Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today’s report highlights:
- an article discussing how, “[o]nce thought to be a toss-up, the Federal Circuit is now ruling for appellees nearly twice as often as appellants”;
- another article addressing how a recent Federal Circuit decision “shows [a] less rigid analysis” of corroboration of inventorship; and
- a third article highlighting several pending Supreme Court petitions in patent cases, including more than one that “raise important questions on Section 101 patent eligibility jurisprudence.”
Scott Graham published an article for Law.com discussing how a recent Lex Machina appellate analysis showed that “appellants prevailed 24% of the time at the Federal Circuit over the last three years, versus 47% for appellees (the rest settled or were dismissed).” Graham noted that this data was surprising to some legal data experts because “of the conventional wisdom that ‘there’s a coin-flip chance of prevailing at the Federal Circuit.’”
Samantha Handler authored an article for Bloomberg Law addressing how the Federal Circuit’s decision in Google LLC v. IPA Technologies Inc. “will benefit patent challengers generally, opening the door to new corroborating evidence to support attacks on inventions as obvious, attorneys say.” Handler emphasized how the Federal Circuit held that “co-authorship in a relevant publication can corroborate an individual’s claim to be an inventor of a patented innovation.” As the article notes, Charanjit Brahma, a patent attorney, highlighted that this “more fluid analysis reflects how the Federal Circuit has been ‘softening’ its scrutiny of evidence sufficient for corroboration.”
Steve Brachmann wrote an article for IPWatchdog highlighting how “several petitions for writ of certiorari in patent cases being appealed from the . . . Federal Circuit remain pending in front of the nation’s highest court.” Brachmann noted that “few petitions for writ of certiorari . . . have garnered as much interest as American Axle & Manufacturing v. Neapco Holdings as it represents a major expansion to the Section 101 abstract idea jurisprudence that has been slowly swallowing all of patent law since the Supreme Court handed down Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International back in 2014.”