by Dennis Crouch
The Federal Circuit handed down a mixed decision in Chewy, Inc. v. International Business Machines Corp., 2022-1756 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 5, 2024) ChewyvIBM. The district court had ruled against the patentee (IBM) -- finding one patent ineligible and the other not infringed. On appeal, the Federal Circuit largely affirmed, but found one claim that passes through the pre-trial gauntlet. The patents at issue were IBM's U.S. Patent Nos. 7,072,849 and 7,076,443, relating to improvements in web-based advertising. On remand, a jury may need to decide whether claim 12 of the '849 patent is valid and infringed.
The first half of the post focuses on eligibility and is fairly standard. The second half of the post is what all patent prosecutors need to read because it delves into "magic language" - binding statements - in describing the invention.
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