Jury’s Finding of No Invalidity Under § 102 and § 103 Supports Finding of No Invalidity Under § 101

Following a jury trial, the court found that plaintiff's medication monitoring patent was not invalid for lack of patentable subject matter. "Because [a prior art article] and at least one other piece of prior art taught away from the claimed combination, the jury likely found the patent was not obvious on that basis. So, too, does this court for patent eligibility purposes. . . . Given the reinvigoration of § 101 by Alice Corporation v. CLS Bank International, 134 S. Ct. 2347, 2354 (2014) . . . and the fact that the medical field is on the cutting edge of what will hopefully be an explosion of new advances in medical treatments based on the effective mining of 'big data' and disciplined use of the scientific method, a real question exists as to the wisdom of continuing to grant patents that last for 20 years on identification of an individual characteristic that may be useful for diagnosis or advances in understanding illnesses. . . . Regardless, there is enough in the combination of the elements in the [patent-in-suit] to get it over the patent eligibility threshold under current law, particularly in light of the jury upholding the patent on § 102 and § 103 grounds. At minimum, [defendant] did not meet its burden of providing clear and convincing evidence to the contrary."

Ameritox, Ltd. v. Millennium Health, LLC, 3-13-cv-00832 (WIWD April 24, 2015, Order) (Conley, J.)