Posts Tagged ‘patentable subject matter’

Today’s In re Healy decision (nonprecedential) is yet another example of business method patents failing at the Federal Circuit. The application at issue is directed to “systems and methods ‘for discovering and publishing clearing prices of commodities within exchange markets.’” This sounds like a fundamental economic process to me! Although the claim was lengthy, covering…

In today’s DirectPacket Research v. Polycom case (non-precedential), the Federal Circuit struck down a patent under section 101. The technology involves using an intermediate protocol to translate one incompatible communication protocol to another (i.e., rather than translating directly between the two endpoint protocols, translate the first communication protocol to the intermediate protocol and then translate…

In yesterday’s post, I discussed how in the Federal Circuit’s two USAA companion cases from June 12, the district court had found that the claims were not directed to an abstract idea, but the Federal Circuit disagreed, striking down the patents. On June 16, the Federal Circuit issued another opinion (Optis Cellular Tech.) again reversing…

Electric Power Group (EPG) continues to perhaps be the Federal Circuit’s weapon of choice (see my last post). Since April 30, the Federal Circuit has used EPG five times to kill patents. On June 12, in two companion cases (USAA v. PNC), the Federal Circuit considered the patent eligibility of four patents dealing with depositing…

Over a one-week period, the Federal Circuit used EPG three times to strike down patents: Aviation Capital Partners (5/6/25 – taxable status of a vehicular asset), Geoscope Tech (5/2/25 – determining the location of mobile devices), and Longitude licensing (4/30/25 – performing digital image correction on a computer). Although non-precedential, these cases illustrate the wide…

Danger is lurking for artificial intelligence (AI) patents: it’s the Electric Power Group line of cases from the Federal Circuit involving patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. I’ve been warning about this for years. In Electric Power Group (2016), the Federal Circuit found that data gathering, analysis, and display is an abstract idea.…

The patentability landscape for computer-related inventions under 35 U.S.C. § 101 post Alice can be difficult to reconcile. So, I created the following graph to help simplify things. This graph reflects an empirical analysis of the Federal Circuit case law since Alice. The y-axis shows patent eligibility based on the patent’s claims, with those drafted…

Here is my article on the patentability of artificial-intelligence inventions as published by the Syracuse University College of Law in 2023.