By Dennis Crouch
On his side of the blog, Professor David Hricik again raises the question of whether Section 101 can serve as the basis for a defense to patentability.
The basic notion is that the defenses to charges of patent infringement are listed in 35 U.S.C. § 282 and there is no statutory pathway for recognizing § 101 as such a defense. Hricik also discusses some amount of legislative history in drafting of the 1952 Patent Act that bolsters his conclusion. The Supreme Court approach makes sense then only by ignoring the statutory language and legislative history.
Other Posts:
- Hricik, Are the Courts Correct in Their Assumption that a Patent Issued on Non-patentable Subject Matter is Invalid?
- Crouch, Can a Third Party Challenge Section 101 Subject Matter Eligibility in the USPTO’s new Post-Grant Review Procedure?
- Kappos, PTAB and Patentability Challenges (responding to my post above)
- Crouch, Beyond Question: RMail Challenges the Use of Subject Matter Eligibility as an Invalidity Defense
There are a few potential legal challenges on this question that are rising through the process, including the Versata case (Inter partes (CBM) review on eligibility grounds). In Sinclair-Allison v. Fifth Ave. Physician (2013-1177), the accused infringer is counter-intuitively agreeing with Hricik that subject matter eligibility is not a validity defense but instead is an off-book “eligibility defense.” The point of the line of argument is that the presumption of validity shouldn’t apply to eligibility challenges.