Patently-O

Design Patent Infringement Test Heads Toward the Supreme Court

Range of Motion's cert petition, due Dec. 21, will challenge the plainly dissimilar test and judicial functionality findings for design patents.
Patently-O

Who Owns the Land Under the Trail?

Barron v. United States, Nos. 2025-1179, -1459 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 22, 2026). This is not a patent case, but decisions from the Court of Federal Claims are also appealed to the Federal Circuit -- making ...
Patently-O

PTAB Section 101 Appeal Data, 2009–2026

I have been parsing ex parte PTAB decisions - about 130 k for this post running from 2009 through September 2026 - looking particularly at the eligibility cases. The short version: eligibility is ...
Patently-OOpinion

Reading the Bench: Predictions for Five October Federal Circuit Arguments

Blind AI readers forecast four pending Federal Circuit appeals, including Samsung v. ITC and Taylor Made v. Costco, after a ...
Patently-O

PTAB Affirmance by Rejection Type, 2009–2026

My October 18 post looked at Section 101 in PTAB ex parte appeals. This one looks at the other rejection types, using the same parsed decisions plus a rejection-by-rejection reading of the 35 thousand ...
Patently-O

Supreme Court Patent Cases

Supreme Court denies VirtaMove without holding it for Tesla, Kahoot!, Intel, or FedEx. Plus new petitions on post-expiration royalties and § 101.
Patently-O

The Federal Circuit Edits Its Damages Footnote in Constellation Designs v. LG

The “optimization” claims of US8842761 and US10693700 are ineligible under § 101; The “constellation” claims of US11019509 and US11018922 are eligible; The infringement verdict stands (denial of JMOL ...
Patently-O

USPTO’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Policy: The Quiet Death of Thaler and the Legal Fiction of Human Inventorship

The Federal Circuit's 2022 decision in Thaler v. Vidal seemed to settle a fundamental question: only natural persons can be inventors under U.S. patent law. But, the bigger near-term question has ...
Patently-O

Method or Molecule: Judge Dyk Dissents from En Banc Denial in Teva v. Lilly

The Federal Circuit has denied rehearing en banc in Teva v. Eli Lilly, leaving in place Judge Prost’s April decision reinstating Teva’s $177 million jury verdict against Lilly over its migraine drug ...
Patently-O

The Team-Based Reality of Modern Innovation: Average Patent Now Lists More Than Three Inventors

New data from the USPTO shows that the amazing transformation in patent inventorship continues: the average number of inventors per utility patent has reached 3.2 in 2024, nearly double the 1.7 ...
Patently-O

Guest Post: Improving PERA’s Eligibility Exclusions

As Dennis reported last year, Senators Thom Tillis and Chris Coons re-introduced the Patent Eligibility Reform Act (PERA) in the Senate in May 2025, accompanied by a parallel bill in the House.
Patently-O

Plain, Ordinary, and Unresolved: Woodway’s Two-Front Claim Construction Fight

It seems a bit crazy to me that almost every patent case involves a process of claim construction. Those claims were already drafted by skilled patent attorneys and survived a rigorous examination ...