USA: Credit Acceptance Corp. v. Westlake Services, United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit, No. 2016-2001, 09 June 2017

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not err in instituting Covered Business Method ("CBM") review and finding several claims of a financing method patent owned by Credit Acceptance Corporation ("CAC") to be directed to a patent-ineligible abstract idea, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled. The Board correctly rejected CAC’s argument that a prior CBM proceeding invalidating other claims of the same patent estopped petitioner Westlake Services from maintaining the present proceeding. In a dissenting opinion, Circuit Judge Mayer expressed his view that the court lacked jurisdiction to review the Board’s estoppel ruling because it was closely tied to a non-appealable institution decision (Credit Acceptance Corp. v. Westlake Services, June 9, 2017, Dyk, T.).

A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law