Case law in the USA

Case law in the USA is the collection of rulings handed down by the courts that deal with patents in the USA. Case law provides the official interpretations of the legislation.

The highest court, the US Supreme Court, has not directly examined the question of the patentability of software ideas, but it has taken decisions on closely related patentable subject matter in a triplet of cases in the 70s and early 80s (Benson, Flook, Diehr), and in the 2010 Bilski v. Kappos case.

A lower court, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has upheld many software patents.

It will take time for case law to be developed around the Bilski decision of 2010. See: patentability in the USA after Bilski.

The main cases

Most recent first; cases at the Supreme Court in bold*:

• Bilski v. Kappos (2010, USA)*
• in re Bilski (2008, USA)
• KSR v. Teleflex (2007, USA)
• Microsoft v. AT&T (2006, USA)
• eBay v. MercExchange (2006, USA)
• AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications Inc. (1999, USA)
• State Street v. Signature Financial Group (1999, USA)
• In re Lowry (1994, USA)
• In re Alappat (1994, USA)
• Diamond v. Diehr, 1981*
• Parker v. Flook (1978, USA)*
• Gottschalk v. Benson (1972, USA)*

Possibly interesting

• Quanta v. LGE (2008, USA) (see: patent exhaustion)
• O'Reilly v. Morse, (1853) (Wikipedia page)
• Graham v. John Deere, (1966) 383 U.S. 1, 6 (1966) (Wikipedia page)
• Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings v. Metabolite Laboratories, Inc., 548 U.S. 124 (2007)
• NTP v. Research in Motion, Ltd., 397 F. Supp. 2d 785 (E.D. Va. 2005)
• Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 1980
• In re Iwahashi, 1990
• Ex parte Yang-Huffman, Appeal 2007­2130, slip op. at 3 (Bd. Pat. App. & Interf. Oct. 4, 2007)
• Northern Telecom v. Datapoint, 908 F.2d 931, 940-941 (1990)
• Prater & Wei
• "Johnson"

Finding USA court documents

• Example, for i4i v. Microsoft: http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-txedce/case_no-6:2007cv00113/case_id-101834/ - not very useful, but it's a start

Related pages on ESP Wiki

• USA patents courts and appeals
• Court cases and lawsuits

External links

• Patent rulings by the Supreme Court
• LPF's page contains links to various Amicus briefs, among other things
• Bitlaw.com's History of software patents in the USA
• Congress weighs patent specialization for federal judges, by Timothy B. Lee, 2009 - discusses a possible change in Judge selection
• http://patentsusa.blogspot.com/ - will have to read it to see if it's interesting
• Dr. David Garrod's Glossaries of Judicial Claim Constructions Available Free of Charge
• Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way, Stephan Kinsella - looks at cases, mostly which touched the obviousness criterion
• Patent Rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, neuro.law.cornell.edu search engine
• The Rise Of The Information Processing Patent, by Ben Klemens
• Wikipedia: Software patents under United States patent law
• Wikipedia: List of United States patent law cases