Overview
Margaret (Peg) Duncan discussed Patent & Trademark Office guidance to help inventors comply with the Supreme Court’s Alice Corp. decision barring patents on computer-implemented abstract ideas, saying the guide can show inventors, companies and their lawyers what the patent office is looking for. “You can’t claim an abstract idea and hope to monopolize it. You can’t remove an abstract idea from the public domain no matter how clever the claims are,” Ms. Duncan explained. She added that while most software inventors are “being very conservative now and sticking closely to what the Supreme Court said,” more case law will better define which software is patent-eligible.