Law Commons^™

Noa V. Doa: Increasing Medical Diagnostic Patentability After Mayo, Karen Mckenzie

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

The medical diagnostics market is expected to reach 65 billion by 2018. In March 2012, in Mayo Collborative Services v. Prometheus Labs, Inc. , ("Mayo") the U.S. Supreme held that the Mayo Clinic (the "Clinic") had not infringed on Prometheus Labs’ (“Prometheus”) diagnostic patent because the Prometheus patent involved ineligible subject matter, and was therefore invalid. Section 101 of the Patent Act defines eligible subject matter an “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter” as patentable subject matter. Courts have held that Section 101 contains an implicit exception, making laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract …

Patent Eligibility's Doctrinal Exclusions... Lately, A Scary Movie Too Difficult To Watch: Concrete Solutions And Suggestions, Kristy J. Downing

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

Patent eligible subject matter is defined by the legislature’s 35 U.S.C. § 101 to include “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter.” Since the nineteenth century, however, United States (U.S.) courts have considered certain otherwise eligible subject matter excludable from patent protection. The judiciary’s doctrinal exclusions’ purpose was to protect fundamental building blocks to science and useful arts ensuring that such information could not be monopolized by one entity. Presently, however, the judicial exclusions have been used to exclude fewer fundamental building blocks and more ordinary brick-and-mortar innovations after two U.S. supreme court decisions (Mayo …

Determining Enhanced Damages After Halo Electronics: Still A Struggle?, Veronica Corcoran

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

35 U.S.C. § 284 of the Patent Act allows district courts to use their discretion to award enhanced damages up to three times the amount found or assessed in the case of patent infringement. This Comment will consider how the Supreme court of the United States’ holding in Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse electronics, Inc. changed the landscape of enhanced damages awards in light of willful infringement.

First, this Comment will examine the Federal Circuit’s approach that now embraces both an objective and subjective inquiry in determining enhanced damages, which may resolve the concern over the rigidity in the Seagate …