The Federal Circuit held that the Alice/Mayo Step 2B inquiry — whether a claim element or combination of elements represents an ‘inventive concept’ that was well-understood, routine, and conventional — contains underlying factual questions that may not always be resolved as a matter of l
The Federal Circuit upheld patent claims covering an improved mobile device application summary interface, holding that specific graphical user interface improvements solving a concrete usability problem are not abstract ideas under § 101.
The Federal Circuit confirmed that patent damages can be apportioned through the royalty rate rather than the royalty base, but vacated a $48 million award because the patent owner’s damages expert failed to adequately explain how the Georgia-Pacific factors supported the proposed royalty rate.
The Federal Circuit held that identifying the “smallest salable patent-practicing unit” is not sufficient when that unit still contains non-patented features, and further apportionment is required to isolate the value of the patented technology in complex software products.
The Federal Circuit, sitting en banc, overruled Achates and held that §315(b) time-bar determinations by the PTAB are subject to judicial review, rejecting the argument that all IPR institution decisions are unreviewable.
The Federal Circuit affirmed PTAB’s cancellation of Credit Acceptance’s patent on financing automobile purchases through a dealer-administered program, holding the claims directed to the abstract idea of processing financing transactions — a business practice not rendered patent-eligible
The Federal Circuit affirmed invalidity of Smart Systems’ open-loop transit payment patents under Section 101, holding that collecting financial data using generic components to facilitate transit access is an abstract idea — with a notable dissent arguing that the claims addressed a real, Int
An en banc Federal Circuit held that in inter partes review proceedings, the petitioner — not the patent owner — bears the burden of proving that proposed amended claims are unpatentable, overturning years of PTAB practice that had effectively blocked most patent owner amendment efforts.
The Federal Circuit reversed summary judgment of non-infringement in a divided infringement case, holding that the ‘direction and control’ standard from Akamai v. Limelight could be satisfied where one party conditions participation in an activity on performance of a method step by anoth
The Federal Circuit granted mandamus to Cray and set forth a three-part test for what constitutes a ‘regular and established place of business’ under the patent venue statute — rejecting the Eastern District of Texas’s expansive four-factor test and clarifying that employees’
The Federal Circuit held that the federal government qualifies as a ‘person’ under the America Invents Act and may petition for covered business method (CBM) review at the PTAB — a ruling the Supreme Court reversed in 2019, holding that the government is not a ‘person’ for AI
Reversing a district court’s Section 101 dismissal, the Federal Circuit held that Visual Memory’s patent on a programmable memory system with processor-specific operational characteristics was directed to an improved computer memory technology — not an abstract idea — because it describe
The Federal Circuit held that IPR estoppel under § 315(e)(2) does not extend to prior art grounds based on patents or printed publications that the petitioner could not have raised in IPR — specifically that prior art systems and physical products (which cannot be raised in IPR) are not subject to t
The Supreme Court unanimously held that the Lanham Act’s prohibition on registering ‘disparaging’ trademarks violates the First Amendment — invalidating the PTO’s refusal to register THE SLANTS for an Asian-American band and establishing that trademark registration is a gover
The Supreme Court held 7-1 that authorized patent sales both domestically and abroad exhaust all U.S. patent rights in the sold item — eliminating Lexmark’s attempt to use conditional patent licenses to control post-sale use and the Federal Circuit’s rule allowing foreign sales to preser
The Supreme Court held that the patent venue statute, § 1400(b), is the sole provision governing where patent suits may be filed, and that a corporation ‘resides’ only in its state of incorporation for patent venue purposes.
The Federal Circuit held that a secret commercial sale — where the existence of the sale agreement was publicly disclosed but the details of the invention were kept confidential — triggers the on-sale bar under the AIA, finding that the America Invents Act did not change the rule that confidential s
The Supreme Court held 6–2 that surface designs on cheerleading uniforms are copyrightable, establishing a new two-part separability test: a design element is protectable if it can be perceived as a work of art separate from the useful article, and would qualify for copyright protection if imagined
The Supreme Court held 7-1 that laches cannot be used as a defense to patent infringement that occurred within the six-year statute of limitations — extending Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (copyright) to patent law and eliminating a long-standing Federal Circuit precedent that had allowed laches t
The Federal Circuit held that when a patentee satisfies all four Panduit factors for lost profits — including proving demand driven by the patented feature and no acceptable non-infringing substitutes — no further separate apportionment of those profits is required, because the Panduit analysis inhe
The Federal Circuit reversed the Court of Federal Claims’ § 101 dismissal of Thales Visionix’s inertial sensor patent, holding that claims directed to a specific arrangement of sensors and a mathematical algorithm to improve navigation accuracy are patent-eligible because the claims impr
The Federal Circuit affirmed invalidation of Intellectual Ventures’ XML-formatting and financial data-collection patents under Section 101, holding that organizing, collecting, recognizing, and storing data — even when dressed in domain-specific vocabulary — is a patent-ineligible abstract ide
The Supreme Court held that supplying a single component of a multi-component patented invention from the United States does not trigger liability under § 271(f)(1), which requires supplying ‘all or a substantial portion’ of the components.
On remand from the Supreme Court’s Samsung v. Apple decision, the Federal Circuit declined to define the legal test for identifying the ‘article of manufacture’ in design patent damages and instead sent the case back to the district court to resolve the issue in the first instance