By: Robert R. Sachs
One of the Section 101 cases we're handling has already made it into a law school exam. In SmartGene v. ABL, the Federal Circuit ruled that claims to a medical expert system were not patent-eligible. On behalf of ABL, we recently filed a petition for certiorari, requesting the Supreme Court to vacate the Federal Circuit decision once it decides Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank, and remand to the Federal Circuit.
Prof. Jason Rantanen, at the University of Iowa College of Law, posted on Patently-O that he recently included claim 1 from ABL's U.S. 6,081,786, on the final exam for his patent law class, challenging them to argue why the claim is not patent-eligible. In an email exchange, Prof. Rantanen said that he chose ABL's patent claim for the exam to "force students to grapple with actual contemporary claims….This claim seemed like a great one to talk about from a PSM perspective." For context, here is the ABL patent claim:
(a) providing patient information to a computing device comprising:
a first knowledge base comprising a plurality of different therapeutic treatment regimens for said disease or medical condition;
a second knowledge base comprising a plurality of expert rules for evaluating and selecting a therapeutic treatment regimen for said disease or medical condition;
a third knowledge base comprising advisory information useful for the treatment of a patient with different constituents of said different therapeutic treatment regimens; and
(b) generating in said computing device a ranked listing of available therapeutic treatment regimens for said patient; and
(c) generating in said computing device advisory information for one or more therapeutic treatment regimens in said ranked listing based on said patient information and said expert rules.
*The perspectives expressed in the Bilski Blog, as well as in various sources cited therein from time to time, are those of the respective authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Fenwick & West LLP or its clients.