Chief Judge Connolly issued a short opinion this morning denying a motion for summary judgment that a patent was not patent ineligible, in C.R. Bard, Inc. v. Angiodynamics, Inc., C.A. No. 20-1544-CFC-SRF (D. Del. Jan. 3, 2024).
In short, the patentee had previously succeeded on the issue of § 101 ineligibility at the Federal Circuit, which reversed a lower-court finding of ineligibility and held that:
[T]he asserted claims in Bard’s three patents are directed to eligible subject matter under § 101.
C.R. Bard, Inc. v. Med. Components, Inc., C.A. Nos. 2022-1136, 2022-1186, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 3780, at *6 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 17, 2023) ("MedComp").
Based on that, the patentee moved for summary judgment of no ineligibility under § 101. The defendant opposed, arguing that it was going to argue a different theory of ineligibility than was addressed by the Federal Circuit in MedComp. D.I. 595 at 3.
The Court didn't even have to reach that position. It just pointed out that MedComp is non-precedential, and that courts do not hold that patents are "eligible" anyway:
I need not, however, engage in an exegesis of MedComp to resolve the pending motion. MedComp is a nonprecedential opinion. But more to the point, just as "courts do not declare patents to be valid, and only declare that they have not been proved to be invalid," Ball Aerosol & Specialty Container, Inc. v. Ltd. Brands, Inc., 555 F.3d 984, 994 (Fed. Cir. 2009), courts do not declare patents to be eligible under § 101, but instead declare only that a party has (or has not) established that a patent is ineligible under § 101.
"[C]ourts do not declare patents to be valid" is a principle that comes up pretty frequently in briefing. Courts and judges are usually pretty good about holding that patents are "not invalid," rather than "valid." It's good to know that the same principle applies to eligibility as well.
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