Monthly Archives:: May 2014

In this case, the issue of “what standard for indefiniteness should the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) apply to pre-issuance claims” was raised.  The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) had held that the applied-for patent claims of Mr. Packard were indefinite, and therefore not in compliance with the statutory drafting requirements of 35 U.S.C. § 112(b), which provide that the specification conclude with “one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming” the subject matter of the invention.”  The Federal Circuit affirmed the rejection of Mr. Packard’s claims. Representative claims 28, 29, and 34 are shown below:… Read more »

Note that occasionally, we will post a “Case Law Rewind” article.  These articles revisit decisions that may have issued some time ago, but we felt were important enough to revisit for discussion on our News page. In CyberSource, with regard to an Internet commerce patent, the Fed. Circuit invalidated both a method claim and the “Beauregard claim” that was directed to a computer readable medium (CRM) containing program instructions to carry out the method. The method was directed to detecting fraudulent credit card purchases made using the internet to, e.g., detect that multiple card numbers had been used to make purchases… Read more »