Source: http://wcsr.com/Insights/Articles/2017/March/Sections-101-and-112-Eligibility-Patentability-or-Somewhere-in-Between
Timestamp: 2017-04-25 08:35:34
Document Index: 150644225

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 102', '§ 101', '§ 112', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 112', '§ 101', '§ 112', '§ 112', '§ 101', '§ 112', '§ 101', '§ 112', '§ 112', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 102', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 102', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 102', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 112', '§ 101', '§ 112', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 112', '§ 103', '§ 101', '§ 112', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 112']

We wrote earlier about the Supreme Court’s renewed interest in patent eligibility and seemingly unintended confusion between the patent eligibility requirements of 35 U.S.C. § 101 and the remaining patentability requirements under Title 35. To paraphrase Judge Rich, whether we lawyers would take advantage of terminology available to us and stop talking nonsense is up to us. Principles of Patentability, Geo. Wash. L. Rev., 28(2), 393-407, 407 (1960). We tried to heed his guidance and aimed to be careful to differentiate between eligibility under § 101 and the remaining requirements of patentability. Since our article, there has been significant commentary and angst regarding the failure of the courts to so differentiate, at least with respect to patent eligibility and the requirements of §§ 102 and 103. But there has been less attention paid to possible changes in the relationship between § 101 and § 112, so we address the relationship of those two sections here.
Patent eligibility under § 101 is traditionally understood as a “threshold” test: the first of multiple challenges to the sufficiency of a patented invention. See Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593, 602, 130 S. Ct. 3218, 3225 (2010). Section 101 defines patent eligible subject matter as “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.” 35 U.S.C. § 101. Courts have limited the scope of patentable material by exempting laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas. See Alice Corp. Pty. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S. Ct. 2347, 2354 (2014). These subject matter qualifications have been observed for over 150 years. Id. Despite their venerable nature, however, courts have struggled in recent years to clearly define the proper scope of § 101. In particular, it remains a vexing problem to describe exactly when an invention is entitled to patent protection, and when an invention is merely the recitation of an abstract idea. The Supreme Court has developed a two-part analytical framework to identify claims that are directed to a patent-ineligible concept. See Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66, 132 S. Ct. 1289 (2012), and Alice, 134 S. Ct. 2347. This Mayo/Alice framework has courts first examine whether the patent claims “are directed to a patent-ineligible concept.” Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2355. If so, courts must then “consider the elements of each claim both individually and ‘as an ordered combination’ to determine whether the additional elements ‘transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.” Id. (quoting Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1298, 1297). This approach seeks to limit the protection of unpatentable subject matter, despite the fact that “[a]t some level, ‘all inventions . . . embody, use, reflect, rest upon, or apply laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas.’ ” In re TLI Commc'ns LLC Patent Litig., 823 F.3d 607, 611 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (quoting Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2354). Above all, § 101 is concerned with weeding out claims that merely claim the “building blocks of human ingenuity” and thus threaten to preempt the use of those ideas for other innovations. Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2354-55 (quotations omitted).
§ 112 Should a claim satisfy the threshold test of § 101, it can properly be subjected to the requirements of other sections of the patent statute, including 35 U.S.C. § 112. Section 112 contains multiple requirements that relate to the adequacy of the inventor’s disclosure within a patent application. The first requirement, the written description, “serves a quid pro quo function in which the public is given meaningful disclosure in exchange for being excluded from practicing the invention for a limited period of time.” Carnegie Mellon Univ. v. Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., 541 F.3d 1115, 1122 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (quotation omitted). This requirement requires an applicant to “convey with reasonable clarity to those skilled in the art that [. . . ] he or she was in possession of the invention,” by including sufficient disclosures in the specification. Id. (quotation omitted).
Interestingly, the court recognized the traditional role of § 112 in policing claim scope: Patent law has evolved to place additional requirements on patentees seeking to claim a genus; however, these limits have not been in relation to the abstract idea exception to § 101. Rather they have principally been in terms of whether the patentee has satisfied the tradeoff of broad disclosure for broad claim scope implicit in 35 U.S.C. § 112. Id. at 1313-1314 (citing Carnegie Mellon, 541 F.3d at 1122). Thus, the court appears to acknowledge that, even though § 101 is increasingly used to challenge overbroad claims, it has not subsumed the role of § 112. Therefore, while § 112 limits claims to the breadth of possession held by the applicant, § 101 serves as a check against claims that are so broad as to preempt an entire field of research.
Despite what appears to be useable guidance in McRO, individual judges on the Federal Circuit have written separate concurrences outlining very different visions of § 101 in the post-Mayo/Alice landscape. For example, Judge Mayer, concurring with the court’s invalidation of a patent on § 101 grounds, describes § 101 as a “sentinel, charged with the duty of ensuring that our nation's patent laws encourage, rather than impede, scientific progress and technological innovation.” Ultramercial, Inc. v. Hulu, LLC, 772 F.3d 709, 718 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (Mayer, J., concurring) cert. denied sub nom. Ultramercial, LLC v. WildTangent, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 2907 (2015). In Judge Mayer’s view, § 101 remains a “gateway” or “threshold test” that should be satisfied before courts consider traditional validity issues such as those embodied within §§ 102, 103, or 112. Id. Judge Mayer compares § 101 to a court’s “jurisdictional inquiry,” placing the burden on courts to ensure that “claimed subject matter is even eligible for patent protection before addressing questions of invalidity or infringement.” Id. While this perspective ensures the divide between §§ 101 and 112, it is a maximalist interpretation of the role of § 101 in patent jurisprudence.
The process, machine, manufacture, or composition of Section 101 must comply with Section 112. Subject matter that complies with Section 112 averts the generality or vagueness or imprecision or over-breadth that characterize abstract ideas. These are conditions of patentability, not of eligibility. The “conditions and requirements of this title” weed out the abstract idea. Id. at 1354 (emphasis added). Judge Newman also argues that §§ 102 and 103 could be similarly pressed into service to dispatch “abstract idea” challenges associated with § 101. Id. Naturally, this approach would erode the distinction between § 101 and the requirements of patentability (i.e., §§ 102, 103, and 112). Judge Newman’s opinion on § 101 contrasts with the panel in Bascom, which stated “[t]he Supreme Court has also consistently held that § 101 provides a basis for a patentability/validity determination that is independent of—and on an equal footing with—any other statutory patentability provision.” Id. at 1347.
District courts have grappled with § 101 and § 112 analyses in different ways. Intellectual Ventures I, LLC v. Canon Inc.
One district court openly expressed frustration with the recent shifts in § 101 jurisprudence, and questioned how they could be squared with traditional patentability standards such as § 112. See Intellectual Ventures I, LLC v. Canon Inc., 143 F. Supp. 3d 143 (D. Del. 2015). In Intellectual Ventures, the court was presented with multiple motions for summary judgment, including one for patent ineligibility under § 101. The patent at issue related to an image scanning method for a scanner that resulted in an improved scanning rate. Id. at 168. Considering the § 101 challenge, the court observed that, because of the moving standards under § 101, a computer-implemented invention “would have survived such challenges if mounted at the time of issuance, [but] these claims are now in jeopardy under the heightened specificity required by the Federal Circuit post-Alice.” Id. at 172. The court continued: Moreover, it is less than clear how a § 101 inquiry that is focused through the lens of specificity can be harmonized with the roles given to other aspects of the patent law (such as enablement under § 112 and non-obviousness under § 103), especially in light of the Federal Circuit's past characterization of § 101 eligibility as a “coarse” gauge of the suitability of broad subject matter categories for patent protection.
Id. Applying this framework, the court found that the claims neither claimed an underlying mathematical formula nor the implementation of a formula and, therefore, the claims were not directed to an abstract idea. Id. at 173. The court also evaluated whether the asserted claims posed a risk of preempting the use of the claimed mathematical relationship in any scanning device, but concluded that the “claimed solution is described with enough specificity to place meaningful boundaries on the inventive concept.” Id. at 174. The district court’s focus on the specificity of the claims, necessarily requiring consideration of their scope in view of the disclosure as understood by one of ordinary skill at the time of invention, overlaps significantly with the patentability considerations of § 112. Therefore, while the court appears to describe the §§ 101 and 112 inquiries as separate and distinct analyses, the court’s § 101 analysis is in essence a § 112 determination.
Judge Newman went on to say that the public interest favors considering close questions of eligibility: [A]long with the understanding flowing from review of the patentability criteria of novelty, unobviousness, and enablement, for when these classical criteria are evaluated, the issue of subject matter eligibility is placed in the context of the patent-based incentive to technologic progress.
John Cox, Ph.D. and Michael Nullet are patent litigation attorneys in Womble Carlyle’s Atlanta and Washington, D.C. offices, respectively.