IP Insights

CRISPR, or “Clustered Regularly Interspersed Short Palindromic Repeats,” is a revolutionary DNA cutting technique that promises to make gene therapy of diseases a reality.  Groups headed by the Broad Institute and the University of California have been battling over which was the first to invent the technology.

Judge Ryan Holte of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, formerly professor of IP law at the University of Akron School of Law, has injected some clarity into pleading under the second part of the Supreme Court’s Alice test, the part of the test that asks, once the court determines that the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea, law of nature or the like, whether the invention adds “something more” in the way of an “inventive concept” to that abstract idea or law of nature so as to make the invention patentable subject matter under 35 USC 101.

Brexit has much less impact on IP than one might think (except perhaps in data rights).

On November 15, 2019, the Federal Circuit offered a ray of hope, and in doing so some pointers, in what has been a dismal outlook for patentability under 35 USC 101 for computer-related inventions since the Supreme Court’s Alice decision.  In Koninklijke KPN N.V. v. Gemalto M2M GmbH, CAFC App. No. 2018-1863, a CAFC panel (Dyk, Chen and Stoll, JJ., opinion by Judge Chen) delivered a rare reversal of a judgment of patent ineligibility under 35 USC 101 on the pleadings.