The Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020 (the CASE Act) included a direction from Congress to create the Copyright Claims Board (the “CCB”), a three-member panel giving an option to resolve copyright disputes involving less than $30,000. The ...
Read More »IP Frontiers: Yu v. Apple Inc.: Yet Another Alice Disaster
In Yangin Yu, Zhongxuan Zhang v. Apple Inc. (Fed. Cir. June 11, 2021), hereinafter “Yu v. Apple,” the Federal Circuit majority proves there is a serious problem with its § 101 jurisprudence, which has expanded to the point of swallowing at ...
Read More »IP Frontiers: Will Supreme Court intervene with runaway expansion of §101 by federal circuit?
There is some concern in the patent-sphere about the CAFC conflating §101 (patentable subject matter) with §112 (issues with claim wording and/or support of claims in specification) and other considerations. There is no better example of this than the recently ...
Read More »IP Frontiers: A look back at Alice decisions in 2019
In this update to my prior articles on the state of patentable subject matter in the wake of the Supreme Court Alice decision, CAFC decisions in 2019 identified as precedential and involving abstract ideas (computer-related inventions) are considered. The two-part ...
Read More »IP Frontiers: Toward rebalancing outcomes of Alice patentable subject matter inquiries — part two
It has been about nine months since my last patentable subject matter (aka “Alice”) update, tracking cases and other important information in the wake of the Alice Supreme Court decision. Things continue to improve at the Court of Appeals for ...
Tagged with: IP Frontiers Wayne F. Reinke
Read More »IP Frontiers: Toward rebalancing outcomes of Alice patentable subject matter inquiries
About five months have gone by since my last update on the state of patentable subject matter after the 2014 Alice Supreme Court decision and its progeny. A number of important developments have taken place during this time, mostly positive ...
Tagged with: IP Frontiers Wayne F. Reinke
Read More »IP Frontiers: What’s in a game: intellectual property protection for the gaming industry
I have come across several smaller gaming companies that say they have never explored Intellectual Property (IP) protection. Typically, I respond with some examples of things they could be protecting. The reactions run the gamut from panic to interest to ...
Read More »IP Frontiers: Computer-related patents after Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International
35 U.S.C. §101 states that “Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this ...
Tagged with: IP Frontiers Wayne F. Reinke
Read More »IP Frontiers: Has the Alice pendulum begun to swing in favor of computer-related inventions?
For decades, computer-related inventions have survived various road blocks erected over time (statutory, case law, regulations and USPTO practice). When the latest road block came about and for some time afterward, i.e., Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, 573 U.S. ...
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Read More »IP Frontiers: The fate of computer-related inventions
Alice Corporation is the owner of several patents directed to mitigating, using a computer as a third-party intermediary, the risk that one of the parties to an agreed-upon financial exchange between two parties will fail to satisfy its obligation. ...
Tagged with: IP Frontiers
Read More »IP Frontiers: Business method patents alive and well
The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided Bilski v. Kappos, involving a business method patent. Back in 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided In re Bilski, which affirmed a rejection of patent application claims to a method for managing or hedging risk.
Tagged with: IP Frontiers
Read More »Software and business method patents called into question
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in October drastically changed its jurisprudence with respect to software- and business-method-based inventions in deciding In re Bilski. A decade before, the Federal Circuit also radically changed that landscape, opening what ...
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