“The district court granted summary judgment on patent ineligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 but, in doing so, created its own patent eligibility argument that went far beyond what was presented, independently assembling and analyzing prior art never identified by the movant, using that unbriefed material to reject unrebutted expert testimony, and resolving factual issues against the nonmovant patentee. A Federal Circuit panel affirmed under Rule 36.”
“The questions presented are:”
1. “Whether a court may create its own invalidity argument – including independently finding evidence, assembling rationales, and supplying evidentiary showings the movant did not provide – when the movant has raised a defense but failed to adequately support it, or whether doing so violates the party-presentation principle. This question arises here in the context of patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101, where the concern is reinforced by (a) the challenger’s burden of proving invalidity by clear and convincing evidence, and (b) the statutory presumption of validity that Congress established, but the principle extends to all litigants across all areas of law.”
2. “Whether a claimed process that takes a real world physiological input from the body and uses that input within a specific, improved process to produce a more accurate technological result –such as estimation of energy expenditure or body temperature – is patent eligible under § 101 even though it employs data processing.”
3. “Whether the judicially created exceptions to 35 U.S.C. § 101 for abstract ideas, laws of nature, and natural phenomena – which appear nowhere in the statutory text – constitute impermissible judicial legislation that this Court should overrule and replace with the statute Congress actually wrote.”
