Adobe Vanquishes E-Signature Patent in Federal Circuit Appeal

The Federal Circuit ruled a digital signature patent asserted in infringement suits against a number of tech companies was abstract and thus invalid, upholding Adobe Inc.‘s California federal court win.

The three-judge panel hearing non-practicing entity eSignature Software LLC’s appeal applied a precedent that creates a high bar for patent eligibility for claimed inventions that describe longstanding business practices performed electronically rather than by hand, according to the Wednesday opinion.

Applying “signatures in designated places on documents” is just such a practice and eSignature’s patent “amounts to little more than saying: do that on a computer,” wrote Judge ...