Insurance Company Invents Faster Way To Deliver Life Insurance
Yesterday The Hartford announced via press release that it had invented a faster way to deliver life insurance, which is now patent pending. Can you that be true? As with many things associated with...
View ArticleCLS Bank International: A Fractured Landscape of Patent Eligibility for...
These polar opposite decisions in CyberSource and Ultramercial illustrate how fractured the Federal Circuit’s patent-eligibility landscape has now become for business methods and systems. The most...
View ArticleBancorp Services: Further Fracturing of the Patent Eligibility Landscape for...
In holding the method, system, and media claims of the ‘792 and ‘037 patents to “cover no more than abstract ideas and therefore do no recite patent-eligible subject matter,” Judge Lourie’s opinion...
View ArticleUK Perspective: Bancorp Services v. Sun Life Assurance
The EPO applies what might be referred to as a “subtraction” test for claims containing a mixture of patent-eligible and patent-ineligible features, those features that are patent-ineligible being...
View ArticleBusiness Methods (and Software) are Still Patentable!
For at least the past 15 years, the legal, technical and academic communities have been debating the patentability of business methods and software. Despite much negative press ink, talk, legislative...
View ArticleCLS Bank v Alice – Federal Circuit Orders en banc Rehearing
It is arguable that neither view is beyond criticism and that any emergent legal test as to patent-eligibility demands further development. There is much to commend the majority view that each of...
View ArticleArt Units in Misc. Computer Applications Have 72% Allowance
This all means that the “business method Art Units” are not the only ones charged with examining applications covering computer-implemented methods. In fact, there are Art Units where from a patentee...
View ArticleFixing the Patent System to Improve Innovation
Settling nuisance value perpetuates the cycle, as the automobile industry discovered in the 1980s and early 1990s. Show a willingness to pay extortion-like demands and you will see more lawsuits filed....
View ArticleBank of America Seeks Patent on ATM with a USB Port
Our featured patent application today discusses the operation of an automatic teller machine, or ATM, that includes a universal serial bus (USB) port. This USB port would enable the ATM to connect to...
View ArticleMissed Opportunities for Alice, Software at the Supreme Court
It seems undeniable that Alice missed many opportunities to score easy points. Indirect arguments were made by Alice that didn't seem very persuasive. Indeed, if one is to predict the outcome of the...
View ArticlePost-Alice, Allowances are a Rare Sighting in Business-Method Art Units
Since the Alice Corp. decision, rejections under 35 U.S.C. 101 have become substantially more common in business-method art units, and notices of allowance have become substantially more rare in these...
View ArticleSoftware and business methods over half of Google, Microsoft US patents
Software and method patents may appear to have fallen out of favor because of recent court decisions and legislation. However, recent trends indicate that they comprise surprisingly high portions of...
View ArticlePatent eligibility forum discusses examiners application of Mayo, Myriad, Alice
Drew Hirshfeld, Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy, went over the highlights of the USPTO interim guidance, explaining “first, we were able to narrow the funnel that we use to determine...
View ArticleAre Business Method Patents Dead? It Depends on Who’s Applying for Them
Business method patents are still being granted after Alice, but are being granted at lower rates than before, and some assignees are better at obtaining them than others. The top assignees in the...
View ArticlePatenting business methods and software still requires concrete and tangible...
The key to obtaining a software patent is to thoroughly describe the system and processes from a technological level. As to Judge Chen explained in DDR Holdings, in order for software patent claims to...
View ArticleThe 2015 Brokered Patent Market: A Good Year to be a Buyer
If you were buying patents in 2015, you likely did better than any previous year. The patent market, and, in particular, the brokered patent market, continues to be a robust market for buying and...
View ArticleFederal Circuit reverses PTAB, says CBM patents must be financial in nature...
The CBM determination includes patents that are “financial in nature” according to the claims; not patents that are “complementary” or “incidental” to financial activity according to the specification...
View ArticlePTAB denied institution of CBM against automotive feature consolidation...
In a surprisingly restrained decision, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) released a decision denying institution of a covered business method (CBM) review proceeding on a patent that is...
View ArticleIs there a Tide-Change in the Prospects of Patenting Business Method...
In the years after the Alice decision, it had seemed as though examiners in the business method art units felt as though their hands were tied with respect to issuing applications. Even if they had...
View ArticleCrossing the Chasm: Avoiding and Surviving the PTAB
In 2012, the American Invents Act established three new administrative procedures: post grant review (PGR), inter-partes review (IPR), and covered business method patent (CBM) review. In each of these...
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