Federal Circuit Acknowledges That, Yes, Alice Did Change The Game

The yo–yo of Ultramercial v. Hulu has come to rest at last, and should prove to any doubters that the Supreme Court’s Alice v. CLS Bank opinion has changed the patent litigation game. The Ultramercial case has been adrift in cross–currents between the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court for years now. In 2010, the...

Go Ask Alice, When She’s Ten Feet Tall

With apologies to Jefferson Airplane, the Supreme Court’s Alice v. CLS Bank opinion has grown dramatically in size and strength since it issued in June. In that time, the Federal Circuit and federal district courts from New York to California have decided twenty–two cases of which we are aware. Of those, eighteen have found the...

Alice Strikes Again; Unified Patents Strikes Back

Two newsworthy items hit our radar this week: Judge George H. Wu of the Central District of California has issued another ruling under Alice v. CLS Bank, this time concluding that patent claims to a method for automatically animating lip synchronization and facial expression for animated characters were patent–ineligible. Once again, he made that ruling...

Total Eclipse of the Claims

Alice was a busy girl Labor Day week. In the space of two days, the two month–old Supreme Court opinion was applied by district courts in California, Delaware, and Texas to grant dispositive motions finding patent claims patent–ineligible for claiming computer–implemented abstract ideas. Loyalty Conversion: Sitting by designation in the Eastern District of Texas, Judge...