Baltimore mortgage lender says his patent was rendered invalid by a Supreme Court decision

Imagine having invested your time and money into developing an innovative software product and then several years later having the rights to your invention rendered virtually worthless due to a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

But that is exactly what happened to a Baltimore-based mortgage lender who invented an application that expedites the mortgage application approval process after the high court ruled in the 2014 Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank decision that certain abstract ideas could not in-and-of themselves be patented and therefore opening the door to third-party duplication.

“When the Alice 101 decision was made it invalidated anything that was considered abstract. But the guidelines for how they determine whether a patent is abstract do not make sense. And that is why it is being appealed,” Larry Porter told MarylandReporter.com. “It makes no sense at all. And it is ruining the industry.”

Porter, who has been in the mortgage lending business for more than 3o years, said his patent was approved in October 2013, after his application had mysteriously been “misplaced” by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for eight years before they discovered the mistake and fixed it.

Read more: https://marylandreporter.com/2021/07/27/baltimore-mortgage-lender-says-his-patent-was-rendered-invalid-by-a-supreme-court-decision/