Litigation Quality Patent PatentCast

Today we have a special Ask the Patent Attorney two-episode edition, answering the question: "Is my patent attorney getting me the right claims?" To answer that question, we're going to break this up into two parts. The first part is the Litigation Quality Patent Claim Criteria, and the second part is the Litigation Quality Patent Claim Scope. You need to have both to assess and give you a proper answer to the question that maybe isn't frequently asked but should be asked. If I were a client of a patent attorney, this is the top of my asked questions.

This is an important case from 2014. It is part of our post-Alice software series of Litigation Quality PatentCasts because it's about an important decision that's often cited in prosecution literature, in IPRs, and in litigation in favor of patent eligibility for software claims in certain circumstances. Alice is the Supreme Court decision, and it has set the bar and the two-step Alice test for analyzing whether claims are patent-eligible subject matter, or whether they're too abstract, to be patentable.

In this installment of the Post-Alice Software Series, the Federal Circuit burns off some of the fog surrounding software claims at Step 2 of the Alice inquiry. The case of SAP vs. Investpic appears to directly answer, for the first time, whether a claim can lack the "inventive concept" needed to survive Alice, even though the claims are "groundbreaking, innovative, or even brilliant" as well as non-obvious. Now we know that an "inventive concept" cannot be found in the non-abstract realm, e.g., the claimed improvement can't be an improvement to merely abstract "math."

In this enlightening review of Microsoft's successful non-infringement defense against Mastermine's software patent relating to pivot tables, Craige exposes the 4 layers that must be considered to properly interpret a patent claim. Craige provides crucial insights into the subtleties of each layer that make the difference between successful patent enforcement and just getting close but falling short, as Mastermine did with their claims. As a bonus, Craige takes this case as a rare opportunity to explore hybrid claiming techniques, showing the factors that courts look at to decide when to permit both method and apparatus elements to be recited in the same claim - which can produce very powerful claims, for example, to protect software!

When is software that automates a human task patentable?

When is it too abstract to be patentable? In this special edition of the post-Alice software PatentCast series, Craige explains how the automation software claims were indeed patentable. Craige extracts key themes that pop up in many software litigations, and explains how to apply the lessons learned to create and enforce Litigation Quality Patents®

No! Common sense or ordinary creativity cannot substitute for reasoned analysis and evidence! This puts a bar, albeit a low bar, on the PTO's ability to waive their hands and find patent claims obvious. Listen to Craige explain how Apple and the PTO could not get over this bar to invalidate an early "IOT" claim.

Visit us at https://thompsonpatentlaw.com/

Disaster befalls a patent owner whom they decided not to tell the Patent Office about 61 sales using the claimed intervention before the patent's critical date. Craige explains how they hurt themselves in the patent office, which led to them losing their patent, getting sued for tortious interference, and paying the competitors legal fees on top of damages!

Did you know... fear from being sued and future business losses does not give you the right to sue a patent owner to get their patent declared invalid/ not infringed? Craige explains how manufacturers can defend themselves by a "DJ" (declaratory judgment) attack under some facts, but not others

visit: https://thompsonpatentlaw.com/patent-process-flowchart/ to get your copy of the Patent Flowchart. Most patents get rejected at least once. What is going on? Axiom during patent prosecution: "The key is to get out of the PTO as fast as possible with Litigation Quality Patent claims that cover a Commercially Valuable Choke Point."

Good news! You could be sued in fewer places!

Business owners will be relieved to know that their risk of being sued for patent infringement in some far away and unfriendly court just went down! Find out how a patent spat over supercomputers can keep you from traveling so far to defend against a charge of patent infringement.