Name the state that permits administrative law judges to conduct marriage ceremonies.
Assuming the hypothetical situation that PTAB judges are not principal officers and they are not currently being overseen by a principal officer — because Director Iancu has resigned his post — should forthcoming PTAB decisions be considered valid, until a new Director/principal officer is confirmed by the Senate? After all, some argue that PTAB judges are inferior officers because a Director purportedly supervises them and a Director is a principal officer. What about when there is no Director/principal officer to supervise the PTAB judges? You might recall that there was an extended vacancy in the USPTO Director position between the terms of David Kappos and Michele Lee.
The oral argument of the day comes from the recent appeal to the Federal Circuit in In re Sorensen. This was an appeal of a §101 rejection in ex parte prosecution.
The claim at issue is pretty long. Claim 1 recites:
1. A system for analyzing shopper behavior within a store, the system comprising:
a sensor system configured to:
for each of a plurality of a first group of shopper trips in the store,
detect a wireless signal for a shopper proxy device adjacent an entrance to the store;
detect a wireless signal for the shopper proxy device adjacent an exit of the store;
a data analyzer computing device configured to:
determine a trip length for each shopper based on a time between the detected presence of the detected wireless signal at the entrance and the detected presence of the detected wireless signal at the exit of the store;
determine a total number of shopper trips by multiplying a number of the detected wireless signals by a calibration factor, the calibration factor determined based on image data of the entrance and exit captured by one or more cameras, and the calibration factor relating a number of actual shoppers observed in the image data during a calibration period;
calculate a first relationship that is a distribution of the determined trip lengths over the number of shopper trips and trip length;
determine an average trip length based on the distribution of the first relationship;
for each of a plurality of a second group of shopper trips in the store,
receive transaction data for a plurality of purchase transactions at the store, and transaction data for a plurality of items, the transaction data for the plurality of purchase transactions including a number of items purchased for each purchase transaction;
calculate a second relationship that is a distribution of items purchased in the purchase transactions over the shopper trips;
determine an average number of items purchased based on the distribution of the second relationship;
wherein the sensor system is further configured to:
detect current wireless signals in the store; and
wherein the data analyzer computing device is further configured to:
determine a current total number of shoppers in the store by multiplying the detected current wireless signals by the calibration factor;
determine a number of items to be purchased by the current number of shoppers by multiplying the average number of items purchased by the current total number of shoppers;
wherein the system further comprises an alert device to signal for deploying an in-store service, the alert device being configured to signal that the in-store service be deployed in response to one or both of:
the data analyzer computing device determining that the total number of shoppers exceeds a first predetermined threshold, in which case the alert device is configured to signal for deploying the in-store service after a predetermined period of time following detection that the current number of shoppers exceeds the first predetermined threshold, the predetermined period of time being equal in duration to the average trip length, and
the data analyzer computing device estimating that the number of items to be purchased by the current total number of shoppers exceeds a second predetermined threshold, in which case the alert device is configured to signal for deploying the in-store service after the predetermined period of time following detection that the number of items to be purchased by the current total number of shoppers exceeds the second predetermined threshold.
The claim is also reproduced in the opinion by the PTAB here:
If you were curious how this claim compares to the claim in Electric Power Group, the claim in Electric Power Group had 395 words while the claim above has 535 words.
As you’ll see from the PTAB decision, the only issue on appeal was 35 U.S.C. §101. Apparently, a §103 rejection had been made during prosecution and was later withdrawn by the examiner.
The Federal Circuit panel was comprised of Judges Newman, O’Malley, and Taranto.
Judge O’Malley first asked if the Office’s position was that any application directed to organizing human activity would be unpatentable:
Judge Newman had a couple of interesting sound bites during the oral argument. My sense from her comments is that she would like to see the Office provide more citations of references when making §101 rejections.
You can listen to the entire oral argument here:
In today’s opinion in Mortgage Application Technologies, LLC v. MeridianLink, Inc., the Federal Circuit used the word “forwent” in the opinion.
Query: How many times has the word “forwent” been used in prior Federal Circuit or CCPA opinions? Answer below the break.
Read the rest of this entry »On Friday, the Supreme Court granted a petition for certiorari in Minerva Surgical, Inc. v. Hologic, Inc. The case concerns assignor estoppel.
You can listen to the oral argument from the Federal Circuit case here:
You can read the Federal Circuit opinion here: [Link].
You can read the briefs to the Supreme Court here: [Link].
Mark your calendars. The Supreme Court has set the oral argument in United States v. Arthrex, Inc. for March 1, 2021.
If anyone is looking for an article to write, I think a very good topic would be a survey of the psychological research (psychology research??) on hindsight bias. Moreover, a discussion of how the psychological research on hindsight has been applied in other legal settings would be useful. I suspect the bulk of the research focuses on how witnesses to accidents remember or misremember the details of an accident. But, it would still be interesting to see what that research teaches us. Hindsight is bandied about quite often when arguing about obviousness; but, isn’t it time to update our understanding of the principles of hindsight so that we can try to eliminate hindsight bias in the minds of those examining applications . . . as well as those adjudicating patents? I don’t ever remember reading a Federal Circuit or CCPA decision that cites a scientific journal on the factors that identify or suggest a hindsight bias.
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Update 1/9/21:
Many thanks to Professor Karshtedt of GW Law for pointing me in the direction of some great resources on this topic. First, in In re Cyclobenzaprine Hydrochloride, 676 F.3d 1063 (Fed. Cir. 2012), the Federal Circuit points to some journal articles on hindsight bias, including a recent law review article by Professor Gregory Mandel [Link]:
Finally, not only is Stratoflex the law, it is sound in requiring that a fact finder consider the objective evidence before reaching an obviousness determination. The objective considerations, when considered with the balance of the obviousness evidence in the record, guard as a check against hindsight bias. Graham, 383 U.S. at 36, 86 S.Ct. 684 (quoting Monroe Auto Equip. Co. v. Heckethorn Mfg. & Supply Co., 332 F.2d 406, 412 (6th Cir.1964)). In Graham, the Court recognized the danger of hindsight bias and the ameliorative effect that the objective considerations might offer. In discussing the utility of the objective considerations, the Court cited a law review note published after the nonobviousness requirement was enacted in the 1952 Patent Act. Id. at 18, 86 S.Ct. 684 (citing Richard L. Robbins, Subtests of “Nonobviousness”: A Nontechnical Approach to Patent Validity, 112 U. Pa. L.Rev. 1169 (1964) (“Robbins”)). In that note, the author argued that the instruments of decision-making applied in patent cases at the time were inadequate and allowed judges to rely on “judicial hunches,” thereby deciding cases on extralegal grounds. Robbins, 112 U. Pa. L.Rev. at 1170 & n.11 (citing Joseph C. Hutcheson, Jr., The Judgment Intuitive: The Function of the “Hunch” in Judicial Decisions, 14 Cornell L.Q. 274, 278 (1929)). Such “judicial hunches” are encouraged by hindsight bias. As one commentator recently observed, “decision-makers unconsciously let knowledge of the invention bias their conclusion concerning whether the invention was obvious in the first instance.” Gregory N. Mandel, Patently Non-Obvious: Empirical Demonstration that the Hindsight Bias Renders Patent Decisions Irrational, 67 Ohio St. L.J. 1391, 1393 (2006). In other words, knowing that the inventor succeeded in making the patented invention, a fact finder might develop a hunch that the claimed invention was obvious, and then construct a selective version of the facts that confirms that hunch. This is precisely why the Supreme Court explained that objective considerations might prevent a fact finder from falling into such a trap, observing that objective considerations might serve to “resist the temptation to read into the prior art the teachings of the invention in issue.” 383 U.S. at 36, 86 S.Ct. 684.[6] And, it is precisely why fact finders must withhold judgment on an obviousness challenge until it considers all relevant evidence, including that relating to the objective considerations.
In re Cyclobenzaprine Hydrochloride, 676 F.3d 1063, 1079 (Fed. Cir. 2012)
Second, the Fifth Circuit even more recently noted some research in regard to hindsight in the case of Lisa M. v. LEANDER INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DIST., 924 F.3d 205 (5th Cir. 2019):
While judicial review unavoidably looks backward, our task is to assess eligibility with the information available to the ARD committee at the time of its decision. An erroneous conclusion that a student is ineligible for special education does not somehow become acceptable because a student subsequently succeeds. Nor does a proper finding that a student is ineligible become erroneous because the student later struggles. Subsequent events do not determine ex ante reasonableness in the eligibility context.
We are not alone in this approach. The Ninth Circuit has held that review of a school district’s eligibility determination should be assessed “at the time of the child’s evaluation and not from the perspective of a later time with the benefit of hindsight.” L.J. by & through Hudson v. Pittsburg Unified Sch. Dist., 850 F.3d 996, 1004 (9th Cir. 2017). As L.J. put it, “We judge the eligibility decision on the basis of whether it took the relevant information into account, not on whether or not it worked.” Id.
Our sister circuits are split on whether courts can consider hindsight evidence in a different context—when assessing the appropriateness of an IEP. Compare R.E. v. New York City Dep’t of Educ., 694 F.3d 167, 187 (2d Cir. 2012) (disallowing use of “evidence that [a] child did not make progress under the IEP in order to show that [the IEP] was deficient from the outset”); with M.S. ex rel. Simchick v. Fairfax County Sch. Board, 553 F.3d 315, 327 (4th Cir. 2009) (“[W]e have concluded that, in some situations, evidence of actual progress may be relevant to a determination of whether a challenged IEP was reasonably calculated to confer some educational benefit.”); see also Dennis Fan, No IDEA What the Future Holds: The Retrospective Evidence Dilemma, 114 Colum. L. Rev. 1503 (2014) (describing various circuit positions); Maggie Wittlin, Hindsight Evidence, 116 Colum. L. Rev. 1323, 1386-88 (2016) (same).
Lisa M. v. LEANDER INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DIST., 924 F.3d 205, 214 (5th Cir. 2019).
The link to the article by Professor Maggie Wittlin, including a discussion of debiasing, is available [here].
The amicus briefs in support of Arthrex were filed recently. You can review them here:
I thought these statistics from TiVo’s brief were interesting:
1. TiVo’s experience presents a particularly striking example of the abusive purposes for which the inter partes review regime can be employed. TiVo’s (and its subsidiaries’) patents have been the subject of well over one hundred inter partes review petitions since November 2016. Thirty-seven patents have been challenged—an average of 3.35 petitions per patent. In total, only about 5% of the challenged claims have survived. Many of these claims had been previously upheld against validity challenges by the International Trade Commission—a body made up of properly appointed principal officers.
In effect, inter partes reviews have allowed TiVo’s competitors to violate its patent rights and then, after having been adjudged guilty of that conduct in one adjudicatory forum (for example, the ITC), obtain a second bite at the apple via one or more inter partes review petitions. Even worse, after the first proceeding has exposed flaws in the infringer’s invalidity arguments, the infringer can use those proceedings as a roadmap to attempt to fix those flaws in the subsequent inter partes review. In effect, the first proceeding functions as a practice run for the infringer to test out its invalidity case and assess the weaknesses in it so it may avoid those weaknesses when it challenges the patent before the Board.
To take one illustrative example, Rovi, a TiVo subsidiary, asserted U.S. Patent Nos. 9,369,741 and 7,779,011 (among other patents) against Comcast Cable Communications in Certain Digital Video Receivers and Related Hardware and Software Components, Inv. No. 337-TA-1103 (U.S.I.T.C.). In the course of that proceeding, Comcast tried and failed to show that the claims of the ’741 patent were invalid in light of a prior-art reference called Sie. See Initial Determination on Violation of Section 337 and Recommended Determination on Remedy and Bond (Public) at 257–60 (June 27, 2019). Comcast also tried and failed to show that the claims of the ’011 patent were invalid as obvious over two prior-art references called Gross and Smith. See id. at 101–13. While the ITC investigation was ongoing, Comcast filed multiple inter partes reviews against the ’741 and ’011 patents. Using the Commission proceedings as a roadmap, Comcast ultimately succeeded in convincing the Board to invalidate those two patents based on the very same prior art that the ITC had already considered. Specifically, the PTAB concluded that the ’741 patent was obvious over Sie, see Comcast Cable Commc’ns, LLC v. Rovi Guides, Inc., No. IPR2019-00231, Paper 44 (P.T.A.B. May 8, 2020), and that the ’011 patent was obvious over Gross and Smith, see Comcast Cable Commc’ns, LLC v. Rovi Guides, Inc., No. IPR2019-00239, Paper 50 (P.T.A.B. June 30, 2020).3
This is not how the system is supposed to work. Patent owners should be entitled to some measure of repose. They should not be subjected to repeated attacks on the validity of their patents throughout their twenty-year term. The perpetual cloud of uncertainty that results from this system undermines the presumption of validity and harms incentives to innovate. It also flatly contradicts the original intent of the drafters of the AIA, who made clear that the new post-grant proceedings established by that statute were “not to be used as tools for harassment or a means to prevent market entry through repeated litigation and administrative attacks on the validity of a patent.” H.R. Rep. No. 112-98, pt. 1, at 48 (2011).
2. TiVo, unfortunately, is not an outlier with regard to its experience with the inter partes review system. According to TiVo’s research, for patents that have survived a validity challenge in district court or the ITC and are also challenged before the Board, the Board institutes inter partes review at a rate of 58% and cancels claims upon which review was instituted at a rate of 63%. These numbers are only marginally lower than the corresponding rates for all challenged patents, which are 66% and 75%, respectively. In other words, patents that have survived an expensive validity challenge in district court or the ITC are almost as likely to be reviewed—and ultimately invalidated—by the Board as a patent that was never the subject of litigation. It is little wonder that accused infringers use inter partes reviews to gain a second bite at the invalidity apple.
Amicus brief of TiVo Corporation at pages 6-9, footnotes omitted.
If anyone is looking for a short article topic, they might want to look at Judge Taranto’s recent opinion for the Federal Circuit in ADAPTIVE STREAMING INC. v. NETFLIX, INC., No. 2020-1310 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 14, 2020) and compare it to Judge Lourie’s opinion for the Federal Circuit in Atmel Corp. v. Information Storage Devices, Inc., 198 F.3d 1374 (Fed. Cir. 1999).
In Adaptive Streaming, the Federal Circuit takes into account material incorporated by reference in a patent specification to assess patent eligibility:
The written description, through material incorporated by reference, itself explains the familiarity of translation of content—from a format (including a language) of a sender to one suited to a recipient—as a fundamental communication practice in both the electronic and pre-electronic worlds. J.A. 337-38. We have held that the ideas of encoding and decoding image data and of converting formats, including when data is received from one medium and sent along through another, are by themselves abstract ideas, and accordingly concluded that claims focused on those general ideas governing basic communication practices, not on any more specific purported advance in implementation, were directed to abstract ideas.
ADAPTIVE STREAMING INC. v. NETFLIX, INC., No. 2020-1310 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 14, 2020)(slip. opinion at page 6).
In Atmel, however, the Federal Circuit noted that material incorporated by reference (from a non-patent document), could not be relied upon for §112,¶6 purposes:
Section 112, ¶ 6, however, does not have the expansive purpose of ¶ 1. It sets forth a simple requirement, a quid pro quo, in order to utilize a generic means expression. All one needs to do in order to obtain the benefit of that claiming device is to recite some structure corresponding to the means in the specification, as the statute states, so that one can readily ascertain what the claim means and comply with the particularity requirement of ¶ 2. The requirement of specific structure in § 112, ¶ 6 thus does not raise the specter of an unending disclosure of what everyone in the field knows that such a requirement in § 112, ¶ 1 would entail. If our interpretation of the statute results in a slight amount of additional written description appearing in patent specifications compared with total omission of structure, that is the trade-off necessitated by an applicant’s use of the statute’s permissive generic means term.
Atmel argues that even though the text of the Dickson article is not in the specification, sufficient structure is nevertheless disclosed in the specification, and that the district court erred in limiting possible structures corresponding to the high-voltage generating means to those structures included in the Dickson article. While we do agree with ISD that the district court properly held that the Dickson article may not take the place of structure that does not appear in the specification, the specification plainly states that “[k]nown Circuit techniques are used to implement high-voltage circuit 34. See On-Chip High Voltage Generation in NMOS Integrated Circuits Using an Improved Voltage Multiplier Technique, IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits . . . .” ‘811 patent, col. 4, ll. 58-62. Atmel’s expert, Callahan, testified that this title alone was sufficient to indicate to one skilled in the art the precise structure of the means recited in the specification. The record indicates that that testimony was essentially unrebutted. That being the case, we conclude that summary judgment was improperly granted invalidating the ‘811 patent for indefiniteness under § 112, ¶ 2. We therefore reverse the grant of summary judgment of invalidity and remand for further consideration of other issues consistent with this opinion.
Atmel Corp. v. Information Storage Devices, Inc., 198 F.3d 1374, 1382 (Fed. Cir. 1999)
Query: In what other cases has the Federal Circuit looked to material incorporated by reference when making §101 determinations?
I thought this was kind of cool: Excerpt from Masur & Ouellette’s Free Patent Law Casebook (Forthcoming Summer 2021) .
Update 12/28/2020:
Here is yet another free patent law casebook — note that the authors of each casebook welcome feedback on their texts: [‘The Invention, The Patent, and The Claim’ in Patent Law: An Open-Access Casebook].
Arthrex has filed its brief with the Supreme Court in United States of America v. Arthrex, Inc. et al. You can read the brief [here].
I thought it was interesting that the COVID relief/government funding bill has a special carve out for the Federal Circuit. Other courts of appeal and district courts are allocated money in one big bolus of $5.3B. But, the Federal Circuit is called out separately and given $33.5M. That’s a lot of money — I wonder what that comes out to for every Rule 36 opinion that the court issues.
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT
SALARIES AND EXPENSESFor salaries of officers and employees, and for nec- essary expenses of the court, as authorized by law, $33,500,000. In addition, there are appropriated such sums as may be necessary under current law for the salaries of the chief judge and judges of the court.
You can read the text of the legislation starting at page 529 here: [Link].
I saw a sketch today of two oral advocates making their presentations to the Supreme Court during Covid. Because they were making their presentations from remote locations, the sketches showed them seated at their desks. That raises an interesting question — what is the best position for an advocate to use when making a remote presentation, sitting or standing?
As a fan of stand-up desks, I have been attuned to several articles over the years that suggest we think better when in a standing position. Here is one such article that suggests tested individuals responded better to the Stroop test when in a standing position. [Link]. The Stroop test is a psychological test indicative of an individual’s processing ability.
I suppose at the end of the day the answer is particular to the individual. One might feel more relaxed seated at his/her desk and perform better for that reason; while, another might feel more alert when standing and perform better for that reason. But, it is worth considering the standing option.
I did a post about a year and a half ago about a local student inventor [Link]. It was nice to see that she was recently named Time magazine’s “Kid of the Year.”
She is quite the Renaissance woman with interests ranging from detecting lead in drinking water, helping physicians identify opioid addiction in their patients, and using artificial intelligence to identify early cases of cyberbullying of teenagers.
So, what were you doing when you were 15?