Amicus Brief in Godaddy v. Rpost Supporting Defendants-Appellants and Reversal
2016; RELX Group (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês
10.2139/ssrn.2872808
ISSN1556-5068
Tópico(s)Legal and Constitutional Studies
ResumoSince Supreme Court’s decisions in Mayo and Alice, issue of subject matter ineligibility has been litigated daily (if not hourly) in federal courts across country. By one account, approximately 70% of patents challenged under § 101 in district court have been held invalid since Alice. [V]irtually unknown twenty years ago, motions under § 101 have become perhaps the most successful validity challenges today. Their prevalence has not been lost on Federal Circuit: one of its Judges has referred to recent upsurge in § 101 cases as plague on patent system nowadays. And while number of cases requiring application of Supreme Court’s test for eligibility in Mayo/Alice has vastly increased, that doctrine has proven extremely difficult for litigants as well as courts to apply in practice. As another Federal Circuit judge has remarked, test articulated in Mayo/Alice in a source of tremendous for bench and bar. The Federal Circuit is laboring admirably to address that uncertainty and give guidance through cases coming before it. Nevertheless, Court would be well-served — as would patent system generally — by pausing to consider more fundamental question raised by Appellant in this case: whether Congress authorized subject matter ineligibility as an invalidity defense in first place. That question goes to heart of current trends: for if [i]n wake of Alice... proverbial motions practice floodgates have opened, Court must confront whether statute actually permits those gates to be thrown open.
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