McRO
As discussed in the latest memorandum, the Federal Circuit in McRO held that the claims at issue are patent eligible under 35 USC § 101 because they are not directed to an abstract idea under the first prong of the two-part Alice[4] test. Under Alice, all claims having an abstract idea are analyzed in two steps:
Earlier this year, we discussed the potential ramifications of the December 2015 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure on the pleading standard of infringement following the decision in Rembrandt Patent Innovations LLC v. Apple Inc. In Rembrandt, the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California applied the Twombly/Iqbal standard of pleading to infringement contentions following the abrogation of Rule 84 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Form 18.
Almost a decade has elapsed since the Supreme Court’s decision in KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc. altered the law of patent obviousness. In reversing the judgment of the Federal Circuit, the Court in KSR limited the “teaching, suggestion, motivation” test and loosened the standards that both courts and the USPTO use to assess validity under 35 U.S.C. § 103. In particular, the Court expressly rejected the application of any inflexible obviousness rule that excluded consideration of, among other things, common sense.
The Federal Circuit, however, recently confirmed that common sense alone cannot suffice to establish obviousness. In Arendi S.A.R.L. v. Apple, Inc., the court held that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (the PTAB) erred when it used common sense to supply a missing limitation in the prior art to arrive at the claimed invention. Not only is this case surprising in that factual findings of the PTAB are rarely overturned on appeal, but it also marks some constraints on the broad obviousness standard articulated in KSR.
Earlier this month, the Federal Circuit revisited the issue of inventorship disputes and iterated in a nonprecedential opinion that proving nonjoinder of inventors in an issued patent is a difficult threshold for a challenger to meet. In doing so, the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court holding that the challenge to correct inventorship of two issued patents was not supported by evidence that rose to the “clear and convincing” standard required to prevail on a 35 U.S.C. § 256 claim.
Foreign filing licenses do not typically require much attention in daily practice since the license is routinely applied for and granted as a matter of course in new application filings. However, in certain situations ignoring the license may cause severe damage. 35 U.S.C. § 184 states that a person shall not file or cause or authorize to be filed a patent application (among other things) in any foreign country unless six months have passed since the United States application was filed unless otherwise authorized by a license obtained from the Commissioner of Patents, i.e., unless a foreign filing license is received from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). A purpose for this rule is that it allows the U.S. government to protect national security by approving or disapproving the export of sensitive technologies, such as technology associated with warfare, nuclear, or security-related measures.
On July 30, 2015, Drew Hirshfeld was appointed to the position of Commissioner for Patents for the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Mr. Hirshfeld reports directly to Michelle Lee, the Director of the USPTO, and according to the USPTO website, he “is responsible for managing and directing all aspects of this organization which affect administration of patent operations, examination policy, patent quality management, international patent cooperation, resources and planning, and budget administration.”
Maximizing the protection and value of intellectual property assets is often the cornerstone of a business's success and even survival. In this blog, Nutter's Intellectual Property attorneys provide news updates and practical tips in patent portfolio development, IP litigation, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets and licensing.
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