{"id":4920,"date":"2017-02-21T16:14:01","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T16:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sls.gmu.edu\/cpip\/?p=4920"},"modified":"2026-02-03T21:01:57","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:01:57","slug":"cpip-scholars-file-amicus-brief-urging-consideration-of-claimed-inventions-as-a-whole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/2017\/02\/21\/cpip-scholars-file-amicus-brief-urging-consideration-of-claimed-inventions-as-a-whole\/","title":{"rendered":"[Archived Post] CPIP Scholars File Amicus Brief Urging Consideration of Claimed Inventions as a Whole"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1816 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/cip2.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2015\/06\/DC-20-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"U.S. Supreme Court building\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/>Last week, CPIP Senior Scholar\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/cip2.gmu.edu\/about\/our-team\/adam-mossoff\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Adam Mossoff<\/a>\u00a0and I filed an <a href=\"http:\/\/cip2.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2017\/02\/TDE-v-AKM-Brief-of-15-Law-Professors-as-Amici-Curiae.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">amicus brief<\/a>\u00a0on behalf of 15 law professors, including CPIP\u2019s Devlin Hartline, Chris Holman, Sean O\u2019Connor, Kristen Osenga, and Mark Schultz.\u00a0We urge the Supreme Court to grant certiorari in\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/search.aspx?filename=\/docketfiles\/16-890.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TDE Petroleum v. AKM Enterprise<\/a><\/em> and reaffirm that any analysis of an invention must be of the claimed invention <em>as a whole<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, lower courts and the Patent &amp; Trademark Office have been applying a test of patent eligibility that allows breaking up an invention into parts and then analyzing the parts separately. Sometimes, as in the case here, a court will completely ignore an element of the invention. This needs to be fixed. Any invention is defined by its entirety, not by its isolated parts.<\/p>\n<p>As I <a href=\"http:\/\/cip2.gmu.edu\/2016\/10\/27\/federal-circuit-improperly-extends-abstract-idea-exception-to-industrial-machines\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">discussed before<\/a>, TDE Petroleum\u2019s patent claims a method of operating an oil rig.\u00a0Part of the method uses software.\u00a0But as the claim discussed in our brief makes clear, the end result of the method is control of a physical well with a drill running inside the earth.\u00a0However, the courts that have looked at this patent so far have only considered the function of certain software elements and pretend the oil rig is not important.\u00a0Such unimpeded dissection of claims makes it easy to invalidate important patented innovation notwithstanding the contribution to the field.<\/p>\n<p>The full amicus brief can be found\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/cip2.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2017\/02\/TDE-v-AKM-Brief-of-15-Law-Professors-as-Amici-Curiae.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>. In addition to showing that the claimed invention is a method of <em>operating an oil rig<\/em>, we show why the claim precisely parallels a claim to a method of molding rubber\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/450\/175\/case.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">found patent eligible<\/a> by the Supreme Court 36 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, CPIP Senior Scholar\u00a0Adam Mossoff\u00a0and I filed an amicus brief\u00a0on behalf of 15 law professors, including CPIP\u2019s Devlin Hartline, Chris Holman, Sean O\u2019Connor, Kristen Osenga, and Mark Schultz.\u00a0We urge the Supreme Court to grant certiorari in\u00a0TDE Petroleum v. AKM Enterprise and reaffirm that any analysis of an invention must be of the claimed invention [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3627,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,35,51],"tags":[83,126,402,1304,1417,1434],"class_list":["post-4920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-innovation-2","category-patent-law","category-supreme-court","tag-adam-mossoff","tag-amicus-brief","tag-david-lund","tag-section-101","tag-supreme-court","tag-tde-petroleum"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4920"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15819,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920\/revisions\/15819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}