Prof. Colleen Chien, along with her student Jiun-Ying Wu, recently published an analysis of the impact of § 101 on patent prosecution. While their analysis clarifies which art units are impacted by § 101 decisions like Alice and Mayo, the published article doesn’t clearly answer the question of how each art unit contributes to the…
Tag Archive for patentable subject matter
IPR And Alice Appear Responsible For Reduced Patent Litigation Costs
by Josh Landau •
Patent litigation costs have dropped significantly over the past few years, after a steady series of increases over the previous decade. This drop has sometimes been attributed to the use of inter partes review and to the Alice decision. The chart below, created based on data from the AIPLA Report of the Economic Survey, shows…
Getting The Future Backwards: Iancu’s Comments On § 101 At IPO
by Josh Landau •
This morning, Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) Director Iancu gave remarks at the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) Annual Meeting. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given IPO’s efforts to legislatively overturn the Supreme Court’s recent cases reinforcing the bar on patents on products of nature and abstract ideas, Director Iancu’s remarks focused on patentable subject matter—§ 101. While…
RALIA Would Take Us Back To The Patent Law Stone Age
by Josh Landau •
At the end of June, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced the “Restoring America’s Leadership in Innovation Act of 2018,” H.R. 6264 (RALIA). RALIA, rather than restoring American innovation, aims to overturn the advances in American patent law that help protect innovation. Last week, I addressed Rep. Rohrabacher’s ‘Inventor Protection Act’ (IPA) [1][2], and I’ve previously…
More Evidence Is In—Alice Has Been Good For R&D
by Josh Landau •
Tuesday marked one milestone—utility patent number 10,000,000. But it also marked a far more important milestone—the 4-year anniversary of the Alice decision. Looking back on those 4 years, Alice has been a clear success in eliminating patents that never should have issued. It’s had a very limited impact on patent prosecution, with most applications entirely…
‘Gold Into Lead’ Article Focuses On Pyrite Patents
by Josh Landau •
I’m out at IPBC Global this week, and one of the hot topics of conversation here is patent eligibility under § 101. In fact, Director Iancu’s remarks focused heavily on § 101, and the panel I spoke on debated the relative importance of patent quality and patent eligibility. (I argued that patent quality is more…
Iancu’s First Hearing Answers Questions, Leaves More Open
by Josh Landau •
On Wednesday, April 18, new USPTO Director Andrei Iancu appeared for his first oversight hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Director was more open with the Committee compared to his confirmation process, leading to some interesting discussions. Algorithms Are Already Patentable A number of questions focused on the issue of patentable subject…
A New § 101 Trio Shows That We Don’t Need § 101 Legislation
by Josh Landau •
The Bilski, Alice, Mayo, and Myriad cases are sometimes referred to as a § 101 quartet because they set forth the Supreme Court’s test for patentable subject matter under § 101. Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a new trio of § 101 cases emerge from Federal Circuit panels—Berkheimer, Aatrix, and Automated Tracking. The…
Innovation Is Alive And Well—Patenting Activity
by Josh Landau •
After examining the evidence for U.S. innovation as shown by startups and venture capital, and by R&D spending, I want to look at patenting activity—new patent applications and new patent grants. Particularly given accusations that the U.S. patent system has fallen behind other systems worldwide—accusations based on extremely questionable analysis—it’s worth looking at what patent…
The Alice Drizzle—Barely Even Noticeable
by Josh Landau •
At the end of the year, I took a look at whether Alice really had a significant impact on patents as a whole. The answer was that Alice simply doesn’t affect that many patent applications. But several important questions were left unanswered. I also wanted to know whether the affected applications are really being affected…