Utility patents aren’t the only form of patent, much less the only form of intellectual property. While not a frequent subject of discussion in comparison to its much better known cousins, the utility patent and the design patent, the plant patent is still relevant and provides a useful example of how to protect subject matter…
Tag Archive for patentable subject matter
What Are We Really Talking About When We Talk About § 101?
by Josh Landau •
After the Senate’s recent § 101 hearings, Senators Tillis and Coons seem to have remained steadfast in their belief that patentable subject matter is a real problem for U.S. innovation. (It’s not.) But there’s a particular flaw in their belief. In a recent article penned by the two Senators, published in Law360, they state that…
Senate Judiciary § 101 Hearings Less Neutral, Helpful Than They May Appear
by Josh Landau •
This week marks the start of three separate hearings on a fundamentally flawed draft § 101 bill. Fortunately, it’s only a draft bill, and there’s still time for it to be modified to make it less harmful. Unfortunately, based on the announced witness list for the first hearing, that might not happen.
Sunshine: Eclipse Promises Not To Sue Californians
by Josh Landau •
Remember Shipping and Transit? The notorious NPE went bankrupt last year after its campaign against everyone from transit app developers to city transit authorities hit a few potholes. Following a decade-long licensing and litigation campaign leveraging the high cost of patent litigation, including one year in which it filed more patent suits than anyone else,…
Senators Tillis and Coons Draft Fundamentally Flawed § 101 Legislation
by Josh Landau •
Today, staff from Senators Tillis and Coons will sit in a room with a group of stakeholders—primarily patent lawyers and lawyers from the pharmaceutical industry—and discuss their recently released draft for a § 101 bill. That draft bill reflects little of the careful input that has been provided to the Senators over the course of the…
Jefferson on Abstract Ideas
by Josh Landau •
Thomas Jefferson neatly summarized the core of the debate on at least one aspect of patentable subject matter, over 200 years ago.
CCIA Letter to Senate Judiciary IP Subcommittee Members On Questionable Studies
by Josh Landau •
At last week’s Senate Judiciary IP Subcommittee hearing, questioners referenced two studies. The first, on multiple IPR petitions, was conducted by Steve Carlson and Ryan Schultz of Robins Kaplan. The second, on venture capital and § 101, was conducted by Prof. David Taylor of SMU. But, as Twain said in a somewhat more colorful form,…
Blackbird Grounded—For Now
by Josh Landau •
Almost two years ago, I wrote about a new non-practicing entity (NPE)—Blackbird Technologies. It claimed to be helping innovators, but the main innovation it helped promote was its own—having the lawyers own the patents on which Blackbird was suing. When I first wrote about Blackbird, it had just sued Cloudflare over the ‘335 patent, which…
Increase In § 101 Rejections Due Almost Entirely To Rejected Business Methods
by Josh Landau •
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…
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…