{"id":9733,"date":"2018-04-21T19:43:45","date_gmt":"2018-04-22T01:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=9733"},"modified":"2018-04-21T19:43:45","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T01:43:45","slug":"federal-circuit-conflicted-over-whether-alice-changed-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=9733","title":{"rendered":"Federal Circuit Conflicted over Whether Alice Changed the Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Federal Circuit’s decision in Voter Verified, Inc. v. Election Systems Software, LLC<\/em> __ F.3d __ (Fed.Cir. 2018) seems to be in conflict with the Federal Circuit’s earlier decision in\u00a0INVENTOR HOLDINGS, LLC v. BED BATH & BEYOND, INC.<\/i>, __ F.3d __ (Fed. Cir. 2017). \u00a0In Voter Verified, Inc.<\/em>, the court proposes that Alice<\/em>\u00a0“did not alter the governing law under \u00a7101<\/em>.” \u00a0In contrast, in Inventor Holdings, LLC<\/em>, the court states that Alice<\/em> created a “significant change in the law.”<\/em> \u00a0Moreover, the Voter Verified, Inc.<\/em> decision fails to even mention the court’s earlier decision in Inventor Holdings, LLC<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Reproduced below are portions of the two opinions:<\/p>\n

Second, we find that\u00a0Alice<\/em>\u00a0was a significant change in the law as applied to the facts of this particular case. Prior to\u00a0Alice,<\/em>\u00a0the state of the law for computerimplemented business transaction inventions was less than clear, given this court’s divided en banc opinion in\u00a0CLS Bank International v. Alice Corp.,<\/em>\u00a0717 F.3d 1269, 1273 (Fed. Cir. 2013)<\/a>. As we later explained, post-Alice,<\/em>\u00a0in\u00a0Mortgage Grader, Inc. v. First Choice Loan Services Inc.,<\/em>\u00a0“a \u00a7 101 defense previously lacking in merit may be meritorious after\u00a0Alice.<\/em>\u00a0This scenario is most likely to occur with respect to patent claims that involve implementations of economic arrangements using generic computer technology, as the claims do here.” 811 F.3d 1314, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 2016). Like the claims at issue in\u00a0Mortgage Grader,<\/em>\u00a0the ‘582 patent’s claims are directed to an “economic arrangement” implemented using “generic computer technology.” These issues were significant, if not determinative, of the Court’s holding in\u00a0Alice.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

INVENTOR HOLDINGS, LLC v. BED BATH & BEYOND, INC.<\/i>, __ F.3d __ (Fed. Cir. 2017)(slip op. at page 12)(Judges Wallach, Chen (Author), Stoll).<\/p>\n

Turning to the first condition, we conclude that Alice<\/em>, which was decided after the first litigation ended, did not alter the governing law of \u00a7 101. In Alice<\/em>, the Court applied the same two-step framework it created in Mayo <\/em>in its \u00a7 101 analysis. Alice<\/em>, 134 S. Ct. at 2355 (citing Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc.<\/em>, 566 U.S. 66, 77\u201379 (2012)). The Court stated, \u201c[f]irst, we determine whether the claims at issue are directed to one of those patent-ineligible concepts.\u201d Id. <\/em>(citing Mayo<\/em>, 566 U.S. at 77\u201378). If so, it stated, one must then determine \u201cwhat else is there in the claims before us?\u201d Id. <\/em>(quoting Mayo<\/em>, 566 U.S. at 78). Just as it did in Mayo<\/em>, the Court characterized the second inquiry \u201cas a search for an inventive concept,\u201d id. <\/em>at 2355 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted), that is \u201csufficient to transform the claimed abstract idea into a patent-eligible application,\u201d id. <\/em>at 2357 (internal quotation marks and citation omit- ted). It is thus evident from the Court\u2019s reliance on Mayo <\/em>that it was merely applying the same test as it set out in Mayo<\/em>, and did not materially change it. See id. <\/em>at 2355, 2357 (citing Mayo <\/em>for the rule of law). We therefore hold that Alice <\/em>did not alter the governing law under \u00a7 101.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Voter Verified, Inc. v. Election Systems Software, LLC<\/em> __ F.3d __ (Fed.Cir. 2018)(slip op. at page 7)(Judges Newman, Lourie (Author), Reyna).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Federal Circuit’s decision in Voter Verified, Inc. v. Election Systems Software, LLC __ F.3d __ (Fed.Cir. 2018) seems to be in conflict with the Federal Circuit’s earlier decision in\u00a0INVENTOR HOLDINGS, LLC v. BED BATH & BEYOND, INC., __ F.3d __ (Fed. Cir. 2017). \u00a0In Voter Verified, Inc., the court proposes that Alice\u00a0“did not alter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9733"}],"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=9733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9734,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9733\/revisions\/9734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}