News / Insights

As promised yesterday, here’s a pretty exhaustive list of abstract ideas found by the Fed. Cir. post Alice (and a few interesting legal points on step one). I don’t list duplicates. For example, I don’t list all of the variations of abstract ideas that fall under Electric Power Group. Perhaps I’ll save that for another…

The Fed. Cir. today struck down claims directed to providing product location information within a store for failing to recite patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101 in Innovaport v. Target (nonprecedential). This was a nice, meaty decision (unlike the one I posted about earlier today). Perhaps this is because the claims not only…

The Fed. Cir. yesterday issued a conclusory, patentable-subject-matter opinion under 35 U.S.C. § 101: Q Technologies v. Walmart (nonprecedential). The court basically just agreed with the district court in finding the claims patent ineligible with little, if any, explanation/analysis. The lesson to be learned here is that if a contested claim can be characterized as…

The Fed. Cir. today struck down a web-conferencing patent for failure to recite patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101: US Patent No. 7,679,637 v. Google. This is not a typo; the name of the plaintiff-appellant is this patent number. Overall, there is nothing surprising in the case, but the court had a…

Here’s an interesting patentable subject matter case under 35 U.S.C. § 101. On Friday, the Federal Circuit seemingly used Electric Power Group as its primary consideration, while downplaying claim limitations tied to technological improvements described in the specification.

Finally, after several months, the Fed. Cir. today issued another patentable subject matter case under 35 U.S.C. § 101: Technology in Ariscale v. Razer (nonprecedential). The district court below found patent ineligible claims directed to “‘[a] computer-implemented method for decoding a transmission signal’ that comprises steps including ‘receiving,’ ‘deinterleaving,’ ‘combining,’ and ‘decoding’ the information in…

The AIPLA’s INNOVATE Magazine just published the article I wrote for my panel discussion at the AIPLA annual meeting. It deals with patent eligibility of AI as well as avoiding problems with 112(f). Here’s a link: Subject Matter Eligibility of Artificial Intelligence and the Problems with a Functionally Drafted Patent

My next webinar on patentable subject matter will be devoted to business methods. It takes place on December 9. Details follow: Subject Matter Eligibility of Business Methods: Surviving 35 U.S.C. § 101 – Product Info – Barbri – Barbri Portal

Not a surprise! In today’s Rideshare Displays v. Lyft case (nonprecedential), the Federal Circuit found ineligible under section 101 claims directed to a system for verifying that a ridesharing-app user is getting into the correct car. Below, the PTAB had granted a motion to amend in an IPR. The substitute claims were challenged on appeal…