Federal Circuit Hands Down Modified Opinion in Illumina, Inc. v. Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. By Kevin E. Noonan — Earlier this year, the Federal Circuit (somewhat surprisingly) found claims of two Sequenom patents directed to methods for detecting fetal DNA in maternal blood to satisfy the subject matter eligibility requirements of Section 101 (see “Illumina, Inc. v. Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2020)”). The surprise arose in part due to the Federal Circuit’s track record of finding all diagnostic method claims to be ineligible as being directed to a natural law without “something more” to overcome the patentability preclusion created by…
