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1 week ago | 
ipwatchdog.com | Eileen McDermott |Gene Quinn |Steve Brachmann |Stephen Schreiner
“PERA 2025 still says that unmodified human genes as they exist in the human body are not patent eligible, but prior versions of the bill said that isolation of genes was considered a modification.”Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) today signed onto the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2025 as co-sponsors with Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE).
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1 week ago | 
ipwatchdog.com | Eileen McDermott |Gene Quinn |Steve Brachmann |Stephen Schreiner
“The petition argued that ‘[p]atents would provide little protection if confined to the strict, literal terms of their claims; ‘[o]utright and forthright duplication is a dull and very rare type of infringement,’ and ‘[t]o prohibit no other would place the inventor at the mercy of verbalism.’” The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to grant a number of IP petitions, including one in which a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruled in October 2024 that...
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1 week ago | 
ipwatchdog.com | Stephen Schreiner |Gene Quinn |Steve Brachmann
“In finding that the petitioner’s prior knowledge of the patent and its failure to act outweighed these other factors, the Director has effectively established a new basis for discretionary denial under Section 314(a) to add the existing list.”The recent decision in iRhythm Technologies v. Welch Allyn Inc., IPR2025-00377, et al.
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2 months ago | 
ipwatchdog.com | Eileen McDermott |Steve Brachmann |Stephen Schreiner |Gene Quinn
“Under this view, the patentee could actually benefit from having a patent issue after its expiration date because the patent’s provisional-rights term would extend beyond the patent’s twenty-year term.” – Federal CircuitThe U.S Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued a precedential opinion clarifying that provisional rights in a patent do not apply when a patent would issue after its expiration date. Judge Chen authored the decision.
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2 months ago | 
ipwatchdog.com | Stephen Schreiner |Gene Quinn |Eileen McDermott
“The courts are doing the right thing by sending Alice Step Two to the jury and instructing them to apply the clear and convincing evidentiary burden.”The 2014 Alice decision held that claims may be patent-ineligible as claiming “abstract ideas” based on a two-step inquiry. Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208, 217 (2014). At Step One, it is determined whether the claim is “directed to” a “patent-ineligible concept” such as an abstract idea.
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
ipwatchdog.com | Eileen McDermott |Gene Quinn |Joseph Allen |Stephen Schreiner
IPWatchdog LIVE Moves to March in 2025: Click for details “The CAFC explained that, as pled, BearBox’s conversion claim is preempted because it is ‘essentially an inventorship cause of action and patent infringement cause of action, and thus seeks ‘patent-like protection’ for ideas that are unprotected under federal law.’” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Monday, January 13, issued a precedential decision denying a state law conversion claim as being preempted by...
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Jan 12, 2025 | 
ipwatchdog.com | Stephen Schreiner |Eileen McDermott
IPWatchdog LIVE Moves to March in 2025: Click for details “With the PTAB receiving thousands of petitions each year, one would expect that the All-Claims Invalidation Rate would be relatively constant year to year… But that hasn’t happened.
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Nov 4, 2024 | 
ipwatchdog.com | Stephen Schreiner |Eileen McDermott
Support IPWatchdog with an individual sponsorship: Click here “In re Xencor calls into question the issue of when a claim term should be construed to be a ‘genus’ and whether that inquiry differs in the unpredictable arts compared to the predictable arts.” The case law distinguishes between so-called “unpredictable arts” (e.g., the biological, chemical, and pharmaceutical arts) and “predictable arts” (e.g., electrical and mechanical arts) for purposes of Section 112 analysis for the very...
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Jun 25, 2024 | 
ipwatchdog.com | Stephen Schreiner |Steve Brachmann
“Since 2021, the invalidation rate has been increasing and is currently at 71% for the first two quarters of 2024. In 2023, all challenged claims were found invalid 68% of the time. These are daunting statistics for patent holders.”The invalidation rate of patents in America Invents Act (AIA) proceedings, such as inter partes reviews (IPRs), has been high since the inception of the PTAB.
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May 28, 2024 | 
ipwatchdog.com | Stephen Schreiner |Brad Close |Randall R Rader
“When making oral argument, listen for judges that may be steering your argument into one of these pitfalls. Don’t take the bait.” Part I of this article discussed how the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is a very different tribunal from district courts. It is a venue where fact and issues of law are decided by technical specialists, who are also highly trained in patent law, instead of lay judges and juries.
