Is the Golden Age of Patent Litigation Coming To an End?

WSJ Law Blog — Is the Golden Age of Patent Litigation Coming To an End?

That’s the weighty ques­tion keep­ing us up last night as we con­tem­plated In Re Stephen Comiskey, the lat­est in a string of rul­ings that has chipped away at patent hold­ers’ rights and reflects the grow­ing con­cern over the patent-​​litigation boom. (Click here for the Federal Circuit rul­ing and the oral argu­ment in the case.)

Legal experts say the court’s rul­ing in Comiskey may make it more dif­fi­cult to obtain and enforce business-​​method patents, which are granted for abstract processes rather than spe­cific devices. Lawyers also say the deci­sion could help financial-​​services and soft­ware com­pa­nies fac­ing a bar­rage of patent-​​infringement lit­i­ga­tion brought by patent holders.

The deci­sion sug­gests that business-​​method patents will now be con­sid­ered invalid unless the inven­tion has a prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion and can be linked to a par­tic­u­lar tech­nol­ogy, such as a com­puter. The court said that “men­tal processes—or processes of human thinking—standing alone aren’t patentable even if they have prac­ti­cal application.”