The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on January 10, 2014, to hear a patent case involving indefiniteness of claim language, the first case to reach the high court on this issue in decades. The Court granted certiorari in the case of Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc. (No. 13-369), in which Nautilus raised on petition the following questions:
- Does the Federal Circuit's acceptance of ambiguous patent claims with multiple reasonable interpretations—so long as the ambiguity is not "insoluble" by a court—defeat the statutory definiteness requirement?
- Does the presumption of validity after grant dilute the requirement of definiteness?
The Supreme Court also granted certiorari in the case of Akamai Technologies, Inc. v. Limelight Networks, Inc. (No. 12-786), covered in the October 2012 edition of Full Disclosure. Click here. The Court will consider whether a party may be liable for infringement under either 35 U.S.C. § 271(a) or (b) where two or more entities join together to perform all of the steps of a process claim.
Certiorari has already been granted in Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International (No. 13-298), regarding patent-eligible subject matter. The CLS Bank decision was covered in the June 2013 edition of Full Disclosure. Click here.
This article previously appeared in Full Disclosure Patent Prosecution Update, January 2014.
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