standard for direct patent infringement is no longer sufficient following recent amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which went into effect on December 1, 2015. The court ruled that the plausibility pleading standard under Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ascroft v. Iqbal now applies to direct patent infringement claims.