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This list contains an alphabetical listing of historically significant or leading case law in the area of patent law. For a list of patent law cases in just the United States, see United States patent law cases.
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| | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (July 2010) |
| | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (July 2010) |
| | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (July 2010) |
| | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (July 2010) |
The patentability of software, computer programs and computer-implemented inventions under the European Patent Convention (EPC) is the extent to which subject matter in these fields is patentable under the Convention on the Grant of European Patents of October 5, 1973. The subject also includes the question of whether European patents granted by the European Patent Office (EPO) in these fields (sometimes called "software patents") are regarded as valid by national courts.
State Street Bank and Trust Company v. Signature Financial Group, Inc., 149 F.3d 1368, also referred to as State Street or State Street Bank, was a 1998 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit concerning the patentability of business methods. State Street for a time established the principle that a claimed invention was eligible for protection by a patent in the United States if it involved some practical application and, in the words of the State Street opinion, "it produces a useful, concrete and tangible result."
Business method patents are a class of patents which disclose and claim new methods of doing business. This includes new types of e-commerce, insurance, banking and tax compliance etc. Business method patents are a relatively new species of patent and there have been several reviews investigating the appropriateness of patenting business methods. Nonetheless, they have become important assets for both independent inventors and major corporations.
Patentable, statutory or patent-eligible subject matter is subject matter of an invention that is considered appropriate for patent protection in a given jurisdiction. The laws and practices of many countries stipulate that certain types of inventions should be denied patent protection. Together with criteria such as novelty, inventive step or nonobviousness, utility, and industrial applicability, which differ from country to country, the question of whether a particular subject matter is patentable is one of the substantive requirements for patentability.
Ex Parte Bowman 61 U.S.P.Q.2d 1669 was a decision by the U.S. Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences which asserted that in order to be patent-eligible, a process had to involve or promote the technological arts. This decision was overruled by the Board's subsequent Ex Parte Lundgren decision, but the Board's and then the Federal Circuit's In re Bilski opinion then superseded Lundgren. In re Bilski, however, rejects use of "not in the technological arts" as a basis for a rejection, although it seems to accept the concept when differently named. Bilski was affirmed by the Supreme Court in Bilski v. Kappos.
The multinational technology corporation Apple Inc. has been a participant in various legal proceedings and claims since it began operation and, like its competitors and peers, engages in litigation in its normal course of business for a variety of reasons. In particular, Apple is known for and promotes itself as actively and aggressively enforcing its intellectual property interests. From the 1980s to the present, Apple has been plaintiff or defendant in civil actions in the United States and other countries. Some of these actions have determined significant case law for the information technology industry and many have captured the attention of the public and media. Apple's litigation generally involves intellectual property disputes, but the company has also been a party in lawsuits that include antitrust claims, consumer actions, commercial unfair trade practice suits, defamation claims, and corporate espionage, among other matters.
There are four overriding requirements for a patent to be granted under United Kingdom patent law. Firstly, there must have been an invention. That invention must be novel, inventive and susceptible of industrial application.
Aerotel v Telco and Macrossan's Application is a judgment by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. The judgment was passed down on 27 October 2006 and relates to two different appeals from decisions of the High Court. The first case involved GB 2171877 granted to Aerotel Ltd and their infringement action against Telco Holdings Ltd and others. The second case concerned GB application 2388937 filed by Neal Macrossan but refused by the UK Patent Office.
In re Bilski, 545 F.3d 943, 88 U.S.P.Q.2d 1385, was an en banc decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on the patenting of method claims, particularly business methods. The court affirmed the rejection of the patent claims involving a method of hedging risks in commodities trading, as non-patentable subject matter. Most importantly, the Court concluded, that machine-or-transformation test "was proper test to apply to determine patent-eligibility of process", and that the “useful, concrete and tangible result” of State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group and AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications, Inc. should no longer be relied upon.
In United States patent law, the machine-or-transformation test is a test of patent eligibility under which a claim to a process qualifies for consideration if (1) the process is implemented by a particular machine in a non-conventional and non-trivial manner or (2) the process transforms an article from one state to another.
Bristows is a full-service commercial, law firm, particularly known for its technology and intellectual property work.
Vringo was a technology company that became involved in the worldwide patent wars. The company won a 2012 intellectual property lawsuit against Google, in which a U.S. District Court ordered Google to pay 1.36 percent of U.S. AdWords sales. Analysts estimated Vringo's judgment against Google to be worth over $1 billion. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned the District Court's ruling on appeal in August 2014 in a split 2-1 decision, which Intellectual Asset Magazine called "the most troubling case of 2014." Vringo appealed to the United States Supreme Court. Vringo also pursued worldwide litigation against ZTE Corporation in twelve countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Malaysia, India, Spain, Netherlands, Romania, China, Malaysia, Brazil and the United States. The high profile nature of the intellectual property suits filed by the firm against large corporations known for anti-patent tendencies has led some commentators to refer to the firm as a patent vulture or patent troll.
Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. was the first of a series of ongoing lawsuits between Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics regarding the design of smartphones and tablet computers; between them, the companies made more than half of smartphones sold worldwide as of July 2012. In the spring of 2011, Apple began litigating against Samsung in patent infringement suits, while Apple and Motorola Mobility were already engaged in a patent war on several fronts. Apple's multinational litigation over technology patents became known as part of the mobile device "smartphone patent wars": extensive litigation in fierce competition in the global market for consumer mobile communications. By August 2011, Apple and Samsung were litigating 19 ongoing cases in nine countries; by October, the legal disputes expanded to ten countries. By July 2012, the two companies were still embroiled in more than 50 lawsuits around the globe, with billions of dollars in damages claimed between them. While Apple won a ruling in its favor in the U.S., Samsung won rulings in South Korea, Japan, and the UK. On June 4, 2013, Samsung won a limited ban from the U.S. International Trade Commission on sales of certain Apple products after the commission found Apple had violated a Samsung patent, but this was vetoed by U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman.
Rockstar Consortium Inc., originally named Rockstar Bidco, is a consortium formed to negotiate licensing for patents acquired from the bankrupt multinational telecommunications and data networking equipment manufacturer Nortel. Members of the consortium are Apple Inc., BlackBerry, Ericsson, Microsoft, and Sony. Rockstar is a patent holding non-practicing entity (NPE) and submitted the winning US$4.5 billion bid for the Nortel patents at a week-long auction held in New York in June 2011.
CyberSource Corp. v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, is a United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit case that disputed patent eligibility for the '154 patent, which describes a method and system for detecting fraud of credit card transactions through the internet. This court affirmed the decision of United States District Court for the Northern District of California which ruled that the patent is actually unpatentable.
Bowman v. Monsanto Co., 569 U.S. 278 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court patent decision in which the Court unanimously affirmed the decision of the Federal Circuit that the patent exhaustion doctrine does not permit a farmer to plant and grow saved, patented seeds without the patent owner's permission. The case arose after Vernon Hugh Bowman, an Indiana farmer, bought transgenic soybean crop seeds from a local grain elevator for his second crop of the season. Monsanto originally sold the seed from which these soybeans were grown to farmers under a limited use license that prohibited the farmer-buyer from using the seeds for more than a single season or from saving any seed produced from the crop for replanting. The farmers sold their soybean crops to the local grain elevator, from which Bowman then bought them. After Bowman replanted the crop seeds for his second harvest, Monsanto filed a lawsuit claiming that he infringed on their patents by replanting soybeans without a license. In response, Bowman argued that Monsanto's claims were barred under the doctrine of patent exhaustion, because all future generations of soybeans were embodied in the first generation that was originally sold.
Monsanto was involved in several high-profile lawsuits, as both plaintiff and defendant. It had been defendant in a number of lawsuits over health and environmental issues related to its products. Monsanto also made frequent use of the courts to defend its patents, particularly in the area of agricultural biotechnology. Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2016, and the company has since been involved in litigation related to ex-Monsanto products such as glyphosate, PCBs and dicamba. In 2020 it paid over $10 billion to settle lawsuits involving the glyphosate based herbicide Roundup.