After the Supreme Court decided that the personalized medicine
method claims at issue in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories,
Inc. did not satisfy the patent eligibility
requirements of 35 USC § 101, it was not surprising that the
Court asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to
take a second look at Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics,
Inc. (the ACLU "gene patenting"/BRCAI
case). Although Myriad's "isolated DNA" claims raise
different patent eligibility issues than
Prometheus's method claims, both patents relate to technology
that is applied in the medical diagnostic/therapeutic space.
It was more puzzling when the Supreme Court also asked the
Federal Circuit to reconsider Ultramercial, LLC v. Hulu, LLC, where
the claims at issue relate to methods of distributing copyrighted
content over the internet. True, the patent eligibility of the
Ultramercial claims is at issue, but how can the Supreme
Court's explication of the non-patent eligibility of natural
phenomena impact the Federal Circuit's decision that the
Ultramercial methods were not disqualified from patenting as merely
claiming abstract ideas?
See what I'm afraid all this could mean in my guest
commentary for The Legal Pulse Blog of the
Washington Legal Foundation.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.
Specific Questions relating to this article should be addressed directly to the author.
Publisher John Wiley & Sons and the American Institute of Physicists has claimed that lawyers and their Chicago-and Minneapolis-based law firms had wrongfully copied journal articles.
Startups and emerging growth companies should focus on building a patent monopoly around the most commercially important choke points of their inventions while making efficient use of their patent dollars and the precious time of their key innovators and technical experts.
Your company has just developed a new invention that it intends to unveil at your annual industry trade show. In advance of the show, your marketing department sends out a press release describing your new invention in detail and launches photos of your invention on your website.
In "Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc.", the Federal Circuit reversed the district court and held that Bayer’s patent covering its Yaz® birth control pill product is invalid as obvious.
On April 18, 2013, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York again held that YouTube is subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as an internet service provider despite alleged general knowledge of extensive copyright infringement.
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