Mark Kay is very very quiet...hmmm!!! Will Rop
Post# of 82672
Will Ropes & Gray claim that SFOR is in dire need of an instant ruling due to significant hardship since these infringers have caused SFOR to make less than 100K in the Q4 2017 and less than 70K in Q1 2018?
Will Ropes & Gray say that since Alice 35/101 must now have 'factual discovery' instead of early dismissal (note the below article) as happened in the SFOR case that the Appeal Judges must rule on this case themselves?
Will Ropes & Gray say that since the recent Supreme Court ruling gives ultimate patent authority to the US Patent Office and Patent Trial and Review Board (PTAB) that there is virtually no likely hood of victory due to SFOR's complete PTAB victory in October 2017?
With recent Alice 35/101 Judicial developments, the rare and complete SFOR PTAB victory (7 additional claims were even added to the patents) and the ongoing SFOR hardship concerns will Ropes & Gray slam dunk this for the 3 Appeal Judges???
What a victory for SFOR when the Supreme Court in April 2018 ruled in favor of PTAB patent reviews stating that the Patent Review Board has the Constitutional authority to rule on patent eligibility!!!!
Now, in addition to the PTAB victory, Federal Circuit courts (often used for Appeals) have made considering a patent invalid under Alice 35/101 much more difficult.
I believe they will find out how badly they lost in the next couple of weeks when the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals slam dunks this case by ruling in SFOR's favor. They will simply be ruling in line with the Supreme Court, The Patent Trial & Appeal Board (TWICE) and Microsoft's legal teams who settled with SFOR back in 2016 because they saw no other way to end the dispute.
United States: Federal Circuit Makes It More Difficult To Invalidate Patents Under Alice
Last Updated: May 1 2018
The recent Federal Circuit ruling determining that Section 101 challenges may involve issues of fact and may not be suitable for dispositive motions complicates the way we look at these issues.
As many patent attorneys and agents know, the landscape of business methods and software patent eligibility has changed since the 2014 ruling of Alice v. CLS Bank. Alice has made it significantly more difficult to patent software and business methods, but now the Federal Circuit made a ruling that will slow down the process of invalidating patents under Section 101.
The Federal Circuit found that a finding of patent eligibility under Section 101 and the Alice ruling involve "factual issues." This means that lower district courts will have a more difficult time resolving Section 101 cases at the summary judgment stage because these factual issues are something that require a jury to decide.
This ruling may drastically change how we look at Section 101 challenges because we have yet to see how a jury will decide such an issue. Over the past four years since the Alice ruling, judges, attorneys, and clients have all been trying to figure out the bounds of Section 101 for business methods and software inventions. With this ruling, it is as if the slate has been wiped clean and we will have to analyze the issues in a different light because the decision may come down to the jury to decide as opposed to the judge.