An Appeal to the New Patent Office Director: Repeal the Single Sentence Rule

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Guest Post by Stephen Schott of Volpe & Koenig 

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Like all elementary school graduates, I learned that a single sentence should be short. One source suggests that a well-written work should average 20 to 25 word sentences.[1] With that as the guide, sentences averaging 50 words would raise the ire of a 3rd grade teacher. Those averaging 100 words would drive a sane person mad. And a 250 plus word sentence would drive even Proust to distraction.

 

But sentences of such prodigious lengths are commonplace in patent law. The offending sentences are patent claims.[2] These claims are a U.S. patent’s most important feature. It is here that the inventor, or more likely the inventor’s attorney, sets forth the “metes and bounds” that define the invention. The claims serve as property lines: Cross into those lines with your product and you infringe the patent.

 

With such importance placed on claims, you would expect them to be quite readable. You would at least expect them to have been the subject of the “plain English” movement, perhaps best summed up by Albert Einstein when discussing science: “Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in language comprehensible to everyone.” But the claims—despite the substantial time spent drafting and interpreting them—are not a place where the discerning reader finds linguistic respite.

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An Initial Comment on Prometheus: The Irrelevance of Intangibility

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By Kevin Emerson Collins, Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law—Bloomington [BIO][Articles][PDF Version of this Post]

Background: The Machine-or-Transformation Test of Bilski

Last fall, the Federal Circuit articulated the "machine-or-transformation" test for patent eligibility in its landmark case In re Bilski, 545 F.3d 943 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (en banc). It held that a method is eligible for patent protection only if it is either (a) limited to a "particular machine" or (b) responsible for transforming a "particular article" into a different state or thing. Id. at 954. Additionally, in a classic example of language that adds judicial wiggle room, the machine or transformation that satisfies either of these prongs "must impose meaningful limits on the claim's scope," it "must be central to the purpose of the claimed process," and it must not be part of "insignificant extra-solution activity" or a "mere data-gathering step." Id. at 961–62 (emphases added).   

The Supreme Court has accepted certiorari in Bilski, but the impending Supreme Court opinion has not stopped the Federal Circuit from issuing what is perhaps its most important case to date applying the machine-or-transformation test: Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. v. Mayo Collaborative Services. There have been two distinct types of claims that have taken center stage in recent debates over the section 101 doctrine of patent eligibility: "business methods" and what I will call "determine-and-infer methods." The claim at issue in Bilski describes a classic business method. In contrast, Prometheus involves a determine-and-infer method. The Federal Circuit's opinion in Prometheus opens a new window into the import of the machine-or-transformation test. Regardless of one's views of the soundness of Federal Circuit's reasoning in Prometheus, herein lies one of the opinion's greatest virtues. By issuing Prometheus before the Court's oral arguments in Bilski, the Federal Circuit has helped to clarify the stakes of the Court's decision to sanction, reformulate, or reject the machine-or-transformation test.   

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