Please join Fenwick & West’s patent prosecution and litigation attorneys for this exclusive executive briefing teleforum reviewing the Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd v. CLS Bank Int’l. Supreme Court oral arguments.
On Monday, March 31, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in this bellwether case for the patent eligibility of software. The question presented by the Court and the parties is whether claims to computer-implemented inventions—including claims to systems and machines, processes and items of manufacture—are patent-eligible subject matter within the meaning of 35 U.S.C. § 101 as interpreted by this Court.
Fenwick & West filed two amicus briefs in the case, one on behalf of Advanced Biological Laboratories (ABL), and one for Ronald M. Benrey (Benrey). Robert R. Sachs and Daniel Brownstone, the Fenwick intellectual property attorneys who wrote the briefs, along with Stuart Meyer, will be in attendance at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., when the oral arguments are heard. Immediately after the hearing, you are invited to participate in an exclusive teleforum discussion where Messrs. Sachs, Meyer, and Brownstone will provide their overview and analysis of the proceedings, and answer questions about the potential implications and ramifications.
Patentable subject matter has become an increasingly important policy and legal issue in recent years. With the Alice v. CLS decision, the Court has the opportunity to articulate the differences between purely abstract intellectual ideas, which are not patentable, and computerized processes and systems for implementing those ideas in the real world, which plainly are. Understandably, there is significant interest in how the Supreme Court considers the case, because the outcome will have deep ramifications across many industries, and especially among the firms that depend on patent protection for their innovations.