Washington – The Supreme Court may take up a case that many are hoping could resolve a division within the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on patent eligibility of software. About half of the court has been following the Supreme Court’s guidance from the recent cases Bilski v. Kappos and Mayo v. Prometheus, but several…
This month, the PTO issued for the very first time a five-item research agenda to be overseen by the new Office of Chief Economist. This deserves applause, both for innovating and for taking a major step in ensuring that the patent system promotes innovation and economic growth — not just patents. For the last five years, Congress…
Today the Supreme Court upheld the Federal Circuit’s protective view of low-quality patents in Microsoft v. i4i. Despite the limited review at the Patent and Trademark Office, the Court affirmed that once granted, a patent can only be invalidated by “clear and convincing evidence,” a strong presumption of validity that is especially helpful for marginal…
CCIA President & CEO Ed Black has written to the Senate opposing S.23, the Patent Reform Act of 2011. The bill has been marked up by the Senate Judiciary Committee and is scheduled for a floor vote this afternoon. The bill raises a number of concerns for the tech sector. The proposed move to a first-to-file offers…
The results of this week’s mid-term elections have been linked to a public desire for “smaller government” or hostility to “big government.” Assuming this is the case, it may be useful to consider what implications a small-government philosophy has for important policy debates, such as the effort to reform the vast federal patent system. Patent…
Monday, June 28 was the day the U.S. Supreme Court was to decide the patent case of the century, Bilski v. Kappos, and bring clarity to the debacle of the 1998 State Street Bank decision. In State Street, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (which hears all patent appeals) had upended centuries of tradition that assumed that…
The Supreme Court has issued a long awaited decision that could impact whether business methods can be patented. The Supreme Court denied a patent for a risk management method in Bilski v. Kappos, while still allowing some business methods to be patented. The justices reduced the strength of the lower court rejection by stating that…
As the Supreme Court heard arguments in Bilski v. Kappos (08-964) today, a case which should help answer the question, ‘what is patentable?’ – the Computer & Communications Industry Association urged the Court to correct a patent system that has run amok. CCIA argued in a friend-of-the-court brief before the Supreme Court and the court below, the…
The Computer & Communications Industry Association is filing an amicus brief Friday with the Supreme Court asking that the Court uphold the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in the Bilski case, which denied a patent for a method of hedging on utility contracts. Prior to the Federal Circuit’s State Street…