Tag Archives: First to Invent

EasyWeb => Easy 101 Invalidation

EasyWeb v. Twitter (Fed. Cir. 2017) (nonprecedential opinion)

In this case, the appellate court affirmed summary judgment that all of the asserted claims of five EasyWeb patents are ineligible under the Mayo/Alice interpretation of 35 U.S.C. 101 and therefore invalid.

Representative Claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 7,685,247 is directed to a message-publishing-system that “accepts messages in multiple ways, such as by fax, telephone, or email” then verifies the message as being sent from an authorized sender, converts the message to a web format, and publishes the message on the Internet.  Although claim 1 is directed to a computer system, it includes a functionally claimed software component:

A message publishing system (MPS) operative to process a message from a sender in a first format, comprising:

a central processor;

at least one sender account;

at least one storage area configured to store at least a first portion of the message;

and software executing in the central processor to configure the processor so as to:

  1. identify the sender of the message as an authorized sender based on information associated with the message in comparison to data in the sender account, wherein the identification is dependent upon the first format;
  2. convert at least a second portion of the message from the first format to a second format; and
  3. publish the converted second portion of the message so as to be viewable in the second format only if the sender has been identified as an authorized sender.

Following the now standard two-step eligibility analysis, the court first found the claim directed toward an abstract idea.

Claim 1 merely recites the familiar concepts of receiving, authenticating, and publishing data. As we have explained in a number of cases, claims involving data collection, analysis, and publication are directed to an abstract idea.

Of import here for the abstract idea finding is that the claim simply uses generic computer technology rather than improving-upon the technology or designing particularized components.

Moving to step-two, the court looked – but could not find – an “inventive concept” beyond the claimed abstract idea sufficient to “transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.” (quoting Alice).

Although EasyWeb argues that an inventive concept arises from the ordered combination of steps in claim 1, we disagree. Claim 1 recites the most basic of steps in data collection, analysis, and publication and they are recited in the ordinary order. In sum, all the claims are directed to the abstract idea of receiving, authenticating, and publishing data, and fail to recite any inventive concepts sufficient to transform the abstract idea into a patent eligible invention.

Its decision is not quite correct, the Federal Circuit does not find abstract ideas simply because a claim involves “data collection, analysis, and publication.”  However, when (as here), the claim is directed toward these activities at a high level of abstraction, then the Alice/Mayo approach easily fits.

Analytically, the decision adds further weight to the theory that steps 1 and 2 are closely linked and are highly likely to correlate with one another.

Uncertainty: Helsinn Foreshadows Trouble with AIA Patents

By Dennis Crouch

The AIA was passed back in 2011 and the changes have gradually been implemented through the patent system.  We are finally at the point where most newly issued U.S. patents are post-AIA patents whose patentability is individually based upon the first-to-file provisions of re-drafted 35 U.S.C. § 102.  We’re talking here about hundreds-of-thousands of patents interpreted under the new rules with millions on their way.  As this huge stone is slowly building momentum, the PTO has faced a startup problem: The Agency must apply the new law even though it has almost no guidance from the courts as to how the new portions of the statute will be interpreted.  Because the PTO interpretation is given no deference and because of the many drafting holes in the AIA, I expect that the PTO interpretation will be repeatedly found incorrect.

The only substantive area that has been thus-far decided by the Federal Circuit involves the recent Helsinn decision.  In that case, the Federal Circuit rejected the PTO approach to on-sale prior art and ruled that a pre-filing sale whose existence was disclosed to the public counts as 102(a)(1) prior art even if the elements of the invention were not publicly disclosed (just the fact of the sale).  In its incorrect interpretation of the statute, the PTO had judged the statute as only counting sales as public if the elements of the invention were also disclosed publicly.[1]

There are many other potential examples of questionable language from the AIA first-to-invent provisions that will eventually come to a head:

  • Effective Filing Date: In a patent claiming priority to a prior application, does the claim’s ‘effective filing date’ depend upon whether the relied-upon filing discloses and enables the claimed invention? Section 100(i) suggests that we look only to whether there is a claimed right for priority or benefit. This could impact many written description cases.
  • On Sale: Does a purely private sale or offer to sell count as prior art? Helsinn reserves this question for a later date.
  • Public Use: Does non-disclosing public use count as prior art? Helsinn suggests yes.
  • Commercialization: Does non-disclosing commercialization of the invention by the patentee count as prior art?
  • Otherwise available to the public: Under what conditions apart from the listed publications and uses will we consider an invention to be “otherwise available to the public?” How much further does this go beyond publication and public use? Is public knowledge of the existence of the invention sufficient, or must the public be made aware of the inventions elements and how to make and use the invention? Does the invention need to be discoverable in some way?
  • Grace Period: What level of proof is required for the patentee to show its prior disclosure?
  • Disclosure: For an inventor’s disclosure to trigger the grace period, must it enable the entire invention?
  • Public Disclosure: What counts as a pre-filing ‘public disclosure’ under 102(b)(1)(B) sufficient to knock-out prior art? Is the publicness the same as 102(a)(1)?
  • Changed Disclosure: For intervening third-party disclosures or patent applications that differ from an inventor’s disclosure, what scope (if any) is knocked-out from the scope of prior art? This may be different depending upon whether focusing on 102(b)(1)(a); 102(b)(1)(b); 102(b)(1)(c); or 102(b)(1)(d).
  • Date of 102(a)(2) prior art: 102(d) modifies the 102(a)(2) prior art date for published applications and patents by looking to whether the application claims priority / benefit to a prior filing. Congress certainly intended that the priority date only counts if the priority filing disclosed the subject matter being relied upon in the rejection.  However, the statute is not so clear and suggests instead that all we need is a proper claim of priority or benefit. .

These are a handful of examples, and more certainly exist.

I have some thoughts on how provisions of the statute should be interpreted – both as a matter of statutory interpretation and a matter of patent policy.  My larger concern, however, is that we are still years away from seeing court decisions interpreting these elements in ways that settle the law.  Up to now, for instance, there are not even any public PTAB decisions interpreting the new elements of 102(b).  With the disposing of more than 500,000 patent applications per year, the office is likely to churn through millions before these issues go before the Federal Circuit.  If the first case on point (Helsinn) is any indication, the Federal Circuit is likely to disagree with at least several of the PTO’s statutory interpretations – potentially creating swaths of improperly issued patents or improperly rejected applications depending upon whether the PTO interpretation is too broad or too narrow.  Although temporary, we have the potential here of creating a real bubble that will give us another 20+ year headache in similar fashion to the PTO’s low-quality examination of software and business methods in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

= = = = =

[1] MPEP 2152.02(d) (“The phrase ‘on sale’ in AIA 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1)  is treated as having the same meaning as ‘on sale’ in pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102(b), except that the sale must make the invention available to the public.”).

CBM Review: Must the Claims Be Expressly Limited to Financial Services?

Secure Axcess v. PNC (Fed. Cir. 2017) (en banc petition)

In an important February 2017 decision, the Federal Circuit limited the scope of Covered Business Method Review (CBM) — requiring that the claimed invention be focused on financial transactions.  In my original review, I wrote:

This case represents an important decision limiting the scope of Covered Business Method reviews.  However, its short consideration of agency-deference leaves it open to further challenge. 

Crouch, For CBM Review: _Claims_ Must be Directed to Financial Service, Patently-O (Feb. 2017).  The case focuses on U.S. Patent No. 7,631,191.

U.S. Bank has now challenged the decision with an en banc request – raising the following question:

Whether a method patent whose claims are worded to avoid reference to financial activity, but whose specification makes plain that it is a patent “used in the practice, administration, or management of a financial product or service,” qualifies for post-grant review as a covered business method (CBM) patent under Section 18 of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), Pub. L. No. 112-29, § 18, 125 Stat. 284, 329-31 (2011).

The petition directly challenges the Federal Circuit’s anti-CBM Jurisprudence, writing:

This is not the first questionable decision by a panel of this Court concerning to scope of the CBM program. In Versata Dev. Grp. v. SAP Amer., Inc., 793 F.3d 1306 (Fed. Cir. 2015), another divided panel disagreed over whether this Court even has jurisdiction to review the Board’s CBM determinations. And a petition for rehearing en banc, with robust amici support, is currently pending in Unwired Planet, LLC v. Google Inc., 841 F.3d 1376 (Fed. Cir. 2016), which asks this Court to address the level of deference owed to Board determinations that a patent qualifies for CBM status and to reconsider the holding in Versata.

Two additional amicus briefs have also been filed supporting the petition.  EFF argues (1) that the panel decision contorts the statutory text; and (2) ignored the consideration of deference to an agency’s interpretation of its governing statute.  Clearing House Payments Company and Financial Services Roundtable joined together and argue (1) CBM institution rates are alredy down; and (2) the case allows artful claim drafting to effectively avoid CBM.  (The artful drafting issue is largely moot since CBM will sunset in September 2020).

The key here is interpretation of Section 18(d)(1) of the America Invents Act that limits the scope of Covered Business Method Reviews to patents “that claim[] a method or corresponding apparatus for performing data processing or other operations used in the practice, administration, or management of a financial product or service.” Does the statute require that the claim include the financial product or service use?  Note here that the argument is not based upon a statute codified in the United States Code since it is only a temporary provision that will sunset after three more years.

Docs:

 

 

“Exemplary Embodiments” as Boiler Plate

US08342852-20130101-D00009Skedco v. Strategic Operations (StOps) (Fed. Cir. 2017)

The district court sided with the accused-infringer StOps – finding (on summary judgment) no-infringement of Skedco’s exclusively licensed U.S. Patent No. 8,342,852 covering a “trauma training system.”

The system is designed to replicate trauma, and includes a pump in fluid connection with a valve that is in connection with a wound site “to simulate a hemorrhage.”

18. A trauma training system … comprising: a collapsible reservoir …, a pump in fluid communication with … said reservoir, at least one valve in fluid communication with said pump, a controller connected to said pump and said at least one valve, and at least one wound site detachably in fluid communication with said valve, wherein fluid is provided to said wound site to simulate a hemorrhage.

The problem for the patentee is that, while the claim appears to separately claim the pump and the valve, the accused device physically links them together – “these valves reside within the pump housing.”  In addition, although the claim requires a controller connected to both the pump and the valve, the accused device’s controller is only connected to the pump.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit has vacated the judgment – finding that the district court erred in its claim construction.

First, although the patent requires a pump in fluid connection with a valve, the federal circuit found that “nothing in the claims requires the pump and valve to be physically separated.”

We see no reason why a device that moves fluid cannot contain another device that regulates flow within it. A pump does not cease moving fluid—i.e., being a “pump”—just because an internal valve adjusts fluid flow. … In short, we agree with the district court that a “pump” is not a “valve,” id. at 1108, but nothing in the claims or specification prohibits a valve from residing within a pump.

Of course, none of the embodiments teach a pump with internal valve.  Responding to that argument, the court appeared to look back primarily to pre-Phillips cases:

“[I]t is the claims, not the written description, which define the scope of the patent right.” Laitram Corp v. NEC Corp., 163 F.3d 1342 (Fed. Cir. 1998). Patents do not need to include drawings of particular embodiments in order to claim them. See CCS Fitness, Inc. v. Brunswick Corp., 288 F.3d 1359 (Fed. Cir. 2002). For this reason, a claim is not limited to inventions looking like those in the drawings. MBO Labs., Inc. v. Becton, Dickinson & Co., 474 F.3d 1323, 1333 (Fed. Cir. 2007). This guidance is especially apt here because the patent refers to the drawings to which StOps points as “exemplary embodiment[s].”

Looking at the second non-infringement justification, the district court had construed the claim to require a controller be actually connected to both a pump and a valve – based upon the requirement of “a controller connected to said pump and said at least one valve.” ON appeal, the Federal Circuit found it was improper to require an actual physical connection between the controller and the the valve:

[W]e think that the correct construction of “a controller connected to said pump and said at least one valve” is “an activation mechanism configured to control a pump and a valve to which it is directly or indirectly joined, united, or linked.”  . . . It [] incorporates the specification’s envisaged indirect connections. . . .

As far as the district court’s “physical” limitation is concerned, we see no reason to import such a requirement into claim 18. The claimed “controller” is merely “an activation mechanism,” and nothing limits this activation to physical channels. Indeed, the ’852 patent includes several embodiments where a remote controller 160 activates a valve. This activation must occur at least in part through a nonphysical connection. See id., figs.3, 9A, 9C. We therefore hold that it was error to limit the claimed connection to physical connections.

Thus, reasoned the district court, the BPS does not have “direct,” “independent,” and “physical” connections between the controller and the valve such that the valve is “controlled by the controller.” Id. at 1105–06, 1108. The court also ruled as a matter of law that claims 18, 19, and 20 were not infringed under the doctrine of equivalents. Having granted summary judgment of noninfringement, the court dismissed Skedco’s complaint. This appeal followed. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1). controller.” Id. at 1105–06, 1108. We hold that it was error for the district court to have included some of these additional limitations into claim 18.

On remand, the district court will be asked to consider infringement under this now broader construction.

 

An Economic Argument Against Mandatory Patent Exhaustion

Guest Post By Prof. Jonathan Barnett, University of Southern California School of Law & Prof. Ted Sichelman, University of San Diego School of Law

As Patently-O has described in several posts (here, here, here), the Supreme Court is poised to decide the fate of the patent exhaustion doctrine in Impression Products v. Lexmark International. Specifically, the Court is likely to answer two important sets of questions: (1) To what extent does exhaustion limit the enforcement of contractual sale and use restrictions on downstream purchasers?; and (2) Does exhaustion apply to foreign sales? If so, how?

Oddly, although exhaustion has major ramifications for IP markets, there have been almost no formal models of the doctrine’s economic effects in the domestic context, and few models in the international context. A recent paper by one of us (Sichelman), together with two economists, Edwin Lai and Olena Ivus, provides a rigorous economic model to determine the effects of (1) a mandatory exhaustion regime, in which the patent owner essentially can never enforce downstream limitations, and (2) a presumptive exhaustion regime, in which the patent owner and a licensee/purchaser can opt out of exhaustion via contract.

Drawing from this paper and other economically oriented analysis, we recently co-authored an amicus brief in Impression Products, which argues in favor of a presumptive understanding of the exhaustion doctrine.  (Interestingly, although academics are usually pegged as strongly in favor of mandatory exhaustion, our brief garnered 44 signatures—significantly more than the brief filed by professors arguing in favor of mandatory exhaustion.)

The major points of the brief and paper are straightforward.

  • The “Paid Twice” Argument is Meritless: Proponents of mandatory exhaustion sometimes argue that it is improper for a patent owner to be “paid twice”—for instance, once upon the initial sale of a patented good and another time upon resale. Although this may sound plausible intuitively, it does not hold up to economic analysis. A patent owner wants to maximize profits, not prices. Multiplying royalties through a chain of purchasers will tend to increase price and therefore depress consumer demand. Thus, there are strong market constraints that restrict the royalty amount a patent owner can charge. There is no sound economic reason why in every case a patent owner should not be able to break up the profit-maximizing aggregate royalty into multiple components payable at different points on the supply chain. Indeed, economic modeling shows that these “double” payments, implemented through use-specific downstream limitations, may sometimes be essential to optimizing incentives to invent and commercialize new technologies.
  • The “Restraints on Alienation” Concern is Ambiguous: The view that is generally espoused is that restraints on personal property are generally not enforced. However, much doubt has been cast on this view. Moreover, in the real property context, reasonable restraints on sale and use have been enforced for hundreds of years. This makes economic sense, especially in the patent context, because a rigorous economic treatment shows that the “restraint on alienation” concern boils down to transaction costs, including negotiation and information costs in downstream licenses and sales. The paper’s model shows that when transaction costs are high relative to the value of the underlying good—think medical device patent owner negotiating with a patient prior to a surgery—then mandatory exhaustion may yield net static benefits by eliminating the possibility of these transaction costs. However, when transaction costs are low—think a patent owner negotiating with a large computer manufacturer—then mandatory exhaustion may prevent customized deals that are economically efficient. Given the extent to which information technology and other industries rely on complex supply chains involving market participants with different needs, mandatory exhaustion may impose significant costs not justified by the benefits.
  • Exhaustion’s Effect on Consumers is Ambiguous: Many proponents of mandatory exhaustion argue that it benefits consumers. However, mandatory exhaustion tends to preclude what economists term “price discrimination”—namely, the ability to charge different prices (and associated terms of use) that reflect consumers’ different product valuations and budget constraints. By forcing patent owners to recoup all their profits from the first purchaser, the patent owner will tend to raise the initial price for the product. This increase, in turn, forecloses consumers who cannot afford the higher price. So while mandatory exhaustion does leave more money in the pockets of the consumers who can afford the product, it often forecloses another class of consumers entirely from buying the product. While some might argue that mandatory exhaustion allows for arbitrage resulting in broader access, any such gains are likely to be short-lived since the patent owner will typically respond by adopting a uniform pricing scheme, often resulting in less access for lower-valuation and lower-income consumers plus weaker incentives for the patent owner to invent and commercialize in the future. In general, the net access and incentive effects of these various factors will differ in any particular market. However, the short story is that there is no sound basis for the popular view that mandatory exhaustion necessarily promotes the interests of consumers—in many cases, just the opposite will be true.

The brief and paper also consider other important aspects of the exhaustion doctrine, such as multi-component products, information asymmetries, switching costs, design-arounds, and the like. Even taking all of these wrinkles into account, the upshot is similar to that above—whether exhaustion is beneficial depends on the particular circumstances at-issue. The same arguments hold in the context of foreign sales.

Based on these considerations, the amicus brief argues that presumptive exhaustion is the best approach for balancing the benefits and costs of downstream limitations in technology markets.  This approach allows a patent owner to opt out of a default exhaustion rule so long as clear notice is provided and the restrictions are otherwise legal (e.g., do not violate the antitrust laws or other public policy concerns). A mandatory, “per se” rule on the other hand assumes all downstream limitations are pernicious, when the economics show otherwise. In this regard, courts are in a suitable position to sort out reasonable from unreasonable downstream limitations, something that courts have done in the past when applying the exhaustion doctrine and, in the related antitrust law of vertical restraints, have done for 40 years since the Supreme Court’s landmark Sylvania decision.

We also argue that it is essential to allow downstream limitations to be enforced via a patent infringement suit rather than a state contract claim—otherwise, it would be too costly to bind remote downstream purchasers, injunctive relief would generally not be available, and a uniform body of federal law would not develop.

In sum, when the economics of exhaustion is carefully considered, the most sensible rule that emerges is a presumptive one that allows for reasonable limitations when clear notice is provided to downstream purchasers.

Eligibility: Get Technical or Get Denied

Dennis Crouch

The principle that patent prosecutors are following today is in the headline: Get Technical or Get Denied.  The following is a case-in-point.

Nonprecedential decision today in Clarilogic v. FormFree Holdings affirming that the claims of FormFree’s U.S. Patent No. 8,762,243 are ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed to an abstract idea.   [Decision: clarilogic] The patent is directed toward a credit reporting scheme.  The gist – according to the court:

In brief, the … system seeks a potential borrower’s financial information from a third party, applies an “algorithm engine” to the data, and outputs a report. . . . the logic rules applied by the engine are received “from government entities or particular users.”

Claim 1 is drafted as a seven step method as follows :

1. A computer-implemented method for providing certified financial data indicating financial risk about an individual, comprising:

(a) receiving a request for the certified financial data;
(b) electronically collecting financial account data about the individual from at least one financial source,
(c) transforming the financial account data into a desired format;
(d) validating the financial account data by applying an algorithm engine to the financial account data to identify exceptions, wherein the exceptions indicate incorrect data or financial risk;
(e) confirming the exceptions by collecting additional data and applying the algorithm engine to the additional data,
(f) marking the exceptions as valid exceptions when output of the algorithm engine validates the exceptions; and
(g) generating, using a computer, a report from the financial account data and the valid exceptions,
wherein the financial account data comprises at least one of real-time transaction data, real time balance data, historical transaction data, or historical balance data; and the algorithm engine identifies a pattern of financial risk; the method is computer implemented, and steps (c), (e), and (f) are executed via the computer or a series of computers.

The Supreme Court’s atextual reading of 35 U.S.C. 101 has created a set of subject matter excluded from patentability – including abstract ideas.  The two step eligibility framework under Alice/Mayo first asks whether the claims are “directed to” an abstract idea and then, if so, asks whether the claims include “something more” beyond the abstract idea such as an “inventive concept” that is “sufficient to transform the nature of the claim into a patent eligible application.”  Quoting Alice.  These issues have generally been treated as questions of law amenable to judgment by a court even at the pleading stage of a lawsuit.

Step 1: The claims are directed to an abstract idea because their focus is “on collecting information, analyzing it, and displaying certain results of the collection and analysis.” (quoting Elec. Power Grp., LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2016).   Here, the court suggests the claims might have passed the test if the “algorithm engine” had been further identified or explained, but simply “claiming an algorithm does not alone render subject matter patent eligible.”

Step 2: The requisite ‘something more,’ does not include recitation of the use of a generic computer.  Here, FreeForm argues that its invention uses algorithms to transform data in parallel fashion to the way that Diehr used an algorithm to transform rubber.  On appeal, however, the Federal Circuit disagreed:

In contrast to Diehr, claim 1 recites a method that changes the way electronic information is displayed via an unknown and unclaimed process. Absent any limitation to how the data are changed, there is little, if any, transformative effect. Data are still data.

The problem, according to the court, is that the patent simply does not reach any inventive “technical manner” in which the “data is gathered, analyzed, or output.”

 

Federal Circuit to PTO: EXPLAIN WITH PARTICULARITY AND EVIDENCE

PersonalWeb Tech v. Apple (Fed. Cir. 2017) [personalweb]

Following an administrative trial, the PTAB found the challenged claims of PersonalWeb’s Patent No. 7,802,310 obvious based upon a combination of two prior art references.  On appeal, however, the Federal Circuit has vacated the judgment – holding that the Board’s factual findings  were not supported by substantial evidence. In particular, the Federal Circuit could not find substantial evidence for the conclusions (1) that the prior art taught each element of the challenged claims or (2) that PHOSITA would have been motivated to combine the references to form the invention as claimed.

Substantial Evidence: For me, the substantial evidence rule is a misnomer because it suggests that a decision is based upon a substantial amount of evidence (and thus seems like a reasonable approach).  I would rename it as the “scintilla rule” because, under the rule, factual conclusions made by the PTAB are affirmed on appeal so long as supported by “more than a mere scintilla” of evidence.  I previously wrote:

[T]o be clear, the appellate court will affirm a factual determination even when that determination is likely wrong so long as some amount of evidence supports the determination. We have all heard the adage that ‘reasonable minds can differ.’ I think of the substantial evidence rule as a relaxed version that ‘somewhat reasonable minds can differ.‘ Or, in other words, the PTO’s factual determinations will be affirmed if somewhat reasonable.

Although the PTAB burden is not great, the Board must fully explain its conclusions and their bases.  (This is a major difference when compared with the ‘black box’ of a jury trial).  As part of its explanation, the Board must also specifically contend with evidence that “detracts from an agency’s decision.”  The court explained in its 2002 Lee decision:

For judicial review to be meaningfully achieved within these strictures, the agency tribunal must present a full and reasoned explanation of its decision. The agency tribunal must set forth its findings and the grounds thereof, as supported by the agency record, and explain its application of the law to the found facts.

In re Lee, 277 F.3d 1338, 1343 (Fed. Cir. 2002).  That is, the Board, “must articulate ‘logical and rational’ reasons for its decision.” (quoting Synopsys).

Here, the court explained that the rational in an obviousness case includes

  1. Particularly identifying where each element of each claim is taught by the prior art references.  Here, the Board failed to explain the particular location within Woodhill that taught the claim limitation of comparing a name with a “plurality of values.” (yes, that’s right.)
  2. Explaining the motivation to combine.

Explaining motivation to combine is a big deal because it comes up in almost every patent case before the PTO. Here, the Board simply wrote that:

“a person of ordinary skill in the art reading Woodhill and Stefik would have understood that the combination of Woodhill and Stefik would have allowed for the selective access features of Stefik to be used with Woodhill’s content-dependent identifiers feature.”

On appeal, the Court found that justification inadequate.

Indeed, the Board nowhere clearly explained, or cited evidence showing, how the combination of the two references was supposed to work. At least in this case, such a clear, evidence-supported account of the contemplated workings of the combination is a prerequisite to
adequately explaining and supporting a conclusion that a relevant skilled artisan would have been motivated to make the combination and reasonably expect success in doing so. . . .

A brief explanation may do all that is needed if, for example, the technology is simple and familiar and the prior art is clear in its language and easily understood. See Ariosa, 805 F.3d at 1365–66. On the other hand, complexity or obscurity of the technology or prior-art descriptions may well make more detailed explanations necessary. Here, the Board’s explanation is wanting. Apple’s attempts in this court to explicate both the Board’s explanation and the underlying evidence do not persuade us otherwise.

On remand, the Board will give it another go – and we’ll see whether the exercise of actually explaining its reasoning causes the Board to change its mind as well.

= = = = =

My explanation of the case skipped over details of the patent at issue.  Claim 1 is shown below and basically includes three steps: (a) sending a “content based name” for a data-item from one computer to another; (b) check to see if the name is on a list; and (c) grant or deny access to the data-item depending upon the result of (b).

1. A computer-implemented method … comprising the steps:

(a) at a first computer, obtaining a content-based name for a particular data item from a second computer …, the content-based name being based at least in part on a function of at least some of the data which comprise the contents of the particular data item, wherein the function comprises a message digest function or a hash function, and wherein two identical data items will have the same content-based name; and

(b) … a processor at said first computer ascertaining whether or not the content-based name for the particular data item corresponds to an entry in a database comprising a plurality of identifiers; and

(c) based at least in part on said ascertaining in (b), determining whether or not access to the particular data item is authorized.

The patentee claims that Apple’s iTunes and iCloud services infringe.

Can Your Patent Block Repair and Resale and Prevent Arbitrage?

resaleby Dennis Crouch

The first rounds of merits briefs have now been submitted to the Supreme Court in Impression Prods. v. Lexmark. The case questions the extent a patentee can control the entire resale and repair market for its products.  For products originally sold in the US, the Federal Circuit held that express use/resale limits at the point of first-sale are effective – even against subsequent bona fide purchasers. For products sold overseas, the Federal Circuit held that US Courts should presume no exhaustion of the US patent – this would automatically prohibit 3rd party importation into the US.

As a property law professor, I tend to think about about the mass confusion among the students as they try to work through the law associated with real covenants and equitable servitudes on land.  It creates substantial confusion among lawyers. But what we want is a system where property rights can be fairly and openly traded without even having lawyers extensively involved with each of our purchases.  With personal property courts long ago rejected servitudes (such as use and resale restrictions) that bind subsequent purchasers. Unlike real property, personal property moves and is often transferred without substantial paperwork or record-keeping, and allowing a set of unique restrictions has the potential of gumming up the marketplace.  The Federal Circuit in this case went all the way to the other side — holding that the presumption in foreign sales is that no US patent rights are exhausted.  I purchased my last couple of smart phones through the used market – and have also repaired them several times.  Under the law, I probably should have taken steps to ensure that all of the original equipment manufacturers affirmatively granted repair and resale rights.  Coming together, the Federal Circuit’s approach here has the potential to limit the market for the repair and reselling of goods.  I would suggest that those activities are incredibly beneficial to our society in terms of resource allocation and avoiding waste as well as empowering citizens and avoiding anticompetitive market behavior.  Although these policy goals are relevant to the Supreme Court decision-making, the Court’s primary analysis pathway should be doctrinal.

In these cases, the most important brief is often the amicus filing by the U.S. Government. Here, the brief USG brief was filed on January 24 by President Trump’s newly appointed acting solicitor general (Noel Francisco) who (like Obama’s SG) has taken the position of supporting the challenger (Impression) against the patentee (Lexmark) and the Federal Circuit.  Time will tell whether this stance is more generally predictive of the new administration’s stance on patent rights and patent enforcement. [15-1189_amicus_reversal_united_states]

The Government frames the questions presented as follows:

  1. Whether a U.S. patent owner may invoke patent law to enforce restrictions on the use or resale of a patented article after the first authorized sale of the article in the United States.
  2. Whether and under what circumstances a U.S. patent owner may authorize the sale of a patented article in a foreign country, either under a foreign patent or otherwise in accordance with foreign law, while reserving its exclusive rights under U.S. patent law.

Answering these questions, the Government argues simply that “restrictions on post-sale use or resale are not enforceable under U.S. patent law” and that the Federal Circuit’s approach is wrong.  This is the same rule that applies generally to attempts to place a restrictive covenant on personal property.  As a minor caveat, the Government takes the position that, under limited circumstances, a foreign sale might not exhaust the associated U.S. patent rights.

The basic justification for this approach is to ensure that we have a working commercial market. The brief quotes the 1895 Keeler decision: “The inconvenience and annoyance to the public” if patent rights are not exausted by the first authorized sale [is] “too obvious to require illustration.”

Since A.B. Dick was overruled in 1917, this Court has rejected every attempt to invoke patent law to control the use or resale of an article after the first authorized sale in the United States.

At the international level, the Government suggests that the court allow express reservation of rights for foreign sales – this would thus allow a German company to sell its products in Germany (with an express export restriction) and then use its U.S. to patent to prevent those products from being sent to the U.S.  This gives the manufacturer more control over the market and would allow for price discrimination (i.e., charging higher prices in the U.S.).

In its merits brief, petitioner Impression Prods. takes a harder stand on international exhaustion — arguing that the court should follow its own prior precedent in the copyright case of Kirtsaeng and hold that any authorized sale by the patentee exhausts all U.S. patent rights – even if the authorized sale is abroad.  [15-1189-merits-petitioner]   Professor Feldman agrees in her brief, naming the Federal Circuit’s actions as “reversal from below” [15-1189_amicus_pet_professor_robin_feldman] as did the Huawei brief (although in different words) [15-1189_amicus_pet_huawei_technologies].

A common argument for exhaustion is that it allows for a robust resale market that greatly benefits consumers and helps price discrimination by allowing third party arbitrage.  Although U.S. prices are low for some goods, they are very high for others (such as pharmaceuticals and printer ink).  International exhaustion would help to solve that problem (although there are many regualtory hurdles associated with importing .  In its brief, the AARP join with EFF and Public Knowledge (and others) to argue this point: “Manufacturers currently exploit weak exhaustion rules to harm consumers. . . . Limitations on resale and repair rights lead to monopolization rather than competition.” [15-1189_amicus_pet_public_knowledge]

Costco is a business that is actively engaged in the sort of price lowering arbitrage discussed by AARP and argues that the Federal Circuit’s exhaustion rules “impose enormous costs for manufacturers, retailers, and consumers.”  They effectively ask – will the american retailers need to inspect patent licenses for all of the components and sub-components found in the products they sell? [15-1189_amicus_pet_costco_wholesale_corporation]  Similarly, an interesting trade group – the Association of Service and Computer Dealers International filed its brief and explained how the no-exhaustion rules impact the market for hard drives, DVDs, Flash Memory, and other consumer product. [15-1189_amicus_pet_ascdi] The UCC (Article 2) provides some protections here, but does not, for instance, provide authority to repair.

FSU Professor Frederick Abbott has an interesting take. Abbott is an expert on international trade law.  He writes:

A fundamental flaw in the approach of the Federal Circuit involves its reasoning that a rule of territoriality of patent rights precludes U.S. courts from taking into account activities of U.S. patent owners outside of the United States. The international agreements governing the international patent system do not prescribe such a rule of territoriality. . . The rule of independence of patents prescribed by the Paris Convention[] provides that acts taken by patent authorities in one country do not affect patent rights in other Paris countries.  recognition by this Supreme Court that first sales in foreign countries exhaust U.S. patent rights would not affect patents granted outside the United States.

[15-1189_amicus_pet_abbott]

Finally, Stanford’s IP Clinic filed a law professor’s brief signed by Mark Lemley, Dan Burk, Sam Ernst, Shubha Ghosh, Orly Lobel, Pamela Samuelson, Jessica Silbey, and others that explains:

A clear exhaustion rule promotes the alienability of patented articles and reduces transaction costs. Unlike clear, reliable property rights, idiosyncratic arrangements of rights that depend on what covenants or conditions an upstream seller has attached to a chattel impose high information costs on purchasers. . . . Exhaustion doctrine also prevents patentees from extracting a patent royalty at multiple stages in a product’s distribution chain, which would compensate them in excess of the societal benefit their inventions have provided.

[15-1189-intellectualpropertyprofessors]

It will be interesting to see how the ‘other side’ responds here .

 

Exhaustion under Judge Rich

Reading Prof. John Witherspoon’s recent remarks about Judge Giles S. Rich led me to a 1999 interview of Judge Rich by Prof. Janice Mueller titled An Interview with Judge Giles S. Rich, 9 FED. CIR. B.J. 75 (1999).  One of the topics discussed was the doctrine of patent exhaustion – also known as the first sale doctrine. The doctrine was central to Bowman v. Monsanto Co., 133 S.Ct. 1761 (2013) and is also central to the case now pending before the Supreme Court, Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc., Supreme Court Docket No. 15-1189 (2017).

The following is an excerpt:

Question: I’ve heard that you disagree with the reasoning of the so-called “first sale doctrine.” What’s wrong with the idea that the first authorized sale of a patented product “exhausts” the patentee’s right to control the subsequent disposition of that particular item?

Judge Rich: My position is simple: No patent right is involved and nothing is exhausted. Talking about exhaustion of the patent right is nonsense and it’s about time to stop talking nonsense. To explain, I have to discuss two things: (1) what the patent right is; and (2) what is the meaning of “exhaustion.” It is no longer debatable what the patent right is. As I just explained, the Supreme Court told the country in 1852 in Bloomer v. McQuewan that it consists altogether in the right to exclude others – and that is all it is. It is not an ambiguous “exclusive right”; it is a simple right to exclude others. Period.

Now, the premise is that the patentee made and sold the patented invention. That was the so-called “first sale.” What did his right to exclude others have to do with those acts? Absolutely nothing! In manufacturing, was he excluding anyone? No. In selling, was he excluding anyone? No! Then he wasn’t exercising his patent right, was he? The trouble stems from the old ambiguous statutory definition of the patent right as the “exclusive right to make, use and sell.”

Turning to the meaning of “exhaustion,” it means the state of being drained or used up completely. It assumes that there is something to be used up. Well, since the patent right is not involved, how could it be used up? It couldn’t have been used, even a teeny bit, and it certainly was not exhausted.

But that’s not all there is to the analysis. What is this so-called “first sale” of an article on which the seller happens to have a patent? It is a simple transfer of ownership – a chattel or personal property – from one person to another. The rights of the buyer are governed by the law of property or the law of sales or both. And the law of patents has nothing whatever to do with those rights. Any restraints on the new owner have to be made under the law of contracts, and any contractual restrictions are subject to the antitrust laws. So there is neither use nor exhaustion of patent rights.

Conclusion: The term “exhaustion doctrine” is meaningless nonsense. The legal result is okay but the reasoning is all wrong. The simple fact is that no patent right is involved in the sale of merchandise by the patentee, nothing is exhausted, and the adjective “first” in “first sale” is also without significance. Let’s clean up the thinking about this law.

I do not always agree with Judge Rich’s positions – the fact that he wrote the statute did not give him unlimited authority to interpret the statute.  However, his logic is fairly sound here. The question in my mind is whether the laws of property and sales would be able to pick-up the slack — especially under our federalist system where state laws (i.e., those that govern personal property and sales) are subservient to national laws (e.g., the patent laws).  Seemingly, no state law that limits patent rights could be enforceable.  The saving grace in this chain of thought comes from 35 U.S.C. 261 which states “Subject to the provisions of this title, patents shall have the attributes of personal property.”

Bayh-Dole Act: Failing to Disclose Government Funding

Interesting filing from the folks at KEI. That alleges IONIS Pharma (formerly ISIS) and Cold Springs Harbor Labs failed to disclose Federal funding supported development of the inventions underlying their patents covering nusinersen and its for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).  See U.S. Patent Nos. 8,361,977 and 8,980,853.

The Bayh-Dole Act allows private entities to patent inventions developed through federal funding. However, the law requires that the federal funding be disclosed in order to allow the Government to understand and exercise its corresponding rights.

An entity that fails to disclose the funding is then subject to the penalty of title being awarded to the U.S. government – although the Government must demand title.  “The Federal Government may receive title to any subject invention not disclosed to it within such time.” 35 U.S.C. § 202(c)(1).

The KEI filing is in the form of a letter to Inspector General of HHS (parent of NIH) asking for an investigation and action.

Read the Filing: [18jan2017-oig-investigation-request-nusinersen-patents]

If the new Trump Administration is serious about high drug prices, this may be a place to start.  Nusinersen is priced at $750,000 for the first year of treatment and $375,000 for every year thereafter.

 

Does the Patent Statute Cabin-in the Abstract Idea Exception? (Yes)

by Dennis Crouch

In a new Supreme Court petition, Trading Technologies (TT) has again challenged USPTO and Federal Circuit eligibility determinations.

TT v. Lee asks the following question:

Given that 35 U.S.C. § 100(b) sets forth that a patent eligible “process” includes a “new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material,” did the Federal Circuit err by holding that an indisputably new and non-obvious use (i.e., game steps) of an existing manufacture (i.e., playing cards) was patent ineligible under Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S.Ct. 2347 (2014)?

The underlying appellate decision In re Smith involves a patent application claiming a new method of playing Blackjack. The new approach offered by offers ability to bet on the occurrence of “natural 0” hands as well as other potential side bets.  Claim 1 in particular requires a deck of ‘physical playing cards” that are shuffled and then dealt according to a defined pattern.  Bets are then taken with the potential of more dealing and eventually all wagers are resolved.  The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB/Examiner determinations that the claimed method of playing cards constitutes an unpatentable abstract idea. As I previously wrote:

The court held that a wagering game is roughly identical to fundamental economic practices that the Supreme Court held to be abstract ideas in Alice and Bilski. . . . Following the Board’s lead, the appellate court then found that the “purely conventional steps” associated with the physical act of playing cards do not “supply a sufficiently inventive concept.”

Important for this case, the court noted that some card games are patent eligible, but that universe appears to be limited only to patents claiming “a new or original deck of cards.”  Of course, the patent statute expressly states that processes are patent eligible – and that set of eligible processes “includes a new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material.”  35 U.S.C. 100(b).

Above the Statute?: An important fundamental question is whether the eligibility exceptions of Alice and Mayo supersede the statute.  Some argue that their origins are Constitutional – embedded in the “discoveries” limitation and thus control the law regardless of the statutory text.  But the Supreme Court has repeatedly indicated that the abstract idea and law of nature exceptions are grounded in the 35 U. S. C. §101 (despite the absence of express language).  Under a plain language interpretation, these atextual exceptions should not be extended so far as to conflict with the statute — especially the express definitions of §100(b). Thus, TT writes:

Under the statute, new processes that use conventional equipment or materials are clearly patent eligible subject matter. 35 U.S.C. § 100(b) (patent eligible processes include “a new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material.”). This Court has never abrogated § 100(b). And Alice did nothing to change this. Indeed, to fail the first step of the Alice test, a claim needs to tie up an “abstract idea,” which for purposes of this test was defined to be a preexisting practice that serves as a fundamental “building block of human ingenuity,” such as a “longstanding” and “prevalent” economic practice. . . . The Federal Circuit has improperly extended Alice step one to claims that indisputably recite a new set of game steps that was not preexisting, let alone “fundamental.”

My own take is that the Constitutional intellectual property clause probably does have some teeth and – as an extreme example – would not empower Congress to authorize patents covering abstract ideas as such.  That said, Congressional power certainly extends to authorizing the grant of patents covering the types of inventions being identified as abstract ideas under Alice Corp such as the blackjack game at issue here.

[In re TT – Petition]

DISCLOSURES – The petition was filed by my friends and former colleagues Leif Sigmund and Jennifer Kurcz at the MBHB firm and the firm is a paid sponsor of Patently-O.  I also represented TT in other matters up until 2007.  That said, I have not discussed this particular case or my here with TT/MBHB other than to request a copy of the petition after I noted its filing.

Affinity II: Who Has the Burden for Alice Step II?

by Dennis Crouch

A few days ago I wrote about the Federal Circuit decision in Affinity Labs. v. DirecTV  affirming that Affinity’s U.S. Patent No. 8,688,085 claims an ineligible abstract idea rather than a patent eligible invention.

The companion case – Affinity Labs v. Amazon was decided by the same panel of Chief Judge Prost and Judges Bryson (author) and Wallach and U.S. Patent No. 7,970,379 and also affirmed that the challenged claims lack eligibility under Section 101.

In DirectTV, the court first “stripped” the representative claim “of excess verbiage.”  Using the same approach but different words, the Amazon court here offered its version of the representative claim “stated more succinctly:”  the claim “is directed to a network-based media system with a customized user interface, in which the system delivers streaming content from a network-based resource upon demand to a handheld wireless electronic device having a graphical user interface.” [Full claim text below]

Abstract Idea: Analyzing the claimed invention, the court found that the claims are directed to a high level of generality “describing a desired function or outcome, without providing any limiting detail that confines the claim to a particular solution to an identified problem. The purely functional nature of the claim confirms that it is directed to an abstract idea, not to a concrete embodiment of that idea.”  In Enfish, the court considered technological inventions and queried whether the invention represents “an improvement in the functioning of a computer,” or merely “adding conventional computer components to well-known business practices.”  Here, of course, the invention uses more than just a “computer component” but the court still found Enfish applicable — finding that the claims “fall into the latter [ineligible] category.”  Further, the “tailoring of content based on information about the user . . . is an abstract idea that is as old as providing different newspaper inserts for different neighborhoods.”  Slip opinion at  10.

Burden Shifting for Step Two?:  Once a patent is deemed to be directed to an abstract idea, the burden appears to shift against the patentee to show that the claim includes “something more” such as an “innovative concept” that goes beyond the ineligible abstract idea.  This burden-shifting would go against the traditional rule that each each element in an invalidity analysis must be proven with clear and convincing evidence — and so it may still be proper to say that the challenger also has the burden under Step Two of Alice/Mayo to show the claim includes “nothing more” of patentable weight.  A complication of this internal dialogue is that eligibility is deemed a question of law whereas the C&C evidentiary requirement applies only to questions of fact.  That distinction became important in this case since the district court dismissed the case on the pleadings prior to the consideration of any factual conflicts.

Nothing More:  Enfish substantially increased the overlap between Steps One and Two of the eligibility analysis.  Typically, if a claim includes an eligible inventive concept then it will not be deemed directed to an abstract idea in the first place.   Here, the court found the converse logic also true:

As noted [in our Enfish analysis], representative claim 14 is written in largely functional terms, claiming “a collection of instructions” that perform the functions of displaying a selection of available content on a graphical user interface and allowing the user to request streaming of that content. . . . [These features] do not convert the abstract idea of delivering media content to a handheld electronic device into a concrete solution to a problem. The features set forth in the claims are described and claimed generically rather than with the specificity necessary to show how those components provide a concrete solution to the problem addressed by the patent.

Thus, the claim fails under Step Two as well – Judgment on the Pleadings of Invalidity Affirmed.

= = = = =

The court noted that the title of the patent ““System and Method to Communicate Targeted Information” has essentially no relation to the asserted claims.  That disconnect had no direct impact on patentability.  However, it appears to have lent credence to the notion that the claims lack innovative weight and technical application since the focus of the claims is something different than what was originally thought to be innovative and worth extensive description.

= = = = =

Claim 14: A media system, comprising:

a network based media managing system that maintains a library of content that a given user has a right to access and a customized user interface page for the given user;

a collection of instructions stored in a nontransitory storage medium and configured for execution by a processor of a handheld wireless device, the collection of instructions operable when executed: (1) to initiate presentation of a graphical user interface for the network based media managing system; (2) to facilitate a user selection of content included in the library; and (3) to send a request for a streaming delivery of the content; and

a network based delivery resource maintaining a list of network locations for at least a portion of the content, the network based delivery resource configured to respond to the request by retrieving the portion from an appropriate network location and streaming a representation of the portion to the handheld wireless device.

= = = = =

Claiming: Special Care with Terms of Degree

LibertyPatentedAmmoby Dennis Crouch

Liberty Ammo v. US (Fed. Cir. 2016)

The U.S. Government has waived its sovereign immunity against allegations of patent infringement. However, the infringement charges are not brought via Civil Action under the infringement definition of 35 U.S.C. 271.  Rather, 28 U.S.C. § 1498 spells out that the infringement claim against the U.S. must be brought in the Court of Federal Claims (CFC) and that the remedy is limited to the “reasonable and entire compensation for [the Govt’s] use and manufacture.”  The CFC does not allow for a jury nor will it award injunctive relief against the U.S.

Liberty sued the U.S. alleging that the ammunition rounds manufactured for and used by the Army are covered by Liberty’s U.S. Patent No. 7,748,325.  In the 1990s and 2000s, the U.S. military became concerned that lead-based ammunition might be a form of harmful pollution – the patented ammunition here follows that lead by eliminating lead from the round while remaining lethal to soft-tissue targets (such as humans).  According to the patent, the projectile (shown in the image above) separates into three portions upon striking a target.  The projectile also includes a reduced-size jacket that limits barrel heat build-up.

In 2005, Liberty provided the Army with a set of 50 prototype rounds for testing (subject to a NDA).  The Army decided not to take a license or purchase those rounds from Liberty, but did begin using substantially similar rounds.  In the subsequent CFC infringement case, the court sided with Liberty – finding the asserted claims infringed and enforceable. The court then awarded $15 million in damages to Liberty with an ongoing royalty of 1.4¢ per round.

Claim Construction a Loser: On appeal, the Federal Circuit reversed – finding that the lower court had erred in its interpretation of the claim term “reduced area of contact.”  The debate over the unstated reference point – reduced from what? The CFC used the reference of “traditional jacketed lead bullet of calibers .17 through .50 BMG” based upon the specification statement that the invention is designed for “all calibers generally ranging from .17 through .50.”  On appeal, however, the Federal Circuit found that the reference for the accused 5.56 mm should – in particular – be traditional M855 rounds – since that is “the specification’s only mention of a specific conventional projectile” and was the standard-issue round for the Army at the time.  This modification to the construction is important because the traditional M855 projectiles already had a rather small area of contact and the accused projectiles have an increased contact area — thus no infringement.

Almost Indefinite: “Reduced area of contact” is a problematic claim term because it is a term of degree that calls for comparison against some unstated baseline.  Reflecting that sentiment, the court here writes that “Terms of degree are problematic if their baseline is unclear to those of ordinary skill in the art.”  Although not ‘inherently indefinite’, terms of degree will be found indefinite if they fail to provide some ‘objective boundaries.’  In talking through this, the Federal Circuit wrote that the lower court’s construction would have left the claim as indefinite because there would be multiple ‘traditional’ bullets that could be used as the baseline.

Claim 1 would not be definite had the trial court’s construction been correct because there would not be a sufficient objective boundary around the term of degree “reduced area of contact.” It is true that the trial court did objectively limit the claim language by including the “.17 through .50 BMG caliber” guidepost in its construction. This standard is objective in the sense that it defines a set range of calibers from which the baseline projectile may be drawn. Yet, even after limiting the field of baseline projectiles according to the trial court’s construction, a multitude of candidates for the conventional baseline projectile would remain for each caliber within that range, making the claim indefinite under Interval.

Here, the Federal Circuit goes on to suggest that the difficulty in proving infringement may be indicative of indefiniteness. “[A] term of degree cannot be definite when construed in a manner that lends itself to this sort of scattershot infringement analysis.”

The Background of the Invention section first narrows the ambiguity by disclosing that the patent’s proposed projectile has “a reduced contact area as compared to conventional projectiles.”

NDA Not Enforceable against the Army: Although the patent portion of the case is most relevant for Patently-O readers, the most important business element may be the court’s disregard of the non disclosure agreement signed by Lt. Col. Glenn Dean.  When the inventor of the ‘325 patent approached the army, he was directed to the Chief of Small Arms for the army’s Infantry Combat Directorate (DCD), Lt. Col. Dean.  Prior to discussing the ammunition, Dean signed a non disclosure agreement (NDA).

The courts, however refused to enforce the agreement – finding that Lt. Col. Dean “did not have the requisite authority to enter the NDA on the Government’s behalf.”  In traditional contract law, an agent’s “apparent authority” can be sufficient to bind a principal.  However, several cases have held that the U.S. Government “is immune to actions of its agents who merely possess apparent authority.”  See CACI, Inc. v. Stone, 990 F.2d 1233, 1236 (Fed. Cir. 1993).

DuPont v. MacDermid Printing: The importance of a Patentee’s Pre-Filing Statements

by Dennis Crouch

A skilled patent attorney working with a qualified searcher could cobble together a colorable obviousness argument against the vast majority of issued patent claims.  Part of the difficulty for patentees stem from the the billions of prior art references available via increasingly effective search tools. Even when an invention results from a ‘flash of genius,’ patent law typically back-fills extensive knowledge for the obviousness analysis – even when that knowledge was not actually available at the time of the invention.  The larger difficulty though is likely the large number of hard-to-pin-down facts such as the motivations, common sense, and level of creativity of a person having ordinary skill in the art.

The “expansive and flexible” approach to nonobviousness is frustrating to many, but it is seen as a feature of the system fully supported by the Supreme Court.  In KSR, the court wrote:

Throughout this Court’s engagement with the question of obviousness, our cases have set forth an expansive and flexible approach. . . . Rigid preventive rules that deny fact finders recourse to common sense… are neither necessary under our case law nor consistent with it.

KSR v. Teleflex (2007) [04-1350].  Conventional wisdom post-1980 has been that the factual inquiry makes summary judgment of obviousness difficult for a patent challenger.  Rather, obviousness goes to the jury.  Since KSR, that attitude has shifted somewhat.  (The even newer model is that obviousness goes to the PTO in an IPR proceeding – save that for a different essay).

= = = = =

Summary Judgment of Obviousness: In DuPont v. MacDermid Printing (Fed. Cir. 2016) [15-1777], the NJ district court granted summary judgment of obviousness against the patentee DuPont – holding that the asserted claims of DuPont’s U.S. Patent 6,773,859 invalid under 35 U.S.C. 103.   The ‘859 patent relates to the manufacture of  a flexo plate for digital printing — a plate used to print digital images on flexible materials.   The claimed advance involves heating-up the plate to remove unpolymerized material (rather than using a harsh solvent).

The obviousness case combines two prior art references: “Martens [a 3M patent] teaches a process for developing an analog plate using heat” and “Fan [DuPont patent] teaches developing a digital plate using solvents.”   The inventor (Roxy Fan) is also the first named inventor of DuPont’s ‘859 patent being challenged in this case. The Fan prior-art patent, however, was filed a decade prior.  Reviewing these two references, the court found that the ‘859 patent uses “the same technology and processes pertaining to digital imaging” previously disclosed by Fan and the same thermal development process disclosed in Martens.  In finding a motivation-to-combine these references, the district court walked through several factors.

  • Limited set of potential combinations: The prior art only had two imaging styles (digital and analog) and four development techniques (thermal, etc.) – this makes the ‘859 combination more likely obvious to try.
  • Benefits of Moving to Digital: The prior art taught benefits of switching to digital (thus suggesting the substitution), including an article published by DuPont
  • Market Incentive: DuPont marketing material suggest a “strong incentive” to combine the thermal process with digital plates.

The district court also rejected DuPont’s evidence of commercial success, longfelt need, and industry praise – finding them insufficient to overcome the “strong showing of obviousness.”

On appeal of this summary judgment finding, DuPont focused on the standard-of-review – noting that the district court had failed to “draw reasonable inferences” in its favor.  In the process, DuPont pointed to a long list of factual disputes between the parties where it would be reasonable to draw different conclusions from the evidences.

The Federal Circuit affirmed – finding that the strong undisputed evidence of prior art and motivation to combine fully supported the summary judgment finding.

[T]he record contains strong evidence that a skilled artisan would have had a reason to combine two known technologies and would have had a reasonable expectation of success in doing so. Indeed, DuPont itself promoted the digital and thermal technologies as technological breakthroughs in prior art publications. Thus, in view of the record as a whole, even drawing all justifiable inferences in favor of DuPont, the objective evidence is insufficient to preclude summary judgment on the ultimate legal conclusion of obviousness.

Doomed by Its Own Prior Statements: The obviousness case against DuPont here is interesting because (1) one of the core prior art references was a DuPont reference and (2) DuPont’s own statements regarding its prior inventions led to the motivation-to-combine finding.  DuPont’s private case study will likely walk through and consider whether it should have taken a different pathway regarding the public disclosures.

Caveat: Although the patentee’s pre-filing disclosures are important – it is also important to remember that the question of obviousness is an objective analysis focusing on the hypothetical mind of a person having ordinary skill in the art.  What this means is that the patentee’s disclosures are should not be treated as “party admissions” and given special treatment in the obviousness analysis.  Rather, the disclosures are simply added to the body of knowledge available to the artisan.  Here, the Federal Circuit came dangerously close to crossing the line into giving information actually available to and created by DuPont special weight in the obviousness analysis.

 

BASCOM v. AT&T: Section 101 Jurisprudence Continues to Develop

By Jason Rantanen

BASCOM Global Internet Services, Inc. v. AT&T Mobility LLC (Fed. Cir. June 27, 2016) Download Bascom
Panel: Newman (concurring in the result), O’Malley, Chen (author)

Since Alice v. CLS Bank, the Federal Circuit has issued four opinions rejecting a lack of patent eligible subject matter challenge: DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P., 773 F.3d 1245 (Fed. Cir. 2014)Enfish LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 2016 WL 2756255 (Fed. Cir. May 12, 2016); Rapid Litigation Management Ltd. v. Cellzdirect, Inc., 2016 WL 3606624 (Fed. Cir. 2016), and BASCOM v. AT&T, with the latter three coming the last few months.  (Many more decisions affirm invalidity on § 101 grounds.)  Each of these opinions is important for understanding the contours of the post-Mayo/Alice patentable subject matter doctrine.   In this post, I’ll summarize BASCOM and examine its treatment of the relationship between steps one and two of the Mayo/Alice framework.

Background: The claimed invention involved in this case is a “system for filtering Internet content.”  Slip Op. at 6.  The patent’s first claim reads:

1. A content filtering system for filtering content retrieved from an Internet computer network by individual controlled access network accounts, said filtering system comprising:

a local client computer generating network access requests for said individual controlled access network accounts;

at least one filtering scheme;

a plurality of sets of logical filtering elements; and

a remote ISP server coupled to said client computer and said Internet computer
network, said ISP server associating each said network account to at least one filtering scheme and at least one set of filtering elements, said ISP server further receiving said network access requests from said client computer and executing said associated filtering scheme utilizing said associated set of logical filtering elements.

At the district court, AT&T moved to dismiss BASCOM’s complaint on the ground that the asserted claims were invalid under 35 US.C. § 101.  “AT&T argued that the claims were directed to the abstract idea of ‘filtering content,’ ‘filtering internet content,’ or ‘determining who gets to see what,” and that none of the limitations “transforms the abstract idea of filtering  content into patent-eligible subject matter because they do no more than recite routine and conventional activities performed by generic computer components.”  Id. at 8.  The district court agreed with AT&T, finding that “the claims were directed to the abstract idea of ‘filtering content’ because ‘content provided on the Internet is not fundamentally different from content observed, read, and interacted with through other mediums like books, magazines, television, or movies,”  Id. at 9, and that “no individual limitation was inventive because each limitation, in isolation, was a ‘well known, generic computer component[]’ or a standard filtering mechanism.”  Id.  Nor were the limitations in combination inventive because “[f]iltering software, apparently composed of filtering schemes and filtering elements, was well-known in the prior art” and “using ISP servers to filter content was well-known to practitioners.”  Id., quoting district court.

“Ordered combination of limitations” can provide the “inventive concept”: On appeal, the Federal Circuit reversed based on the second step of the Mayo/Alice framework.   Critical to its conclusion that the claims were directed to patent eligible subject matter was the court’s focus on the particular arrangement of generic and conventional components in the claims.

“An inventive concept that transforms the abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention must be significantly more than the abstract idea itself, and cannot be simply an instruction to implement or apply the abstract idea on a computer.”  Slip Op. at 14.  Under the court’s step two analysis, the specific limitations were sufficient to establish eligibility on the limited record before the court–not because the limitations themselves provided that “inventive concept,” but because the arrangement of those elements did.  “The inventive concept inquiry requires more than recognizing that each claim element, by itself, was known in the art.  As is the case here, an inventive concept can be found in the non-conventional and non-generic arrangement of known, conventional pieces.”  Slip Op. at 15.  On the limited record before the court, the specific method of filtering content claimed in the patent “cannot be said, as a matter of law, to have been conventional or generic.”  Id. at 16.

The relationship between Mayo/Alice Step One and Step Two:  The court’s step one analysis is, unfortunately, somewhat muddled.  The court first states that the claims are directed to an abstract idea, that of filtering content on the Internet, id. at 12, then shifts to the conclusion that the claims present a “close call,” requiring progression to step two.  Id. at 13 (“This case, unlike Enfish, presents a “close call[] about how to characterize what the claims are directed to….Here, in contrast, the claims and their specific limitations do not readily lend themselves to a step-one finding that they are directed to a nonabstract idea.  We therefore defer our consideration of the specific claim limitations’ narrowing effect for step two.”)

Ultimately, the choice between claims that are clearly directed to an abstract idea and those that are “close calls” may not matter.  If a claim is either unambiguously directed to an abstract idea or is a “close call,” the result is that the claim fails Mayo/Alice step one and the analysis proceeds to step two, the search for an inventive concept.  Viewed in this light, resolving disputes over the articulation of the abstract idea isn’t necessary as long as it fits in the “close call” category.

On the other hand, the articulation of the abstract idea in step does matter because it provides an important ingredient for step two.  Here, the court drew upon the articulation of the “abstract idea” as “filtering content on the Internet” to conduct its step two analysis.  “The claims do not merely recite the abstract idea of filtering content along with the requirement to perform it on the Internet, or to perform it on a set of generic computer components.  Such claims would not contain an inventive concept.”  Id. at 16.  With that articulation of the abstract idea in hand, it is relatively easy to see the method of filtering claimed in claim 1 as providing the necessary “inventive concept.”  The articulation of the abstract idea as “filtering content on the Internet” also provides the foundation for the court’s analysis of the invention here as compared with its previous decisions on patent eligible subject matter.

But if one were to articulate the abstract idea as being “controlling access to content by using centrally-held accounts with different permissions,” it might be significantly more difficult for the claims to pass the step two analysis because that idea is much closer to the inventive concept described by the court.  “The inventive concept described and claimed in the ‘606 patent is the installation of a filtering tool at a specific location, remote from the end-users, with customizable filtering features specific to each end user.”   Id. at 15.  To be sure, it would be harder for such an articulation to fail the Mayo/Alice step 1 analysis, but it’s not immediately clear to me that it would.

Judge Newman’s Concurrence: Concurring in the result, Judge Newman wrote separately “to urge a more flexible approach to the determination of patent eligibility, for the two-step protocol for ascertaining whether a patent is for an “abstract idea” is not always necessary to resolve patent disputes.”  Newman concurrence at 2.  Judge Newman’s concurrence, while raising the academic question of whether there is actually an “abstract ideas” limit on the § 101 categories or instead whether questions of abstractness are fully resolved by application of §§ 102, 103 and 112, does not really offer much in the way of a path forward under current patent law.    To the extent Judge Newman is suggesting that district courts should be able to deny 12(b)(6) motions when there are evidentiary disputes, then I would agree.  But if she is suggesting something else, it is not clear to me how  proposal would fit into the procedural constraints of Rule 12(b)(6) or current § 101 jurisprudence.

AIA Patents: Trickle becomes a Stream

by Dennis Crouch

The first-to-invent rules of the America Invents Act of 2011 began taking effect in March 2013. New patent applications filed after the changeover date are examined under the new rules while those that were eather already on file or properly claim priority* to a pre-AIA filing are examined under the old rules. [updated to fix typo]

Although more than three years have passed since the changeover date, most new patents still fall under the old-rule. This long transition period is explained by the reality that most patents that issue claim priority to a prior patent filing document such as a foreign priority filing, international PCT application, US provisional application or parent non-provisional US filing.  Once the non-provisional application is filed, patent prosecution process still that typically takes around three years.  This results in an average pendency from priority filing to issuance of around five years.

The chart below shows results of a sample of 6,000 recently issued patents and their AIA status.  Time series is grouped by the quarter-year in which the patent issued.

AIAPatents

* My reading of the statute is that the determination of whether an application is an AIA application or pre-AIA application is determined as a whole – for the whole application. If an application ever included a claim to an invention whose earliest effective filing date (counting priority claims) is on or after March 16 2013.  This automatically includes all applications filed after the March 2013 deadline that do not claim priority to any earlier applications. Applications filed before the March 2013 date are all pre-AIA because the new-matter restriction would require that all claims be associated with that pre-AIA filing date.  In the middle are applications filed after the March 2013 date but that claim priority to a pre-AIA application.  For those bridge applications, the patent applicants have been asked to self-determine whether their applications are considered pre- or post-AIA.

Choice of Law Compared to Subject Matter Jurisdiction

One thing I have to deal with a lot when advising lawyers — whether practitioners for prosecution matters or litigators in patent case (or other stuff) — is the difference between subject matter jurisdiction and choice of law.

First, I cannot tell you how important this issue can be. For example, under some state rules public information is confidential; it’s not under the USPTO rules.  If state rules apply, I may have to ask a client for permission before I disclose a prior art patent to the Office.  That sounds like a silly example, and it is, but you’d be surprised what “experts” I’ve testified against say sometimes…

So let me give a simple walk through.

Ordinarily, a state bar is going to be able to discipline a lawyer for conduct occurring in representing clients in a state even if the practice is entirely federal and even if the lawyer is not licensed in a state.  So, if Bob is a patent lawyer licensed only in Minnesota and is prosecuting an application for an Iowan, the Iowa authorities (whether it’s disciplinary counsel or the court, I don’t know) are going to be able to subject him to discipline.  Likewise, more obviously, the OED can discipline him.

What rules apply?  The goal of modern choice of law principles in legal ethics is to make it so that one set of rules applies and we can easily figure that out.  Where a matter is pending before a tribunal, the tribunal’s rules will generally apply.  So, if Bob files the application and misses a deadline, the USPTO’s rule about neglect, or competence, should be applied by both the Iowa bar and the OED.

Here is the USPTO Rule on subject matter jurisdiction, which is unique to the Office, but notice how it defines its reach — to practice before the office:

All practitioners engaged in practice before the Office… are subject to the disciplinary jurisdiction of the Office….. A person not registered or recognized to practice before the Office is also subject to the disciplinary authority of the Office if the person provides or offers to provide any legal services before the Office.

“Proceeding before the Office” is itself defined:  “Proceeding before the Office means an application for patent, an application for reissue, a reexamination, a protest, a public use matter, an inter partes patent matter, correction of a patent, correction of inventorship, an application to register a trademark, an inter partes trademark matter, an appeal, a petition, and any other matter that is pending before the Office.”

So, plainly Bob is involved in a proceeding before the Office and the OED could discipline him.  Can the OED apply Iowa’s Rules to his conduct?  Do they apply? Before we get there, let’s see if the OED could discipline Bob because Bob had violated an Iowa rule — without Iowa already having done so.

Another subsection of that same USPTO regulation in title 37 of the CFR identifies what is a basis for OED discipline:

The following, whether done individually by a practitioner or in concert with any other person or persons and whether or not done in the course of providing legal services to a client, or in a matter pending before the Office, constitute grounds for discipline or grounds for transfer to disability inactive status.

(1) Grounds for discipline include:

(i) Conviction of a serious crime;

(ii) Discipline on ethical grounds imposed in another jurisdiction or disciplinary disqualification from participating in or appearing before any Federal program or agency;

(iii) Failure to comply with any order of a Court disciplining a practitioner, or any final decision of the USPTO Director in a disciplinary matter;

(iv) Violation of any USPTO Rule of Professional Conduct; or

(v) Violation of the oath or declaration taken by the practitioner. See § 11.8.

So, unless some other agency or court has disciplined a practitioner, or one of the other specific acts has occurred, the OED has to find that a practitioner violated a USPTO Rule.  So, the OED has to find that Bob violated the USPTO Rules.

Now for Iowa.  (I used to speak there every year!  Why haven’t they invited me back in a couple years?).  Let’s do it in reverse order.  What rules would Iowa apply to Bob’s conduct?  Luckily, it’s the USPTO rules, as Iowa Rule 32:805(b) makes clear:

(b) Choice of Law. In any exercise of the disciplinary authority of Iowa, the rules of professional conduct to be applied shall be as follows:

(1) for conduct in connection with a matter pending before a tribunal, the rules of the jurisdiction in which the tribunal sits, unless the rules of the tribunal provide otherwise; and

(2) for any other conduct, the rules of the jurisdiction in which the lawyer’s conduct occurred or, if the predominant effect of the conduct is in a different jurisdiction, the rules of that jurisdiction shall be applied to the conduct. A lawyer shall not be subject to discipline if the lawyer’s conduct conforms to the rules of a jurisdiction in which the lawyer reasonably believes the predominant effect of the lawyer’s conduct will occur.

The USPTO is a “tribunal.”  It defines itself as one!  See 37 C.F.R. 11.1 (“Tribunal means the Office…”). So, the Iowa Rules won’t apply to Bob’s conduct; even if Iowa tried to discipline Bob, it would apply the USPTO Rules.

Warning:  not every state has the same version of Rule 8.5, and some have weird carve outs (e.g., D.C.).

Now, if Iowa wanted to discipline Bob, does it have subject matter jurisdiction to do so?  It does!  Here is the rest of Iowa’s rule 8.5:

(a) Disciplinary Authority. A lawyer admitted to practice in Iowa is subject to the disciplinary authority of Iowa, regardless of where the lawyer’s conduct occurs. A lawyer not admitted in Iowa is also subject to the disciplinary authority of Iowa if the lawyer provides or offers to provide any legal services in Iowa. A lawyer may be subject to the disciplinary authority of both Iowa and another jurisdiction for the same conduct.

(Remember, Bob’s licensed only in Minnesota.)  So, we end up with a nice good, predictable approach.  A recent case analyzing the subject matter jurisdiction issues, but not the choice of law issue, is York v. W. Va. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, 744 S.E.2d 293 (2013).  According to this opinion, (scroll down to top of page 26), in an unreported later decision, Mr. York was disciplined.

(By the way, Minnesota could also discipline Bob, and it would also apply the USPTO rules in doing so.  Whew!)

Here, unless the facts are weird, Bob’s conduct would violate both Iowa and the USPTO rules, and Minnesota’s for that matter, so who cares?

Like I said at the start, there are critical differences between the USPTO rules and many state rules and often those differences tell us whether Bob keeps his license, or not. More often, choice of law becomes an issue in disqualification motions and in legal malpractice cases.  Ethical rules like state bar rules and then USPTO rules are are applied in disqualification and malpractice cases.  If something is ethical under the USPTO rules, but unethical under state law, choice of law may provide the answer to what’s right — whether a client has a malpractice claim, or a lawyer is subject to disqualification.

Where it gets even more interesting is if the conduct occurs before the application is filed, and so there is no matter before a tribunal (yet).  Some choice of law rules state that that apply to matters that going to be before a tribunal, but many don’t.  Others say that the cover only the lawyer who appears before the tribunal, so what about a lawyer who does work in the office on an application but whose name doesn’t appear on the filing?  What rules apply?  What if it’s an assignment that’s incompetently drafted (probably won’t matter but you see my point)?  What if…

Finally, if state law somehow does apply to conduct before the office, then it may be that a preemption analysis is required, because the USPTO rules do narrowly preempt state law to the contrary.

Claim Limits and Differences

Indacon v. Facebook, App. No. 15-1129 (Fed. Cir. 2016)

Indacon’s U.S. Patent No. 6,834,276 covers an improved database system that adds “custom links” so that instances of a “link term” would point to a particular file in the database. Thus, applying this in LinkedIn, you might find that references to “Dennis Crouch” point to my LinkedIn profile.  Of course, the way that Facebook & LinkedIn operate does not create the pointer-link for all occurrences of the term.

During claim construction, the district court determined that the asserted claims required that all instances of a specified link term be identified and linked.  Although not expressly claimed, the district court found that the all-instances requirement should be found in the definition of “link term” and “custom link.” On appeal, the Federal Circuit has affirmed.

As the first step in the de novo claim construction analysis, the appellate panel determined that the claimed “link term” and “custom link” had no defined meaning in the art – a factor making the specification and prosecution history even more important in the analysis.  As the next step, the court looked to the specification that called for automated tagging a link term “when [it] is encountered in a file or document.”   and for “association of any selected link term with any of the plurality of files in the selectable database.”  In my mind, these are ambiguous at best in terms of requiring all instances be identified. The clincher, however, was buried in the prosecution history where the patentee explained that the operation works by linking “every instance of a specified word . . . [and again] associate all instances of a specified word with a specific file.”

The statements from the prosecution history were sufficient for the court to affirm that the “every instance” should be imported into the claim term construction.

“[T]he interested public has the right to rely on the inventor’s statements made during prosecution, without attempting to decipher whether the examiner relied on them, or how much weight they were given.” Fenner Invs., Ltd. v. Cellco P’ship, 778 F.3d 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2015). Here, the patentees repeatedly described their invention both in the specification and the prosecution history as allowing “every instance” or “all instances” of a defined term to be identified and displayed as a link. Under these circumstances, the district court did not err in limiting the link claim terms as such.

Strict Limits on Claim Differentiation: Indacom’s best argument stemmed from the language of non-asserted claims. In particular, some of the claims required linking of “instances” of a term while other claims required linking “all instances.” The implication here is that the “instances” does not require “all instances.”

On appeal, Judge Stoll indicated that the claim differentiation argument only applies in a narrow range of cases — where claims are otherwise identical in scope.  “[W]e have declined to apply the doctrine of claim differentiation where, as here, the claims are not otherwise identical in scope.” Citing World Class Tech. v. Ormco, 769 F.3d 1120 (Fed. Cir. 2014) and Andersen v. Fiber Composites, 474 F.3d 1361 (Fed. Cir. 2007).

Although it is still probably not enough to win the case (and thus a harmless error for this case), Judge Stoll’s statement of the doctrine is unduly limiting and will likely be harmful in future cases.  This is, however, the approach suggested by Professor Lemley in his 2008 article: “First, courts should not use the doctrine unless the claims in question are in an independent-dependent relationship.” Mark A. Lemley, The Limits of Claim Differentiation, 22 BERKELEY TECH. L.J. 1389 (2007).

Rather than relying upon claim differentiation – the better approach may be to expressly differentiate the claims to indicate the difference. Thus, rather than just “instances” the claims could have said “at least some instances.”

 

 

 

Book Review: Patents After the AIA

By Jason Rantanen

Alan J. Kasper, Brad D. Pedersen, Ann M. Mueting, Gregory D. Allen, & Brian R. Stanton, Patents After the AIA: Evolving Law and Practice (Bloomberg BNA 2016).

Last fall, I sat next to Greg Allen at the AIPLA annual conference dinner.  After we started talking about the lingering effects of pre-America Invents Act 102(g), he excitedly told me about a treatise he was working on that dealt with that and many other complexities created by the AIA.  He enthusiastically described the detail into which the book went, including the dozens of timelines dealing with different chronological issues facing patent prosecutors today and the lengthy chapter on transition issues, a chapter that turned out to be surprisingly complex.

A few weeks ago, I received a copy of the book for reviewing purposes. The short version is that Patents After the AIA is massive and detailed, and aimed largely at those who practice before the Patent Office.  The tome, bigger even than Harmon’s Patents and the Federal Circuit, is about three inches thick with over 1,900 tissue-paper thin pages.   Packed inside is more detail on the changes and challenges posed by the AIA than anyone might imagine from just reading the (relative short) 58-page AIA itself.  The dozens of timelines are there, along with chapters on legislative history, regulations, prior art and grace periods, international issues and harmonization, transition issues and much more.   Paired with the discussions of the law are “Practice Tips”: practical advice for prosecuting attorneys.  There is a wealth of detail about post-AIA patent practice contained in this book, and it could become the go-to treatise for patent attorneys.

That detail, though, imposes its own limitations.  In trying to simultaneously be a treatise on all of patent law and a useful resource for prosecutors, its usability suffers. The substantive portion of the treatise begins with a history of patent law–starting with the Book of Genesis.   The first chapter includes an abstract, conceptual overview of “The Innovation Process and Terminology Used in This Treatise,” complete with “instantiations of an invention.”[1]   Many topics are covered in multiple chapters, sometimes in a redundant way.  Discussions of post-AIA § 102(a), for example, are sprinkled throughout the book, with overlapping discussions in chapters 5 (Prior Art, Grace Periods, and Exceptions After the America Invents Act: Global Considerations), 6 (Prior Art, Grace Periods, and Exceptions After the America Invents Act: Practical Considerations), and 9 (America Invents Act Patentability Standards–Issues and Commentary).

The authors recognize this limitation: before even the table of contents, the reader comes to an eight-page section on “How to Use This Treatise,” begging the reader to “PLEASE…take a few minutes to read and study this introductory section of the treatise.”  In chapter 1, after summarizing the AIA, the authors include another orientation section: a description of the treatise’s organization and summaries of the chapters.   The authors also attempt to address the complexity of the subject matter by defining terms, with two separate lexicographies (a short one at the front and a long one at the end).  In some cases, this helps the reader: for example, differentiating between “Post-AIA” and “Pre-AIA” is critical.  But numerous terms that the audience for this book would likely be familiar with, such as “appeal brief,” “evidence,” “malpractice,” and even “human” (“a member of the Homo sapiens species”) are also defined.[2]  While definitions can be useful in establishing precision of meaning, they lose their effectiveness with both length of the text and number of defined terms–here, 164 pages of them.  The index suffers from the opposite problem: its 37 pages tend to be less detailed in key spots than desirable.  For instance, there is just one index column for “Prior art under the AIA” but two columns of index entries for “Prior user rights.”   Yet much of the book (and probably the practical concerns of attorneys) relate to the former rather than the latter.  Readers will probably find the table of contents to be more useful than the index.

Some of these issues may be due to the multi-author nature of the text, with too many cooks in the kitchen.  There’s unquestionably a lot to discuss here, but coupled with the amount of patent law covered there needs to be an emphasis on effectively communicating it.  For this treatise to become the go-to volume on patent law, the authors (or maybe just one person) need to focus on taking that next step.  Understandably, though, the authors were under significant time pressure in getting this project out the door, and they’re to be commended for what they accomplished.

Ultimately, Patents After the AIA is a useful treatise, with the potential to be more with some judicious editing.  Consolidating redundant sections, culling unnecessary text, simplifying (and consolidating!) the definitions, and refining the index would all help improve the accessibility and long-term usefulness of this book.  (Although if most readers are going to be using the online version of the text with its search-capability, improvements to the index are of lesser importance).   Little errors in execution need to be addressed as well.  Fortunately, just like with cooking, that’s an issue that can be remedied in subsequent versions.  Given the rapidity with which patent law continues to develop, and the certainty that there will be judicial interpretations of the open questions the authors identify, those versions are likely to be needed in the near future.

  1. The treatise defines “instantiation” as “[a] codification, manifestation, or representation of abstract subject matter or information as an actual, concrete, or real-world instance of that subject matter or information.”
  2. As is “and/or,” a term that should be excised from all writing, defined or not.

Disclosure: As I mentioned above, I received a (gratis) copy of this text so that I could write this review.  I also was a speaker at the AIPLA annual conference this past fall. 

Edit: Based on a reader’s comment, here’s a direct link to the Bloomberg/BNA page for the book: http://www.bna.com/patents-aia-evolving-p57982059262/