The Federal Circuit has recently been issuing Rule 36 opinions with prodigious fecundity.\u00b9\u00a0 However, there is still plenty of intriguing commentary in the oral arguments underlying these terse judgments.<\/p>\n
One interesting exchange occurred recently between Judge Moore and the associate solicitor for the PTO\u00a0in the In re Rackman<\/span> appeal.\u00a0 Judge Moore was exploring when it is acceptable for the PTO\u00a0to assert that it is obvious to\u00a0modify a device in a\u00a0prior art reference by adding software to it\u00a0if the rationale that the PTO gives\u00a0is simply to increase the functionality of the device.\u00a0 [Listen<\/a>]\u00a0 Judge Moore seemed concerned about the effect that this could have on the patentability of future software inventions.<\/p>\n You can listen to the entire oral argument here:\u00a0[Listen<\/a>].<\/p>\n You can read the court’s opinion, such as it is, here: [Read<\/a>].<\/p>\n \u00b9 I’m not really well-read\u00a0enough to use phrases like “prodigious fecundity;” but, I read\u00a0the following\u00a0Learned Hand quote today and couldn’t resist:\u00a0 “[A]s the law stands, the inventor must accept the position of a mythically omniscient worker in his chosen field. As the arts proliferate with prodigious fecundity, his lot is an increasingly hard one.” Merit Mfg. Co. v. Hero Mfg. Co.<\/span>, 185 F.2d 350<\/a>, 352 (2d Cir. 1950).\u00a0 Which begs the question, “How would Learned Hand have decided Bilski v. Kappos<\/span>?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Federal Circuit has recently been issuing Rule 36 opinions with prodigious fecundity.\u00b9\u00a0 However, there is still plenty of intriguing commentary in the oral arguments underlying these terse judgments. One interesting exchange occurred recently between Judge Moore and the associate solicitor for the PTO\u00a0in the In re Rackman appeal.\u00a0 Judge Moore was exploring when it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1120"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1141,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions\/1141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}