Patent Eligibility Case Is Teed Up for Next Supreme Court Term

Patent attorneys may soon get some long-standing questions on patent eligibility answered by the US Supreme Court in a case involving noisy driveshafts.

The US Solicitor General recommended Tuesday that the justices step in to clarify how to determine whether or not an invention qualifies as one worthy of patent protection.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was wrong in finding that a method of manufacturing driveshafts to reduce vibrations was too abstract to be eligible for a patent, citing hundreds of years of patent law that patented similar inventions, the government said in its brief. ...