Patent Applications for Software and Computer Related Inventions Need to Demonstrate Technology Improvement to be Patentable
September 14, 2021
The Federal Circuit continues to confirm the importance of showing, in a patent application, how software/computer-implemented inventions "improve" underlying technology.
Recently, for In re Zhu et al., case number 21-1761, the Federal Circuit vacated a decision from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to reconsider "whether the claims [of the patent-at-issue] are directed to an improvement in computer functionality, especially in light of this court's recent case law [as to improvements to computing devices]."
In its appeal brief, the inventors had argued that that the claimed invention included an improvement to an underlying computing device via disclosure of a new method of video screen capture compression (e.g., data compression).
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