SCOTUS Catches IP Fever
The U.S. Supreme Court recently granted certiorari for two intellectual property cases—one relating to patents and another for trademarks.
Patent Case
Relevant to patent law, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide the issue of enablement for patents with so-called “genus claims.” Genus claims are directed to inventions that are functional in nature, and with
The Obviousness Monster
Obviousness – Don’t Get Tricked
Halloween candy containers have come a long way since I was a kid. Back then, we would use a plastic bag or a pillowcase to hold our trick-or-treating loot. The container market changed in 1986 when McDonald’s introduced their plastic Happy Meal containers. While these plastic containers could not hold
Ambiguity Begets Ambiguity: A Legislative Attempt to Bring Clarity to Patentable Subject Matter May Bring More Confusion
On August 2, 2022, Sen. T. Tillis introduced the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (S.4734) in an effort to clarify which inventions are actually patentable and to codify those that are not. Since the Supreme Court handed down its decisions in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 566 U.S. 66, (2012) and Alice v.
Predicting the Unpredictable – When is a Combination Obvious?
Judge Markey famously wrote “Only God works from nothing. Man must work with old elements.” Howard T. Markey, Why Not the Statute?, 65 J. PAT. OFF. SOC’Y 331, 334 (1983). His point was simple and well taken—every invention is a combination of something old. An obviousness argument must be more than the arbitrary combination of