Patent Owner Flags Judge Newman’s Suspension to Supreme Court

The owner of an invalidated background-check software patent urged the US Supreme Court to consider the Federal Circuit’s suspension of 97-year-old Judge Pauline Newman, whose absence on the court the company says deprived it of a potentially sympathetic ear.

Miller Mendel Inc.'s patent was deemed abstract under Section 101 of the Patent Act under the high court’s two-step patent eligibility test from its 2014 decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l., first by an East Texas district court judge and then by a three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The appellate decision ...