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Regardless of whether a patent practitioner’s clients favor a stricter or more lenient eligibility regime, patent eligibility decisions continue to evolve. Patent practitioners have been seeking updated guidance since 2014’s Alice Corp. Pty. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573, U.S. 208 (2014) decision, and we may see some from American Axle & Mfg. v. Neapco Holdings, LLC, 967 F.3d 1285 (Fed. Cir. 2020). We are still waiting for a response to last year’s invitation from the Supreme Court to the Solicitor General seeking guidance on granting certiorari in American Axle. Some practitioners have wondered why American Axle should be the subject of such long-awaited guidance. Indeed, practitioners filing an amicus brief in Interactive Wearables, LLC v. Polar Electro Oy, stated their preference for an application surrounding an “intuitive technology” over American Axle’s “highly technical subject matter.” Interactive Wearables, LLC v. Polar Electro Oy, et al., No. 21-1281, Brief of the Chicago Patent Attorneys as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioner at 4 (U.S. April 21, 2022). However, it can be argued that the level of technicality is indeed what makes it the right case: We need a line drawn for what practitioners expect to be clearer. Hardware inventions are facing patent eligibility challenges that would have seemed more likely in software inventions. Recent court decisions have shown that what once made a hardware invention eligible may no longer fly.
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By Reid Knabe and Bita Rahebi
This article describes certain key developments in the period from passage of the CHIPS Act through the present day, and provides a brief survey of key grantmaking and investment activity by U.S. government agencies since passage of the Act.
Emerging Legal Terrain: IP Risks from AI’s Role In Drug Discovery
By Fredrick Tsang, Antonia Sequeira and Carl Morales
This article explores the benefits and risks of AI-driven drug discovery from the legal perspective. Since the law governing IP rights in AI-driven drug discovery is still in its infant state, any future legal development is likely to have significant implications in many areas.
LLM Customization With A Path to Human Inventorship and Patent Rights
By Jim Soong
A statutory predicate to the contractual outcome regarding ownership of patent rights is the requirement of a sufficient contribution by a natural person in the effort that yielded the output. The issues implicated by this requirement are one development among more to come as patent law and policy try to catch up to proliferating AI technology.
Adidas Stripe Design Battle Reveals Intricacies of Trademarks In the Fashion World
By Nicole D. Galli, Laura Talley Geyer and Alexa Elder
Although the bitter legal battle between Adidas and Thom Browne is far from over on either side of the pond, the case illustrates the challenges of ensuring trademark protection for simple and widely employed design elements.