101 Motion Denied Prior to Markman as Premature (in that case)

Originally published by Michael C. Smith.

Readers may be interested in Judge Payne’s opinion which came out Monday in Phoenix Licensing, LLC et al v. CenturyLink, Inc., 2:14cv965 (8/17/15) (Payne, J.) and was posted on Docket Navigator earlier today. In that case, the defendant sought dismissal under 101 for lack of patentable subject matter. Judge Payne recommended that the motion be denied at this stage, finding that “a definitive ruling on eligibility before claim construction is only warranted in narrow circumstances, making such a ruling the exception rather than the rule.”In this case, the Court found that that the need for claim construction was “especially apparent” because the Defendants disputed the meaning of various terms. “The difficulty of making a substantive ruling on the validity of an issued patent in what is — in essence — a complete vacuum cannot be understated,” it wrote. “While the claim language of some patents may be so clear that the court need only undertake a facial analysis to render it invalid at the pleading stage, that will not be the norm and is certainly not the case here.”

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