Since the June 2014 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Alice Corporation Pty Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, the vast majority of district court decisions, Federal Circuit decisions, and Patent Trial and Appeals Board (PTAB) decisions that considered the issue have overturned software and business method patents under the new patent-eligibility standard of Alice. In the first quarter of 2015 alone, when considering a motion to dismiss or a motion for judgment on the pleadings on the basis of patent-eligibility under §101, U.S. district courts have granted the motions and ruled the patents to be invalid over 66% of the time.
In November 2014, I published a post that summarized court and PTAB decisions that bucked this trend and found software to be patent-eligible. Since then, a small but growing number of cases refused to overturn patents that involved software, and the USPTO issued an Interim Guidance document describing actual and hypothetical claims that could survive post-Alice scrutiny.
To track the activity since then, I have updated my original post. It’s still available via this link. I intend to keep it updated on a periodic basis, so feel free to bookmark it or simply check back for future updates.
IP Spotlight 