McRO, Inc., owns a U.S. patent on a method for animating faces in video games. Back in 2016, when McRO sued a number of video-game developers for patent infringement, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) upheld the patent as subject-matter eligible. Now, the CAFC has again upheld the patent, this time against a challenge of non-enablement. Patents must enable the full scope of claims At their core, patents are a…

Late last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit delivered ShoppersChoice.com the affirmation it ordered in Electronic Communication Technologies, LLC (ECT) v. ShoppersChoice.com, LLC. In doing so, the court supplied accused infringers with a helpful example of what may be appropriate for early dismissal under 35 U.S.C. § 101. In addition, this opinion discusses the ineligibility of claims directed at long-standing commercial practices. ECT brought suit in the Southern District of Florida…

By reversing the lower court’s ruling that the asserted claims were not patent-eligible under 35 U.S.C. §  101 in Uniloc v. LG Electronics, the Federal Circuit resurrected Uniloc’s infringement suit against LG Electronics. It also demonstrated what we already know — courts have been inconsistent in their application of the Alice/Mayo test. Nevertheless, this latest opinion provides us with another good example of claim language that the Federal Circuit considers to be non-abstract such that…

Last week, the Federal Circuit decided that claims related to a method of fishing that involved evaluating the water to be fished were not patent-eligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101. It is a bit of a head scratcher as to why this opinion is deemed precedential — the eligibility analysis employed here under the Alice/Mayo framework certainly did not involve wading into unchartered waters. In any event, In re: Christopher John Rudy is a good reminder…

Nearly five years ago the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) decided the controversial case of Ariosa v. Sequenom. In Sequenom the invention was a radically new method of fetal genetic testing by amplifying free paternal DNA from the mother’s blood. This test has today largely replaced the previous method of amniocentesis, which was an invasive test with a very high risk of complications. There was no evidence that anyone had ever…

KPN is a Dutch telecom company that owns a U.S. patent for detecting errors in data transmission. Last year, the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware invalidated the patent as ineligible subject matter, but on Friday, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) reversed. So, let’s look at what the CAFC said about this data-processing patent. Check data methods Anytime you send data, there is a…