Harris Brumfield v. IBG LLC, Appeal No. 2022-1630 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 27, 2024) In our case of the week, the Federal Circuit addressed three issues in a dispute that dates ba.
The Federal Circuit on Wednesday affirmed a district court’s decision invalidating the claims of two of Trading Technologies’ patents as being patent ineligible under Section 101 and also clarified the application of a 2018 Supreme Court ruling on foreign damages.
United States
It is well known that in the U.S., abstract ideas, laws of nature, natural phenomena, and products of nature are all excluded from patenting under 35 U.S.C. § 101. This article briefly outlines various U.S. approaches to subject matter eligibility with an eye towards succeeding in patenting domestically and internationally.
In the U.S., computer-implemented inventions such as software and business methods are patentable, yet hurdles abound. When assessing the eligibility of software and business method patents, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office applies the two step framework of Mayo and Alice.[1] If an invention is determined to be “abstract” in Step 1, it is often a fatal determination unless the Applicant can show “something more,” at Step 2, that transforms the abstract idea into patent eligible subject matter. Many software based inventions and business methods may be determined as “abstract” at Step 1, therefore practitioners must be prepared to