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Case law in the USA

Revision as of 06:07, 19 July 2010 by Ciaran (talk | contribs) (The main cases: asterisks)

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*:

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) (WP on NTP and WP on RIM)
  • 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)

Finding USA court documents

Related pages on ESP Wiki

External links