By Michelle E. O’Brien and Tom Irving The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit today affirmed the U.S. Patent Office’s findings that claims in four patents were unpatentable because they are not patentably distinct from claims in other patents in the same family. In re Cellect, LLC, Nos. 2022-1293, 2022-1294, 2022-1295, 2022-1296 (August [...]
New guidance to Examiners from the USPTO provides additional clarity around the use of 35 U.S.C. § 101 to reject patent applications as directed to an “abstract idea.” Since the 2014 Supreme Court decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, many patent applicants have faced a novel ground of rejection from Examiners asserting that [...]
Oracle and Google have been fighting over Google’s use of JAVA API packages in Google’s Android operating system for the last seven years in a case that has bounced back and forth between the Northern District of California, Federal Circuit, and Supreme Court. In a blow to Google, the Federal Circuit recently overturned a jury [...]
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) provides under 17 U.S.C. § 512 a safe harbor defense to copyright infringement for providers that have adopted and reasonably implemented a policy that terminates subscribers who are repeat copyright infringers. Many companies have terms of use and other company policies designed to take advantage of such DMCA [...]
