In Google Decision, Federal Circuit Widens Patent Challenge Lens

Google’s recent Federal Circuit win on software patents will benefit patent challengers generally, opening the door to new corroborating evidence to support attacks on inventions as obvious, attorneys say.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that co-authorship in a relevant publication can corroborate an individual’s claim to be an inventor of a patented innovation. The legal analysis used to confirm inventorship—called the rule of reason—is a flexible standard that still has open questions on what evidence can be used to validate a person’s claim to have been involved with creating an invention.

By allowing authorship to ...