scholarly journals It’s Not So Obvious

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 729-750
Author(s):  
Samuel Reger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Patent Claim ◽  
Specific Approach ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
Federal Circuit

Currently, the United States Supreme Court requires a fact-specific approach to determine whether a patent claim is eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101, even though, traditionally, this has been considered a question of law. However, recently, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit introduced the “manifestly evident” standard. The court held that when it is not manifestly evident that a claim is directed to a patent-ineligible abstract idea, then that claim must be deemed patent-eligible subject matter. This Comment suggests that the manifestly evident standard, or one similar to it, will reduce litigation costs. This is because, under the current fact-specific requirements, it may become commonplace for courts to engage in formal claim construction, a costly pre-trial process, to decide whether these requirements are met. But under the manifestly evident standard, courts and litigants will be able to quickly move past the often confusing section 101 to the later sections of the Patent Act, which courts are better prepared to confront.

scholarly journals Dolly and Alice

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Burk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Somatic Cells ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Patentable Subject Matter ◽  
Federal Circuit

The opinion of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, In re Roslin Institute, rejecting patent claims to mammals cloned from somatic cells, was rendered about a month before the United States Supreme Court's decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International. The Alice opinion explicitly sets out the standard for determining whether an invention falls within statutory patentable subject matter. Thus one is thus left to wonder what the Roslin opinion might have looked like had it been decided only a few weeks later, after the Alice decision was published, with the benefit of the Supreme Court's further direction on patentable subject matter. In this essay I explore whether in hindsight the Alice standard might have dictated a different outcome in Roslin, suggesting how the two-part test articulated by the Supreme Court in Alice might apply to a "products of nature" analysis for cloned mammals. Drawing on that analysis, I then use the Roslin case as a vehicle to highlight certain issues with the Supreme Court's current subject matter jurisprudence as applied to biotechnology. By juxtaposing Dolly with Alice, it becomes clear that the Supreme Court has revivified a number of dormant biotechnology patent problems in the guise of subject matter analysis.

The Doctrine of Res Judicata in Naturalization Cases in the United States

1929 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry B. Hazard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Circuit Court ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
Res Judicata ◽  
The Subject

With nationality problems continuing to occupy a prominent place in both international and municipal practice, expressions of opinion of our highest tribunal upon the subject are received with peculiar interest. This is particularly true where the rule announced is one which governs the validity of naturalization judgments. In a recent sweeping naturalization decision which upholds the government’s views at every point, the United States Supreme Court has again stressed the rule that when doubt exists concerning a grant of citizenship, the statutes must be strictly construed in favor of the United States and against the alien. On October 22, 1928, the court handed down its opinion in the case of Anna Marie Maney, Petitioner, v. The United States of America, in which it affirmed, on writ of certiorari, the judgment of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The latter court had directed the cancellation of the applicant’s certificate of naturalization as having been “illegally procured” because of her failure to file, at the prescribed time and in the required manner, the certificate of her arrival in the United States.

scholarly journals The Inventive Concept in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Burk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Patent ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
European Patent Convention ◽  
Patentable Subject Matter ◽  
Short Essay

In its recent patentable subject matter opinion in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l, the United States Supreme Court articulated a two-step patent eligibility test that hinges on the presence of an "inventive concept" in the patent claims. This short essay considers the connection between the "inventive concept" requirement in the Alice Corp. test and the requirement of an "inventive step" or non-obviousness requirement for patentability, by relating the Supreme Court's holding to similar decisions considering patentable subject matter under the European Patent Convention.

Supreme Court Behavior in Racial Exclusion Cases: 1935–1960

1962 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-330
Author(s):  
S. Sidney Ulmer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Simple Procedure ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Racial Exclusion

The United States Supreme Court is often guided by rules of law which make the disposition of cases depend upon singular combinations of circumstances. It is a relatively simple procedure to go through the cases in a subject matter area and compile a list of the facts the justices seem to have considered material to their solution of the issue at hand. But the identification of the peculiar combinations of events which push the decisions in one direction or the other is more difficult. The number of possible combinations is almost endless: with as few as twenty specified circumstances there are more than one million possible combinations. And the weight of a particular circumstance may depend on the combination of factors in which it appears.Fred Kort has pointed to the “concrete differentiation of factual elements” which seem decisive in cases involving such procedural civil rights as protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, coerced confessions, and unfair trial procedures.

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