News

Here is a report on recent news and commentary related to the Federal Circuit and its cases. Today’s report highlights:

  • an article about how a “Federal Circuit panel . . . seemed wary that . . . large companies used a roundabout way to challenge the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Fintiv policy”;
  • a blog post about a Federal Circuit decision finding that two patents “for remote education and training systems is patent ineligible”; and
  • another article about the Federal Circuit upholding a lower court’s decision related to Amazon.com Inc.’s virtual assistant Alexa.

Dani Kass wrote an article for Law360 about how a “Federal Circuit panel . . . seemed wary that Apple, Cisco, and other large companies used a roundabout way to challenge the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Fintiv policy” but “also call[ed] into question how far the government believes the agency director’s discretion goes.”

Eileen McDermott wrote a blog post for IP Watchdog about a Federal Circuit decision finding that two patents “for remote education and training systems is patent ineligible as it is ‘plainly drawn to an abstract idea.’” McDermott reported how in Riggs Technology Holdings, Inc. v. Cengage Learning, Inc. the Federal Circuit rejected the argument “that the claim addresses a problem rooted in computer technology to solve problem in the realm of computer network” and instead concluded that “the technology . . . merely serves a ‘conduit for the abstract idea.’”

Michael Shapiro authored an article for Bloomberg Law about the Federal Circuit upholding a lower court’s 2021 decision related to Amazon.com Inc.’s virtual assistant Alexa. Shapiro summarized how “[a] federal court in Delaware in late 2021 granted Amazon’s request to toss a suit filed by IPA Technologies Inc. filed five years earlier,” ruling “that Alexa doesn’t infringe the relevant claims.”