Power Analytics Corporation v. Operation Technology, Inc., et al.

In Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, 573 U.S. 208 (2014), this Court prescribed standards and a mode of analysis for determining patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Alice left to the Federal Circuit the responsibility to implement those standards and guide the application of that analysis nationwide. In the five years since Alice, an avalanche of litigation challenging the patent eligibility of inventions across a wide swath of technologies has affected multiple industries. The relatively few precedential Federal Circuit decisions on patent eligibility have not provided uniformity. This lack of uniformity has been exacerbated by the Federal Circuit’s routine issuance of Rule 36 affirmances in § 101 cases even where, as in this case, numerous issues are raised on which prior decisions of the Federal Circuit have not provided consistent guidance. Given the current environment in which issues of patent eligibility that are of vital significance to district judges, innovators and litigants are decided, the question presented is: Has the Federal Circuit correctly implemented the standards for patent eligibility set forth in 35 U.S.C. § 101 and Alice v. CLS Bank?