Is There Room for Improvement?

work in progress sign

“Given the overwhelming public interest” the patent office is seeking feedback on its existing subject matter eligibility guidance, which feedback may be submitted through October 15 via the Federal eRulemaking Portal. I think there is significant dissatisfaction with the state of section 101 jurisprudence, and it would seem that this request for feedback would be an excellent opportunity to provide suggestions to help move in a better direction. However, after considering the current guidance in context, I think there is a good case that the best that can happen is for the guidance to stay in its current form, and that any improvements should come from the courts, not the patent office.

Initially, it is important to recognize that, if the goal is to improve the clarity and certainty of the patent office’s treatment of section 101, is it very clear how to do this. In a report issued in April of 2020, the patent office noted that the uncertainty about determinations of subject matter eligibility decreased 44% with the introduction of the 2019 subject matter eligibility guidance. Comparing that guidance with interim eligibility guidance (and updates thereto) which preceded it, it appears that this uncertainty decrease flowed directly from the introduction of further structure and delineation between the different steps of the Alice/Mayo framework. For example, prior to the 2019 guidance, abstract ideas were to be identified based on comparing the claims of a subject application with the subject matter which had been determined to be ineligible by courts. By contrast, under the 2019 guidance, abstract ideas were identified by determining if they fell within the bounds of one of three enumerated groupings. Similarly, the 2019 guidance explicitly set forth a procedure for determining whether a claim which included an abstract idea was “directed to” that abstract idea, rather than treating identification of an abstract idea and determination of if a claim was directed to an abstract idea as being a single step. There is certainly opportunity for more changes in this direction. For example, the patent office could provide groupings for “practical application” and/or “inventive concept” the same way it did for “abstract idea” in the 2019 guidance. Similarly, it could split the analysis of step 2 of the Alice/Mayo framework into two prongs, the same way as the 2019 guidance did for step 1. Thus, if you want to improve clarity and certainty of patent prosecution, there is a clear approach that has proven successful in providing those results in the past.

The problem with trying to improve the current guidance by making changes similar to those made when the current guidance was adopted in 2019 is that the Federal Circuit is *not* on board with improving the clarity and certainty of section 101. To illustrate, compare the current guidance used by the patent office with the approach taken by the Federal Circuit in the recent case of CareDx, Inc. v. Natera, Inc., 40 F.4th 1371 (Fed. Cir. 2022). Under the current guidance, “[step 1 of the Alice/Mayo analysis] specifically excludes consideration of whether the additional elements represent well-understood, routine, conventional activity. Instead, analysis of well-understood, routine, conventional activity is done [at step 2].” However, when CareDx’s attorney asserted that conventionality should only be considered at step 2, the Federal Circuit explicitly rejected that proposition: “CareDx also incorrectly characterizes our precedent as limiting the conventionality inquiry to step two. On the contrary, and as the district court recognized, we have repeatedly analyzed conventionality at step one as well.” CareDx, 40 F.4th at 1379. Accordingly, any changes the patent office makes to improve the clarity and certainty of section 101 are likely to widen an already troubling rift between the patent office and the courts.

While there are some areas where it can make sense for the patent office and the courts to apply different standards, determining eligibility under section 101 isn’t one of them. For example, while the patent office interprets more broadly than the courts, patent applicants can always foreclose overbroad interpretations using amendments. As a result, broad PTO interpretations shouldn’t deprive patentable inventions of protection, and the resulting patents are likely to be stronger and more precise than they would be otherwise. By contrast, if the patent office uses an approach to section 101 which is clearer and more certain than that used by the courts, the result would be weaker patents that are more likely to be invalidated by the courts. Indeed, we already have a concrete example of this in the case of  Cleveland Clinic v. True Health, 760 Fed.Appx. 1013 (Fed. Cir. 2019), where the Federal Circuit overruled the Examiner’s conclusion on section 101, even though it meant explicitly disapproving the relevant portion of the patent office’s then current guidance. Accordingly, while increased clarity and certainty would certainly be a welcome change for patent prosecution, if implemented by the patent office without court buy-in it would likely be detrimental to the patent system as a whole.

The bottom line is that, while the current request for comments may seem like a great opportunity to move subject matter eligibility in a positive direction, since the request wasn’t made by the courts, this is probably an opportunity it is better to let slip.

 

Disclaimer – “The statements and views expressed in this posting are my own and do not reflect those of my law firm, are intended for general informational purposes only, and do not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion.”

Measuring Uncertainty

measuring tape
measuring tape

               Current subject matter eligibility jurisprudence is often criticized for increasing uncertainty. However, this raises the question: how can we measure uncertainty to know that it has increased? Until very recently, I thought that the uncertainty criticisms were based on conflating uncertainty with incomprehensibility. I always thought this was wrong, since the two are different concepts. That is, I felt it was relatively easy to predict whether an invention would or would not be treated as ineligible, but that the justifications given for the eligibility/ineligibility determinations were basically gibberish. Recently though, I learned that the patent office purported to have a quantitative measurement of uncertainty for subject matter eligibility, and so I decided to take a look.

In an article published in April of 2020, the patent office quantified uncertainty as a measurement which would be made on the level of individual U.S. patent classes, and defined the uncertainty for any particular class as that class’s inter-examiner variance in proportion of first office actions which included subject matter eligibility rejections. While I applaud this effort to make some kind of objective evaluation of uncertainty, I think an inter-examiner variance-based approach is fundamentally flawed, because it ignores the fact that any rejection based on subject matter eligibility is a sign of underlying uncertainty. To illustrate, consider an example of a subject matter eligibility question where there really is no uncertainty: whether you can patent a literary work. In this case, the answer is clearly no, and the result is that authors protect their literary works with copyrights, not patents. This is only to be expected. Preparing, filing, and prosecuting a patent application is an expensive and time-consuming proposition, and so, if something clearly can’t be patented, people (assuming they are constrained by time and/or money) won’t try to patent it. Thus, even if the proportion of applications treated as ineligible is consistent across examiners, every application treated as ineligible represents a case where two people (i.e., the examiner and the applicant) operating in good faith came to different conclusions when applying the same rules, and therefore where those rules produced uncertainty.

 

               A more accurate measure of uncertainty would consider the behavior of both applicants and examiners, and would account for all circumstances in which their actions reflected uncertainty, not just first office actions.  In this approach, each initial filing of an application, as well as every response which addressed rejections under section 101 should be treated as reflecting the applicant’s conclusion that the claims complied with the relevant rules as of the time of filing, including those of subject matter eligibility. Similarly, because the patent office follows the policy of compact prosecution, but can adopt a new ground of rejection any time before patent issuance, each substantive communication from the patent office would be treated as communicating a conclusion that the claims either do (if there were no rejections under section 101) or do not (if there were rejections under section 101) comply with the then current rules of subject matter eligibility. The level of uncertainty could then be calculated as the number of times the patent office and a patent applicant, looking at the same application and applying the same rules of subject matter eligibility, reached a different conclusion, divided by the total number of times patent applicants and the patent office, looking at the same application and applying the same rules, expressed (either implicitly or explicitly) any conclusion regarding eligibility at all.

 

               Ultimately, I don’t think there is a perfect measurement of the uncertainty in subject matter eligibility law. For example, while the approach I propose here improves on the patent office’s approach by considering the actions of both applicants and the patent office, it misses entirely the uncertainty determinations made by people who decided that subject matter eligibility is too unpredictable, and so decide not to file at all. Similarly, any approach will necessarily omit the uncertainty in whether a claim issued by the patent office will be upheld by the courts, since only a tiny fraction of patents are litigated, and courts use different rules for evaluating eligibility. However, regardless of the limitations, the level of uncertainty in subject matter eligibility determinations is an important topic, and so any effort to measure it should reflect both the actions of the patent office and applicants, as well as the fact that any section 101 rejections are a reflection of differences in opinion, and therefore of uncertainty in the system.

 

Disclaimer – “The statements and views expressed in this posting are my own and do not reflect those of my law firm, are intended for general informational purposes only, and do not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion.”

In re Killian: Defining “Abstract Idea” and “Inventive Concept”

In re Killian is interesting because the Federal Circuit used that case to respond to the frustration many patent applicants feel regarding the amorphous and unpredictable nature of analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Killian made that frustration quite plain, leading off his appeal with the argument that

the standard promulgated in Alice and Mayo is indefinite—so poorly defined that it renders all court and Board decisions finding a claim patent ineligible under the Alice/Mayo standard arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

While there was basically no chance that the Federal Circuit would agree to an argument premised on the proposition that the standard laid out by its reviewing court (and applied by it) was incomprehensible, I think the Federal Circuit choosing to address that argument with a precedential opinion rather than affirming the board under rule 36 is interesting in and of itself. Even more is that the Federal Circuit acknowledged and responded to “Mr. Killian’s desire for ‘a single noncapricious definition or limiting principle’ for ‘abstract idea’ and ‘inventive concept.’” Thus, In re Killian not only shows that the Federal Circuit feels the need to respond to criticisms of the Alice/Mayo framework, it also shows what the Federal Circuit feels is the closest it can come to concrete definitions of the phrases “abstract idea” and “inventive concept” which are at the heart of the eligibility determination.

 

                Turning first to “abstract idea,” the Federal Circuit began by acknowledging that there is no single rule which could distinguish what was and was not an abstract idea.  It explained that such a rule did not exist because there were at least three different types of abstract ideas: (1) methods of organizing human activity, (2) claims to mental processes, and (3) claims to results rather than means of achieving them. It also said that it had provided guidance as to what constitutes an abstract idea in the form of cases which said that the abstract idea determination was made based on the claimed advance over the prior art, and cases which said that the intangibility of information meant that advance in the specified content of information were abstract. It finally turned specifically to software inventions, stating that, for that kind of invention eligibility “often” turns on whether the claims focus on “the specific asserted improvement in computer capabilities” or “on a process that qualifies as an ‘abstract idea’ for which computers are invoked merely as a tool.”

 

                The treatment of “inventive concept” was similar, with the Federal Circuit indicating that it had provided guidance, but stopping short of elaborating a clear definition. With respect to guidance, there was actually very little on offer, with the examples of guidance laid out by the Federal Circuit largely restating principles already laid out as “guidance” for what was an abstract idea. For instance, the first example of guidance in the discussion of “inventive concept” was that “methods that ‘improve[] an existing technological process’ include an inventive concept at step two.” However, the discussion of abstract ideas had already stated that the lack of “any particular assertedly inventive technology” would doom a claim to an invention where the improvement was information of specified content, and so it isn’t clear what would be added by treating an improvement to “an existing technological process” as an inventive concept.

 

                Ultimately, I don’t think the Federal Circuit’s explication of its “guidance” would be particularly satisfying to someone who, like the appellant in Killian, is frustrated by the current state of 101 caselaw. Indeed, the fact that the Federal Circuit could do no better than provide a non-exhaustive list of types of abstract ideas, then point to various past cases as “guidance” seems to confirm the ad-hoc and nature of contemporary subject matter eligibility analysis. I suspect that the Federal Circuit realized this, since it ended its discussion of “abstract idea” and “inventive concept” by explaining that, even if it was “persuaded by Mr. Killian’s argument that the Alice/Mayo framework is insolubly unclear, both this court and the Board would still be bound to follow the Supreme Court’s § 101 jurisprudence as best we can as we must follow the Supreme Court’s precedent unless and until it is overruled by the Supreme Court.” Hopefully, the Supreme Court will view this as an invitation to come up with a standard that a court couldn’t even hypothetically be persuaded is “insolubly unclear,” as otherwise I think the frustration felt by Mr. Killian (and many others) is likely only to get worse.

 

Disclaimer – “The statements and views expressed in this posting are my own and do not reflect those of my law firm, are intended for general informational purposes only, and do not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion.”

Why Innovative Features Don’t Overcome the Prior Art

Having an examiner treat a feature which is absent from the cited art as insufficient to establish patentability can be a serious setback during patent prosecution. If the applicant amends the claim to address whatever issue was raised by the examiner (e.g., adding concreteness to claim language which the examiner stated didn’t actually require the feature due to the broadest reasonable interpretation rule), the result is that they will have spent a rejection/response cycle (and maybe even an RCE) to get where they would have been originally if the feature had simply been compared to the prior art. Alternatively, if the applicant stands firm and argues that the examiner was wrong to treat the feature as insufficient to establish patentability, they are setting themselves up for an appeal of what may have been an easy allowance if whatever reason the examiner gave for treating the feature as insufficient had been addressed or avoided. In either case, dealing with arguments about why a feature which isn’t part of the prior art should or shouldn’t be sufficient for patentability increases costs, delays prosecution, and may also reduce the ultimate scope of protection as a result of amendment or argument-based estoppels.

To determine how to anticipate and avoid these issues, I did a study identifying the reasons examiners used most often when arguing that features which are absent from the cited art aren’t sufficient to establish patentability. In this study, I examined recent (i.e., from 2019-2022) obviousness rejections from the database which powers IP Toolworks’ Arguminer software. I used natural language processing and clustering software to identify keywords and n-grams that were cited repeatedly by examiners in their rejections. I then manually correlated the most common keywords, n-grams and citations with specific doctrines used to treat features as insufficient to establish patentability, such as intended use or nonfunctional descriptive material. Finally, I applied these correlations on a technology center by technology center basis, so that the study could identify whether, and how, the doctrines by examiners differed between types of innovation.  

The study showed that drafting claims to reduce the risk that a feature which is absent from the prior art will be treated as insufficient to establish patentability requires a flexible approach which accounts for different doctrines which are likely to be applied during examination of different inventions. For example, while the most common argument overall for why a feature which was absent from the cited art wasn’t sufficient to establish patentability was that the feature was merely a recitation of intended use. However, for chemical inventions, the most common reason for treating a feature which was absent from the cited art as insufficient to establish patentability was that it was simply a matter of routine optimization. Similarly, while the argument that a limitation should not be given patentable weight because it recited nonfunctional descriptive material wasn’t in the top ten arguments overall, it was the third most commonly used argument for inventions in technology center 3600 (Transportation, Electronic Commerce, Construction, Agriculture, Licensing and Review). The most common doctrines used to treat features that are absent from the cited art as insufficient to establish patentability, and how those differed from technology center to technology center, are shown below:

 

Technology Center

Top Argument

Second Argument

Third Argument

1600 (Biotechnology and Organic)

Routine Optimization

Intended Use

Obvious to Try

1700 (Chemical and Materials Engineering)

Intended Use

Routine Optimization

Known Suitability for Purpose

2100 (Computer Architecture Software and Information Security)

Broadest Reasonable Interpretation

Intended Use

Obvious to Try

2400 (Computer Networks, Multiplex, Cable and Cryptography/Security)

Broadest Reasonable Interpretation

Intended Use

Obvious to Try

2600 (Communications)

Broadest Reasonable Interpretation

Intended Use

Obvious to Try

2800 (Semiconductors, Electrical and Optical Systems and Components)

Intended Use

Routine Optimization

Mere Change of Shape

3600 (Transportation, Electronic Commerce, Construction, Agriculture, Licensing and Review)

Intended Use

Broadest Reasonable Interpretation

Nonfunctional Descriptive Material

3700 (Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing and Products)

Intended Use

Mere Change of Shape

Obvious to Try

 

Ultimately, there is no magic bullet to ensure that a feature (assuming it is absent from the cited art) will be sufficient to establish non-obviousness. However, by using data showing both common practices that are broadly applicable across the patent office, as well as idiosyncrasies associated with how the patent office treats particular types of invention, it is possible to identify doctrines which are most likely to be cited in a particular case, so that the claims for that case can be drafted to anticipate those objections and avoid them before they even come up.

 

Disclaimer – “The statements and views expressed in this posting are my own and do not reflect those of my law firm, are intended for general informational purposes only, and do not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion.”

RCEconomics

Coins stacked to create a bar graph
Coins stacked to create a bar graph

One of the things that I think has significantly improved both my quality of life and my success as a patent prosecutor is front-loading patent applications to avoid interminable cycles of RCEs. I  wrote about this previously in Get Off the RCE Merry Go Round, and I continue to stand by that article as excellent practical advice. However, I recently had an interaction which has led me to revisit the question of RCEs and consider whether there are scenarios where front-loading an application to avoid RCEs may not make sense.

The issue which leads me to revisit the RCE question is economics: specifically whether  avoiding RCEs became unfeasible when working with high-volume filers who set a limited budget for each office action response. An attorney I was corresponding with told me that in these cases, he found the budget was generally set too low to present arguments on all potential points of novelty in the initial office action response. As a result, it wasn’t unusual to file one, two, or even three RCEs, to incrementally address rejections as they were made until you ultimately found something that both the examiner and the client were happy with.

 

My intuition is that the economic argument for RCEs doesn’t make sense. Focusing purely on minimizing costs, filing a second (or third!) RCE seems counter-productive, since the cost for a second RCE is greater than the cost for simply filing a continuation with whatever amendments you would have included in the RCE. Additionally, even ignoring a continuation as an alternative to an RCE, each rejection-response cycle has a cost. Increasing the number of rejection-response cycles thus can be expected to increase the total cost of prosecution. However, intuition isn’t a particularly reliable guide, and the entities this attorney was talking about were quite sophisticated. I therefore felt it was worth actually working out the financial impact of incremental prosecution to determine if the economic argument really is a valid reason for an RCE.

 

To evaluate the financial impact of incremental prosecution relative to front-loading arguments, I created a simplified model of prosecution using the following assumptions:

  • An application has a fixed number of points of novelty.
  • Prosecution consists of presenting the points of novelty until the application is allowed or no points of novelty remain.
  • The cost to present a point of novelty is constant, regardless of whether the points are presented one at a time (as in incremental prosecution) or all at once (as in front-loading).
  • Every other office action is final, and so every other response requires submission of an RCE.

I also set the number of points of novelty at 6, since the other attorney said that incremental prosecution could lead to three RCEs, and if each response had a single point of novelty the lowest number of points of novelty which would require 3 RCEs is 6.

 

            Formally, this simplified model allows prosecution to be represented by a set of equations,[1] but even without formal analysis, the simplified prosecution model makes clear that neither incremental prosecution nor front loading is a strictly dominant strategy (again, considering only direct costs of prosecution). In cases where it is only necessary to present a few points of novelty before an application is allowed, the cost of incremental prosecution is lower, since front-loading involves making more arguments than are necessary. On the other hand, as the number of rounds of prosecution increases, the advantage of incremental prosecution in terms of cost for presenting points of novelty decreases, and the cost for RCEs begins to dominate. For applications which have three or fewer rounds of prosecution (and therefore no more than one RCE), the incremental approach may still be less expensive, since the fee for a single front-loaded office action response *may* exceed the expected cost of 1-3 aggressively capped incremental responses by more than the cost of a single RCE (i.e., by more than $1,360). However, if an application requires two or more RCEs under the incremental approach, it almost certainly would have been cheaper to front-load prosecution. Based on my correspondence with the other attorney, I would say that it is not at all uncommon for applications with aggressively capped office action response budgets to have two or more RCEs, meaning that the incremental strategy which leads to those RCEs is likely to be self-defeating in the long run.

 

            Ultimately, the decision of whether to file an RCE (or, more accurately, to adopt a strategy which is likely to lead to an RCE) will depend on more than just cost considerations. For example, the similarity of the prior art to the claimed invention, the importance of preserving patent term, and the likelihood of success on appeal are all factors that will play a role. However, my feeling is that the non-financial considerations will almost always come down in favor of avoiding RCEs. Additionally, given the analysis above, I think that even a purely cost based decision-making process should generally avoid RCEs, even though doing so may require paying more for individual responses.

 

[1] For the interested reader, those equations are:

TI = NR * CN + $1,360 * NR/(|NR-1| + 1) + $2,000 * (Max(0,(NR/2 – 1)) – (NR%2)/2)

TF = CN * 6

In which

TI is the total cost to a large entity for prosecuting an application using incremental prosecution

TF is the total cost to a large entity for prosecuting an application using front loading

NR: Number of rounds of prosecution, which I assumed is capped at six, since the application would theoretically either be allowed or abandoned after all points of novelty were presented

CN: Cost to present a point of novelty

How a Solo Inventor can (and Can’t) Identify if Their Patent Attorney is “Great” – Part 2

 

This is the second part of a two part series responding to Inc.com’s Seven Signs You’ve Hired a Great Patent Attorney. In Part 1 I dealt with the first three signs in the original article, which are focused on context, and explained my thoughts on things a great patent attorney could do to help a patent serve as an effective part of a larger business strategy. This part deals with the remaining four signs identified in the original article, and explains how a solo inventor can evaluate if his or her patent attorney has skills required to be “great.”

Evaluating Skills Requires Skill

I feel it is effectively impossible for a solo inventor to evaluate whether his or her patent attorney is competent as a lawyer. Patent law is a highly specialized field, and even someone just out of law school is likely to be able to dazzle a solo inventor with concepts that he or she has never seen before. In my experience, this can lead clients who are trying to evaluate the competence of their patent attorneys to focus on minutia which is unlikely to have any substantive impact, and which the client is likely to misunderstand in any case. For example, in a past case I had a client who corrected me because I addressed a paper using a salutation that didn’t match the examiner’s gender (e.g., “Dear Sir” with a female examiner). As it happened, that paper wasn’t for the examiner, but directed to another patent office official for whom the salutation was correct. This was easy enough to explain once the client brought it to my attention, but I think it is a good illustration of how easy it is for a client who isn’t familiar with the patent system to go wrong when trying to judge an attorney’s work product.

While I don’t think a solo inventor should expect to be able to evaluate a patent attorney as a lawyer, that does not mean that that a solo inventor can’t make any kind of judgement as to quality. The trick is to focus on the aspects of the attorney’s job where the client does have relevant expertise – i.e., the technology. For a patent attorney to effectively represent an inventor, the attorney needs to be able to understand the invention and describe it both completely and in enough detail for a reader to understand how to make and use it. Additionally, if the same attorney is both preparing and prosecuting the application, then he or she will also need to be able to understand related technology (e.g., prior art cited by an examiner) and explain how the inventor’s technology differs from what’s already available. While a solo inventor may not be competent to write a patent application, he or she will be able to evaluate the technical sufficiency of the application once it is complete. Similarly, if a patent attorney who is prosecuting an application can’t come up with arguments that an inventor feels make sense, this is a sign that the patent attorney may not have the technical expertise necessary to provide the “great” representation an inventor may want.

 

Beware of False Certainties in an Uncertain Process

Rather than acknowledging or accounting for this asymmetry between an inventor’s ability to make legal versus technical evaluations, sign 4 from the Inc.com article is actually something I would consider a red flag that an individual inventor might miss if he or she isn’t familiar with the patent system. Sign 4 was “[t]hey provide you with the total cost of getting a patent to issue.” While this may be a reasonable expectation for some kinds of services, it does *not* make sense for patents. Getting a patent to issue requires dealing with many factors which are outside of the attorney’s control (e.g., the examiner), and any attorney who can say “if you pay X then the patent will issue” is failing to convey the uncertainties that are inherent in the system. It is reasonable to provide things like an expectation of fees for particular tasks (e.g., responding to this rejection will likely cost this amount), or overall estimates for normal sequences of events (e.g., in general, drafting and prosecuting a patent application for this type of invention usually costs between this low and this high estimate). However, I would expect any “great” attorney to make clear that actual costs may diverge from these types of expectations or estimates based on various factors (e.g., if an impasse is reached that requires an appeal to break), and any attorney who “provide[s] you with the total cost of getting a patent to issue” is not providing the whole story.

 

Basic Competency Doesn't Equal Greatness

Signs 5 and 6 aren’t red flags in the same manner as sign 4, but they still don’t provide a good yardstick for telling if the patent attorney you’ve hired is “great.” Those signs are, respectively, “[t]hey treat provisional patent applications differently than non-provisional patent applications” and “[t]hey conduct interviews for office actions.” In both cases, I think the signs are good general guidelines. Provisional and non-provisional patent applications are treated differently by the patent office, and so it (usually) makes sense for them to be treated differently by the patent attorney who drafts them. Similarly, interviews are generally much more effective channels of communication than written responses (I addressed this in my article, 5 Tips to Having a Good Patent Examiner Interview, and so it usually (but not always) makes sense to conduct them when responding to an office action. However, these guidelines are so broadly followed that I don’t think they can reasonably be used to separate the “great” patent attorneys from the rest. To do that, an inventor would need to be able to do things like determine if the attorney’s treatment of a provisional versus a non-provisional was correct, or evaluate if the attorney did a good job conducting the interview. As mentioned above, I don’t think most individual inventors will have the familiarity with the patent system necessary to make these kinds of judgments, and so I don’t think that signs 5 and 6 would be helpful in determining if a solo inventor’s patent attorney is “great.”

 

Summing Up: What Does (and Doesn't) Matter

The final sign from the article – “[t]hey don’t run ads” – is something I think is simply irrelevant to whether a patent attorney is “great.” Patent law is a business. Just like any other business, some people advertising are lousy, and some people advertising are great. This simply reflects the fact that preparing and prosecuting patents is different from promotion, and activity (or lack of activity) in one doesn’t say anything about competence (or lack of competence) in the other. To treat advertising as a red flag would be tantamount to saying that being a patent attorney is different from being any other type of service provider. While I love to think that patent attorneys like me are in a unique class by ourselves, that simply isn’t true, and so disqualifying a patent attorney because he or she runs (or doesn’t run) ads, makes no sense.

The bottom line to this (and part 1) is that figuring out if you have a “great” patent attorney is hard, especially if you’re a solo inventor with little or no experience in the patent system. It isn’t impossible – an attorney who can help put your patent in the proper business context, and who demonstrates technical skills to understand and describe your invention is more likely to be great than one who can’t. However, there are no shortcuts, and numbered lists, while they may make for great headlines, tend to oversimplify things and can give a false impression of your patent attorney’s competence (or lack of the same).

 

Disclaimer – “The statements and views expressed in this posting are my own and do not reflect those of my law firm, are intended for general informational purposes only, and do not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion.”

How a Solo Inventor Can (and Can’t) Identify if Their Patent Attorney is “Great” – Part 1

If you’ve followed my previous posts on how to achieve success in the workplace, you know the importance I place on surrounding oneself with a great team. Hire people smarter than you, or at very least, who are exceptionally competent within their field. The problem is, it’s not always easy to gauge the caliber of potential collaborators outside of one’s area of expertise, especially if they are in a highly specialized practice, like patent law. That’s why I was so enthused to come across a recent article by Stephen Key, co-founder of InventRight, titled Seven Signs You’ve Hired a Great Patent Attorney . Unfortunately, after reading it, I felt that the signs listed in the article were entirely unsuited to allowing a solo inventor (i.e., the target audience for the piece, which was published on Inc.com) determine if he or she had hired a “great” patent attorney. And so, because I can’t just leave something like that alone, I decided to write my own guide on how an individual inventor can tell if their patent attorney is “great.”

Following the original article, I am organizing my recommendations into two categories. In this week’s post, I’ll focus on contextual factors, corresponding to the first three signs identified in the original article. Next week, I’ll turn to legal competence factors, corresponding the following three signs, along with a final sign, identified by Keys, which I think is entirely irrelevant to whether your patent attorney is great, and for which I do not have a corresponding recommendation of my own.

First 3 Signs of "Greatness": Address the Business context

The first thing I would generally expect a “great” patent attorney to do for a solo inventor with respect to placing the invention in context would be to advise the inventor on taking the right business steps so that his or her patent didn’t end up as an expensive conversation piece. In my practice, I have run into more than one solo inventor who is under the impression that, once he or she has a patent, major corporations will fall all over themselves to buy or license the invention. Any experienced attorney, and certainly any patent attorney who aspires to be “great” will know that this is not realistic. Even in cases where a patent is successfully sold or licensed, it is almost always in the context of an overall package which will include at least an implemented proof of concept, and will generally also include validation in the form of a business which uses the patented technology to generate income. This is something a solo inventor needs to be aware of. A great patent attorney will be able to advise their client on this point, and may also be able to provide concrete assistance, such as connecting a solo inventor with local incubators, implementation/marketing partners (depending on what strengths the solo inventor brings to the table), and investor organizations.

I would also expect that a “great” patent attorney would take active steps to make sure their patent to fits in with the inventor’s overall plan for exploiting the technology (if the inventor doesn’t have such a plan, this is something the attorney should help fix, as described in the preceding paragraph). There are different strategies for achieving objectives such as quickly getting patent pending status, quickly getting a patent, delaying costs, or minimizing the total amount spent. A great patent attorney will be aware of these strategies and be able to advise the client on the steps that fit best with the client’s business milestones (e.g., funding rounds, product launches) and objectives. In short, I would expect a great patent attorney to recognize that a patent is a business tool, make sure that their client understood that as well, and ensure that the tool fits in with the overall business it supports.

By contrast, signs 1-2 from the Inc.com article didn’t address the business context of a patent, and don’t seem to me to be particularly useful for helping a solo inventor decide if their patent attorney is “great.” The first sign was “[t]hey encourage you to investigate whether your invention already exists.” While it is true that you can’t get a patent on something that isn’t new, this is something I would consider to be a sign that someone has gone through patent law 101, not a sign that he or she is a “great” attorney. The second sign was similar. That sign was “[t]hey discuss the importance of performing a prior art search.” While prior art searches can be useful, I find that in many cases they don’t provide much benefit. This is because inventors are often experts in their field, and will only come to a patent attorney when they have satisfied themselves that they really have something unique. Discussing the pros (additional certainty) and cons (additional cost and delay) of such a search is important, but discussing the importance of a prior art search is not something I would consider to be a reliable sign that an attorney is “great.”

The only sign from the article that I felt arguably addressed the business context of a patent was sign 3, and I felt that sign was dead wrong. The sign was “[t]hey don’t play the fear card,” and the article explained the sign by stating

[i]nventors are already paranoid someone is going to steal their idea. Putting fear in your mind is a way of getting you to act faster than you might otherwise, which isn’t doing you any favors, because no sound business decision is made out of fear.

My problem with this sign is that there are many parts of the patent process that are genuinely scary, and a patent attorney who avoids discussing (or downplays) those aspects to avoid playing the “fear card” isn’t doing their client any favors. For example, if a client obtains a patent after withholding material information from the examiner, this can change the patent from a valuable asset into a time bomb, by laying the groundwork for competitors to argue it was approved as a result of inequitable conduct. For a patent attorney to be “great,” he or she needs to have open communication with his or her client, and if a patent attorney has never told you something that makes you nervous, I would consider that a cause for concern in and of itself, not a sign that they are great because “[t]hey don’t play the fear card.”

            The bottom line for me (at least for part 1) is that a great patent attorney will help his or her client maximize the value of a patent, and that this requires open communication to convey the (sometimes scary) realities of obtaining and commercializing a patent.

Stay tuned next week for my take on the remaining (legal competence) factors. 

 

Disclaimer – “The statements and views expressed in this posting are my own and do not reflect those of my law firm, are intended for general informational purposes only, and do not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion.”

Cert denied in American Axle

Surprisingly, despite a solicitor recommendation, the Supreme Court denied cert in
American Axle. I can’t say I’m particularly disappointed. I recorded a
video last year (best viewed at 2x speed) where I talked about the potential outcomes of
the Supreme Court taking it up. I think my conclusion then – i.e., that
the Supreme Court was more likely to make things worse than better –
was basically right. Some clarity in the 101 analysis would have been
great, but I don’t think we would have gotten that, and the Supreme
Court passing up an opportunity to make things worse (again) is probably
all for the best.

Disclaimer – “The statements and views expressed in this posting are my own and do not reflect those of my law firm, are intended for general informational purposes only, and do not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion.”

American Axle v. Neapco: Some thoughts (2021)

I want to talk about American Axle v. Neapco.  This is a reasonably interesting case in its own right, since it applied section 101 to driveline propeller shaft manufacturing technology, which is obviously a bit different from the software and biotech inventions where section 101 is generally applied.  However, rather than talking about the case itself, I want to talk about what could happen if the Supreme Court grants cert, since they have asked for the solicitor’s views on the matter and that’s usually a sign that the case has a good chance of being heard.  I have seen articles out there saying that the Supreme Court should grant cert so they can fix the mess that is section 101.  What I want to do is explain why I think the Supreme Court granting cert would most likely make section 101 jurisprudence even more of a disaster than it already is.

Taking it doesn’t mean clarifying Alice/Mayo

I think part of the reasoning behind wanting the Supreme Court to take up American Axle is that the Supreme Court doesn’t take cases just to affirm, and so if they do take it they’re like to reverse the Federal Circuit which, by definition, would mean they would have to put some limits on the currently amorphous 101 analysis.  I think this is wrong.  Maybe the Supreme Court doesn’t take cases just to affirm them, but it did just that in Alice and Bilski.  You can say that those were special cases, since the PTO had basically teed up Bilski for Supreme Court review, and the Federal Circuit was so fractured on Alice that it basically amounted to a circuit split requiring review.  However, while the Federal Circuit might not be as fractured as it was for Alice, there are still significant differences between panels on how to apply section 101, and the fact that those differences persist even seven years after Alice may make the Court feel it needs to step in.  Additionally, while the patent bar, or at least the part of it that pays attention to these issues, is keenly aware of the drawbacks of section 101, the outside world is still focused on “patent quality” and the dangers of “Bad patents”.  Indeed, there was a hearing last month before the senate judiciary committee’s intellectual property subcommittee just last month that focused on exactly those issues, and I think the Supreme Court is much closer in outlook to the Senate’s intellectual property subcommittee than it is to the portion of the patent bar that is concerned about section 101.  Accordingly, my feeling is that if the Supreme Court does take up American Axle, it is likely to do so in order to emphasize that the Alice/Mayo analysis that has heretofore been mostly confined to software and biotech should be applied to other types of inventions as well, not to fundamentally clarify or make any changes to its application.

This isn’t a great case for clarifying anything

However, let’s say I’m wrong, and the Supreme Court does take up American Axle with the goal of significantly clarifying the analysis under section 101.  I think American Axle is a lousy case for the Supreme Court to take up if it wants to make things clearer.  First, the claims in American Axle were found ineligible because they were directed to a law of nature, so right off the bat this is a suboptimal vehicle for clarification because it doesn’t present the opportunity to define “abstract idea”, and I think the lack of a definition for an “abstract idea” is one of the biggest problems with 101 jurisprudence as it currently stands.  Also, because American Axle came through the courts rather than the PTO, it wasn’t analyzed using the patent office’s framework, which I think is the clearest framework anyone has come up with so far for applying section 101.  As a result, any significant change in the section 101 analysis is likely to be orthogonal to the patent office’s analysis, and so require major revisions to current PTO practice.  Does that necessarily mean it would be a step backward in terms of clarity?  Not necessarily, but after seeing what the Supreme Court has done in the past, I think the best we can reasonably hope for is that it leaves things largely intact so that we don’t all have to go back to the drawing board.

The only potential silver lining is that if the Supreme Court endorses broad application of section 101, we’ll finally see some meaningful limits 

So, is there any potential for a good outcome if the Supreme Court takes up American Axle?  There’s always the possibility that they’ll replace our current 101 mess with a meaningful, logical, predictable framework.  However, that’s so unlikely I think I can safely ignore it.  Are they likely to make things worse in the one context where section 101 is working at least relatively well?  Yes.  However, there is another possibility, which I alluded to earlier.  They could leave things essentially unchanged in terms of the substance of the 101 analysis, and instead take up the case to endorse applying 101 across the board, not just to software and biotech.  What happens then?  Well, obviously chaos for everyone, but maybe that chaos will lead to section 101 being applied a little more rationally in the long term.  In support of this optimistic outlook, I would like to draw an analogy to the broadest reasonable interpretation rule.  When it was only used during prosecution, the broadest reasonable interpretation rule could reasonably be criticized as essentially defaulting to the broadest possible interpretation, with reasonableness being an afterthought at best.  However, once it started being applied in inter partes review proceedings, the Federal Circuit started issuing opinions that found the broadest reasonable interpretation was a good deal narrower than I would have expected from the way it had traditionally been applied to patent prosecution.  That is, when an extremely broad broadest reasonable interpretation didn’t advance the policy goal of facilitating patent examination, it started narrowing in scope.  Similarly, if section 101 started being applied in areas where its aggressive use didn’t advance anti-software or anti-biotech policy preferences, it might happen that the Federal Circuit would find ways to make it easier to establish eligibility.  Just a thought, and something of a long shot.  However, given the Supreme Court’s track record I think it’s probably the best that could come from them hearing American Axle.

Anyway, I’d love to be proven wrong, and, right or wrong, I don’t think we’ll actually see any impact for at least another year.  In the meantime, I wish you good luck in dealing with section 101, and in your patent endeavors more generally.

Thanks a lot…bye bye.   

Disclaimer – “The statements and views expressed in this posting are my own and do not reflect those of my law firm, are intended for general informational purposes only, and do not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion.”