Abstract
Recent Supreme Court and Federal Circuit cases have redefined patent eligibility under §101. In 2012, the Supreme Court decided Mayo Medical Laboratories v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. and in 2014, the Court decided Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International. Together, these two cases form what is known as the Mayo/Alice Two Step Test for subject matter eligibility. Although Alice discussed computer implemented inventions, it did not expressly answer whether software patents were eligible under § 101. In the years since Alice, it has been difficult to define what is patent eligible. Thus, many software patents have been found ineligible under § 101. However, since 2014, the Federal Circuit has decided a series of § 101 cases which have helped define § 101 eligibility. These are particularly important to guide the district court judges during their § 101 analysis. The Federal Circuit has previously instructed district courts to determine patent-eligibility at the pleadings stage to avoid unnecessary litigation. As a result, oftentimes district courts dismiss cases based on subject matter eligibility with pretrial pleadings. This paper will explore eligibility issues that software patents have faced post-Alice and whether recent Federal Circuit cases help software patentee avoid invalidity due to lack of eligibility at the pretrial stage.
Last Page
80
Recommended Citation
Robert D. Garza,
Software Patents and Pretrial Dismissal Based on Ineligibility,
24
Rich. J.L. & Tech
1
(2024).
Available at:
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/jolt/vol24/iss2/2