Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today’s report highlights news related to the Federal Circuit’s October hearings, a comment on the Trump administration’s stance on a petition for certiorari by Google, a discussion on the distinction between preemption and novelty/non-obviousness, and a note on a recent amicus brief filed by U.S. Steel in a case being watched by the Cato Institute.
As a reminder, the Federal Circuit will hold some of its hearings this week in Dallas-Fort Worth at the Earle Cabell Federal Building & United States Courthouse, SMU Dedman School of Law, and Texas A&M University School of Law today and tomorrow. The Dallas Bar Association Intellectual Property Law Section will also hold a 25th Anniversary Celebration tonight welcoming the Federal Circuit judges to Dallas.
Greg Stohr and Naomi Nix at Bloomberg Law commented on the Trump administration’s recently filing of an amicus brief in Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. urging the Supreme Court to reject Google’s petition for certiorari, “undercut[ting] Google’s chances of a Supreme Court hearing” and “boosting Oracle Corp.’s bid to collect more than $8 billion in royalties for Google’s use of copyrighted programming code in the Android operating system.”
At IPWatchdog, Robert Levy discussed “the distinction between preemption and novelty/non-obviousness,” noting that in the Federal Circuit’s decision in Solutran Inc. v. Elavon, Inc., the court “held that novelty/non-obviousness does not bear on the question of patent eligibility,” and that understanding the difference “between preemption and novelty/non-obviousness should aid in understanding Supreme Court and Federal Circuit case law on patent eligibility, even if the courts continue to blur these terms.”
Over at the Cato Institute, William Yeatman again highlighted recent happenings in American Institute for International Steel v. United States, noting that U.S. Steel Corporation recently “filed an amicus brief in support of the government” and that “more than half of the brief is given to Cato’s arguments” made in their own earlier amicus brief. (We previously reported on the Cato Institute’s amicus brief and followed up with a note on the Justice Department’s subsequent brief.)