Patents4Life | Biotechnology Patent Law Blog

AKAMAI V – “How To” Induce Infringement of a Method of Treatment Claim

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Warren Woessner

I have both been busy since the holiday season and frankly, uninspired by the case law that has appeared on the scene. Who can be enraptured by the fine points of standing when we are all speculating about whether Michelle Lee still has a job – along with a number of unfilled vacancies under her, or how sure-thing Gorsuch will rule on immigrants’ rights? (The three IP oriented decisions I have read that he generated are about as far from biotech as one can get.)

Continue reading →

Posted in Infringement | 1 Comment

Transubstantiation of a Machine into an Abstract Idea

Posted on January 20, 2017 by Warren Woessner

In the Catholic Church “transubstantiation” is the belief that the wafer and the wine become the actual body and blood of Christ during the communion ceremony. Recently, the PTAB went into the mystic to transform claims to a multi-station MRI apparatus into abstract ideas, and then to reject them under s. 101. Ex parte Hiroyuki Itagaki, Appeal No. 2015-002702 (PTAB 2016), application serial no. 12/598168.

And this rejection was entered after the panel found that the MRI apparatus was unobvious over the art cited by the Examiner.

This legal result requires us all to call the Alice/Mayo rule unworkable and to shout out that this is a claim to a machine, not to a conventional process carried out by a generic computer. Even the panel refers to claim 1 as an “apparatus” or as describing “a multi-station MRI.”

Continue reading →

Posted in Patent Eligible Subject Matter | 1 Comment

Chisum Academy Awards for 2016 to Federal Circuit Decisions

Posted on January 18, 2017 by Warren Woessner

This is a guest post from the Chisum Patent Academy.

Chisum and Mueller selected the following fifteen (15) cases as the most impactful of the Federal Circuit’s precedential patent law decisions issued in 2016. We excluded Supreme Court patent decisions, all of which are inherently impactful. Our remarks about each case indicate why we think it made a difference–for better or worse. Our comments, views, and opinions are strictly our own and do not reflect the views of any persons other than Chisum and Mueller.

We have listed our selections by patent law topic/issue rather than rank the cases in an overall sense. Nor did we attempt to include every disputed issue in patent law. The order of topics and the number assigned to each case within a topic does not indicate a ranking.

Read the full Awards list.