The Center for Patent Innovations at the New York Law School has recently begun a post-grant review project that seeks to harness the public community via the Center's peer-to-patent project. The post-grant review project invites all parties to request posting of patents on the website for peer review by the public. Certain firms have also posted bounties for finding prior art that may invalidate particular patents.
Stay tuned for further developments at www.maierandmaier.com
January 2009 Archives
In Ex parte Cornea-Hasegan, the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences has found that a method for predicting results of floating point
mathematical operations and calculating the results using software--when the result is too small to be accurately calculated via floating-point hardware--is not patentable subject matter in light of In re Bilski, 545 F.3d 943 (Fed. Cir. 2008).
While the claim recited a "processor", the BPAI stated that the recitation did not impose any limits on the claim's scope, nor did it tie the process steps to a particular machine. Furthermore, while claimed "floating-point hardware" may have been a particular machine, the BPAI saw it as "insignificant extra-solution activity" that is not sufficient to transform an unpatentable principle into a patentable process.
Regarding claims directed to "computer readable media", the BPAI held that such limitations do not add any practical limitations to the claim scope, as eligibility under Section 101 could not be circumvented by attempting to limit the use of the formula to a particular technological environment.
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