Nearly every patent practitioner has been impacted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, 134 S.Ct. 2347 (2014). Alice applied the two-part eligibility test set forth in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Labs, 132 S.Ct. 1289 (2014), i.e., is the claim directed to ineligible subject matter and,
Nicholas Martin
Drafting Software Patents After Recent Federal Circuit Decisions
By James J. DeCarlo on
The Federal Circuit recently issued two opinions directly impacting software patent practitioners. Grounded in 35 U.S.C. §112(f) (or pre–American Invents Act §112, para. 6), the cases deal with claims containing “functional language,” and hold that there must be detailed support in the patent’s specification that describes the “means” by which a claimed function is carried…