CCIA filed a brief Friday before the Court of Appeals for the
Federal Circuit Court in support of the plaintiff CLS Bank. In the amicus
filing, CLS Bank Int’l v. Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd., CCIA argued that the panel’s presumption of patent eligibility is unwarranted.
The case involved the question of how the court should determine
whether a computer-implemented invention is a patent ineligible “abstract
idea”; and when, if ever, does the presence of a computer in a claim lend
patent eligibility to an otherwise patent-ineligible idea. Patently O wrote about the questions
raised by the case this fall after the rehearing of it was announced.
In the CCIA
brief, CCIA’s Matt Schruers writes, “The decision in this case should be
straightforward. The patent purports to govern an abstract idea: escrow.
The dispute is whether the claims add an “inventive concept” sufficient
to bring it within ambit of patentable subject matter. They do not.
The panel majority seeks to avoid this conclusion by devising its own
rule that patent claims are presumptively not abstract.”
CCIA argues these patent questions
should be answered with the balanced, principled approach expressed by the
Supreme Court in Mayo Collaborative v. Prometheus Labs – rather than the
patentee-centric perspective of the panel decision.
