Case law in the USA
- Some recent case law is documented in Patentability in the USA after Alice
Case law in the USA is the collection of rulings handed down by the courts that deal with patents in the USA. Case law provides the official interpretations of the legislation.
The highest court, the US Supreme Court, has only ruled on certain aspects of the software and patentable subject matter. From the 70s and early 80s, there's Benson, Flook, and Diehr. More recently there's Bilski (2010) and Alice v. CLS (2014) and one important non-software case, Mayo (2012).
A lower court, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has upheld many software patents but the Bilski and Alice rulings by the Supreme Court should reduce the CAFC's ability to continue doing so.
Contents
Chronological list of articles
List of articles on ESP Wiki analysing US court rulings. Newest first:
- Alice v. CLS Bank ruling by US Supreme Court on 19 June 2014
- CLS Bank v. Alice ruling by US CAFC on 8 May 2013
- In re Spansion by US Third Circuit on 21 December 2012
- Mayo ruling by US Supreme Court on 20 March 2012
- Cybersource v. Retail ruling by US CAFC on 16 Aug 2011
- Bilski ruling by US Supreme Court on 9 November 2009
- In re Bilski ruling by US CAFC on 30 October 2008
- Quanta v. LGE ruling by US Supreme Court on 9 June 2008
- KSR v. Teleflex ruling by US Supreme Court on 30 April 2007
- Microsoft v. ATT ruling by US Supreme Court on 30 April 2007
- EBay v. MercExchange ruling by US Supreme Court on 15 May 2006
- ATT v. Excel ruling by US CAFC on 14 April 1999
- State Street ruling by US CAFC on 23 July 1998
- In re Lowry ruling by US CAFC on 26 August 1994
- In re Alappat ruling by US Supreme Court on 29 July 1994
- Diamond v. Diehr ruling by US Supreme Court on 3 March 1981
- Parker v. Flook ruling by US Supreme Court on 22 June 1978
- Gottschalk v. Benson ruling by US Supreme Court on 20 November 1972
Possibly interesting
- O'Reilly v. Morse, (1853) (Wikipedia page)
- Graham v. John Deere, (1966) 383 U.S. 1, 6 (1966) (Wikipedia page)
- Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings v. Metabolite Laboratories, Inc., 548 U.S. 124 (2007)
- NTP v. Research in Motion, Ltd., 397 F. Supp. 2d 785 (E.D. Va. 2005) - nope, isn't case law. Just an example of a troll
- Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 1980
- In re Iwahashi, 1990
- Ex parte Yang-Huffman, Appeal 20072130, slip op. at 3 (Bd. Pat. App. & Interf. Oct. 4, 2007)
- Northern Telecom v. Datapoint, 908 F.2d 931, 940-941 (1990)
- Prater & Wei[1]
- "Johnson"[2]
Finding USA court documents
- Example, for i4i v. Microsoft: http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-txedce/case_no-6:2007cv00113/case_id-101834/ - not very useful, but it's a start
Related pages on ESP Wiki
External links
- Patent rulings by the Supreme Court
- LPF's page contains links to various Amicus briefs, among other things
- Bitlaw.com's History of software patents in the USA
- Congress weighs patent specialization for federal judges, by Timothy B. Lee, 2009 - discusses a possible change in Judge selection
- http://patentsusa.blogspot.com/ - will have to read it to see if it's interesting
- Dr. David Garrod's Glossaries of Judicial Claim Constructions Available Free of Charge
- Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way, Stephan Kinsella - looks at cases, mostly which touched the obviousness criterion
- Patent Rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, neuro.law.cornell.edu search engine
- The Rise Of The Information Processing Patent, by Ben Klemens
- A few recent Section 101 cases at the PTAB, 8 July 2013, Patently-O
- Wikipedia: Software patents under United States patent law
- Wikipedia: List of United States patent law cases
