Insights

Washington, D.C. – January 4, 2016: Crowell & Moring LLP is pleased to announce that it has elected nine attorneys to the firm's partnership, effective January 1, 2016. The firm has also promoted 15 associates to the position of counsel. The new partners and counsel have been promoted from within the ranks of the firm's Washington, D.C., New York, and Orange County offices, and underscore the firm's commitment to its Antitrust, Health Care, Insurance/Reinsurance, Government Contracts, Advertising & Product Risk Management, Mass Tort, Product, and Consumer Litigation, International Trade, Aviation, Administrative Law & Regulatory, and Intellectual Property Groups.

In the April 12, 2023 decision in Sequoia Technology, LLC v. Dell, Inc., No. 21-2263, a case involving infringement and validity of a patent related to digital storage of data in a server, the Federal Circuit reversed the district court, in part, and held that a “computer-readable recording medium storing instructions” does not encompass transitory media. 

With its decision to grant certiorari in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Intl., the Supreme Court has the chance to provide much-needed clarity to the proper framework for analyzing whether computer-implemented inventions are patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. §101. Although the Federal Circuit in CLS Bank Intl. v. Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd., Appeal No. 2011-1301 (Fed. Cir. May 10, 2013) (en banc) affirmed the district court decision that the claims at issue were not directed to patent-eligible subject matter, a majority of the court failed to agree on a framework for analyzing patent eligibility. This has caused great uncertainty for inventors of computer-implemented inventions as to whether to seek patent protection as well as whether issued patent claims are valid and enforceable. Judge Moore of the Federal Circuit recognized this by candidly stating in her dissenting opinion that: 

In Net Moneyin, Inc. v. Verisign, Inc. (No. 07-1565; October 20, 2008), the Federal Circuit affirms a district court's judgment that certain disputed claims were invalid as indefinite under 35 U.S.C. § 112, ¶6, but reverses the summary judgment that another disputed claim was invalid as anticipated by prior art.