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Course Details

This CLE course will guide patent practitioners to draft their patent applications to overcome Section 101 challenges during prosecution, litigation, and AIA reviews. This panel has decades of experience in Section 101.

Faculty

Description

Patent eligibility in the context of software-related inventions is not always apparent. Patent practitioners and applicants have struggled since the Supreme Court's decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l (2014) to understand what qualifies as an abstract idea.

Recent Federal Circuit decisions on software-related claims have provided more guidance on patent eligibility. Understanding the court's rationale in recent decisions will increase the likelihood that a patent drafter's claims will pass step one or two of the Alice patent-eligibility test.

Counsel must carefully draft their specifications and claims to increase the likelihood of the patent surviving at the district court as well as during a post-grant review.

Listen as our authoritative panel of patent attorneys reviews the courts' guidance in the post-Alice decisions. The panel will offer their perspectives and experiences concerning patent applications/claims, including anticipating Section 101 rejections when drafting the claims.

Outline

  1. Challenges in drafting software patents
  2. Guidance from recent decisions
  3. Best practices for drafting software patent applications
    1. Benefits of claimed inventions
    2. Providing details in the specification
    3. Drafting claims to survive 101

Benefits

The panel will review these and other key issues:

  • What are the hurdles for patent counsel to demonstrate a software-related claim is not abstract?
  • How can patent practitioners pass Alice's step two if an abstract idea is identified?
  • What guidance have the courts provided in recent decisions concerning patent eligibility for software-related inventions?
  • What best practices should counsel use to help software-related inventions survive 101 challenges?