What types of inventions are eligible for patent protection?
There are four general categories of inventions that are eligible for patent protection. Specifically, they are processes, machines, manufactures and compositions of matter or their improvements. The following case, In re Ferguson, 2007-1232 (Fed. Cir. 2009) involves the issue of whether an invention to a new process is eligible for patent protection. The case makes [...]
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No Patent Protection For Programmed Computer Method
In Ex Parte Halligan, the BPAI held that a method using a programmed computer does not transform a method that is ineligible for patent protection patent eligible. The computer limitation is a field of use limitation and does not add any meaningful limitation to the claims.
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What types of process inventions are eligible for patent protection?
The Patent Statute defines patent eligible subject matter as any new and useful process, machine, manufacture and composition or improvement thereof. 35 U.S.C. § 101. Recently, the Federal Circuit (i.e., the appeals court for all patent matters) decided the case of In Re Bilski which clarifies the types of useful processes that are eligible for [...]
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Patentable Subject Matter
§ 101 of the patent act limits the grant of a patent to patentable subject matter. In the broadest sense of patentable subject matter, anything under the sun made by man is patentable subject matter. However, § 101 excludes from patentable subject matter abstract ideas such as mathematical algorithms unless the claim is presented in [...]
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Process Claims Directed To New Purpose
In Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Ben Venue Labs., Inc., 246 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 2001), Bristol-Myers patented a method of administering the drug Paclitaxel for antitumor purposes. A competing drug manufacturer (i.e., Ben Venue Labs, Inc.) challenged the validity of the patent based on a prior art reference by Kris which disclosed the method of [...]
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