In re Rudy and the PTO 101 Guidance

Attorney: Richard D. Kelly
April 22, 2021

The USPTO 101 Guidance document has been under a cloud when Judge Brinkema refused to follow the guidance in Cleveland Clinic Found. V. True Health Diagnostics LLC., affirmed at 760 F. App'x. 1013, 1020 (Fed. Cir. 2019). Cleveland Clinic relied on Guidance example 29, claim 1 to assert that its claims were patent eligible since they were drafted in the same manner. The Federal Circuit in rejecting the argument found the 101 Guidance example 29, claim 1 to be "strikingly" similar to claim 1, see760 F. App'x. at 1020, which the Federal Circuit held was patent ineligible. The guidance teaches that example 29, claim 1 is patent eligible. The USPTO has not responded to the Court's criticism and example 29 continues to appear in the Guidance unchanged.... Read more

An Automated Notification System for Providing Advance Notification of the Pickup or Delivery of Goods was Found Patent Ineligible

Attorney: Marina I. Miller, Ph.D.
July 20, 2020

Electronic Communication Technologies, LLC (“ECT”) sued ShoppersChoice.com, LLC (“ShoppersChoice”), alleging that ShoppersChoice infringed claim 11 of U.S. Patent 9,373,261 (“the ’261 patent”). The district court granted ShoppersChoice’s motion for judgment on the pleadings that claim 11 was invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. ECT appealed. The Federal Circuit (“the Court”) affirmed the judgment of the district court.<... Read more

Solicitor General on Patent Eligibility

Attorney: Richard D. Kelly
December 16, 2019

The Solicitor General (SG) was invited by the Supreme Court to provide comments on the certiorari petitions filed by Berkheimer and Hikma to review the Federal Circuit's 101 decisions adverse to them. The two briefs have numerous similarities including identifying the Court's decision in Bilski[1]as starting the patent eligibility confusion by not grounding its decision on interpreting the meaning of the 35 U..S.C. 101 terms "process, machine, manufacture, [and] composition of matter." The SG asserts that in Bilski the Court did not ground its decision on the stature terms but instead found three exceptions to be not required by the statutory text: laws of nature, physical phenomenon, and abstract ideas. While these concepts are found earlier Supreme Court decisions, Bilski represented the first time they were used independent of the statutory language or constitutional concept of the "useful arts." The SG then described Mayo[2] as continuing the Court's Bilski practice of not tying patent eligibility to any of the statutory or Constitutional language. Alice[3] characterized the Mayo decisional approach as a two step process.... Read more

What You Say Can Hurt You

Attorney: Richard D. Kelly
May 21, 2019

Often in writing applications there is a tendency to denigrate prior art techniques. This is not risk free as the patentee in Nuvo Pharmaceuticals (Ireland) v. Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Inc. (Fed. Cir. May 15, 2019) discovered.... Read more

Category: Patent Eligibility

A Different Lesson from Vanda v. West-Ward

August 20, 2018

Last week the Federal Circuit denied West-Ward's petition for rehearing en banc. At the time of the original Federal Circuit decision (Vanda Pharms. Inc. v. West-Ward Pharms. Int'l Ltd., 887 F.3d 1117 (Fed. Cir. 2018), the case generated substantial commentary in regard to its patent eligibility context. West-Ward's petition focused on the question of whether "adjusting a dose of an old drug based on a patient's genetic risk of poorly metabolizing it" is patent eligible subject matter, so the pro-patent crowd will no doubt be pleased. There is another aspect of the case, however, which is worthy of consideration.... Read more