Civil Procedure Update Last edition, we covered Supreme Court cases that were poised to shape procedures for removal to federal court. Two unanimous opinions answer our questions: Hain Celestial Group v. Palmquist, No. 24-724 (U.S. Feb. 24, 2026). “This Court has never held that a district court can create jurisdiction through its own mistakes.” The Court upheld the Fifth Circuit’s ruling that a district court’s erroneous dismissal of a defendant before final judgment could not cure the jurisdictional defect of that defendant destroying complete diversity among the parties. Berk v. Choy, No. 24-440 (U.S. Jan. 20, 2026). The Court held that a Delaware law requiring an affidavit to accompany medical malpractice complaints conflicted with Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 8 and 12. Therefore, the state procedural statute does not apply in federal court. n Unfortunately, successful outcomes at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) are not guaranteed. The USPTO has structural and procedural headwinds that can become barriers for unwary applicants. Examination is fragmented across art units: some boast high allowance rates, while others appear committed to preserving nearzero allowance rates. Guidance and examiner training can be uneven, and the application of eligibility “tests” can vary. Applicants also contend with frequent— and sometimes unannounced—shifts in examination standards that change how similar claim language is treated from one moment to the next. A more consistent path to strong outcomes is to emphasize the technological context of an insurance-related innovation in the patent application, rather than dismissing or ignoring it. Identify the technical point of novelty, articulate the technological problem it solves, and build a record (specification, claims, and prosecution history) that reinforces that framing. A useful shortcut—echoed in Federal Circuit language such as Contour IP Holding LLC v. GoPro Inc. (2024)—is to ask: Is the point of novelty a technological solution to a technological problem? How to Identify Technological Solutions to Technological Problems Patent eligibility often turns on what the application appears to be “about.” If the narrative centers on an insurance or financial arrangement—rather than the technological mechanism that enables it—the claims are more likely to be mischaracterized as an abstract idea and ruled ineligible. A stronger approach is to discuss the technical problems (system performance, security, interoperability, model reliability, or similar constraints) at the heart of the claimed advance while also detailing the corresponding technical solutions. Many applicants miss this opportunity by describing insurance-related inventions at a high level of abstraction, often eliminating any real chance of issuance. Achieving successful USPTO outcomes is rarely about arguing harder—it is about building the right record from day one. Across the industry, insurance-related companies are finding success protecting a range of innovations. The first step on this path to patent success is working with experienced patent counsel to understand and assess the technological systems that enable and expand their businesses. This work often uncovers important linkages between insurance innovations and related technological advances such as data gathering and cleaning methods for modeling, new AI integrations and advances in machine learning operations, blockchain integration with legacy systems, and backend architectures for efficient, large-volume data processing. Today, generative AI integration in the face of rapidly changing regulatory environments presents particularly strong opportunities for patent portfolio development. Upstream technical improvements—such as prompt engineering, data cleaning and filtering, and novel training processes—may be eligible for patenting. Downstream improvements may also be patentable, including new methods for training and retraining models, controlling real-world devices and systems, and deploying novel user interface elements designed to ensure model output transparency and explainability. Industry Players Are Filing Aggressively Insurance companies have already begun expanding their filings and protecting technological innovations, following in the steps of their fintech peers that already include 10 of the top 200 patent filers in the United States. Some insurance companies have already begun monetizing their patent portfolios to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. While the overall industry’s grant rate for insurance-related applications hovers just below 50%, Alston & Bird insurance clients do far better than this industry average, achieving allowance rates approaching and, in some circumstances, exceeding 90%. Companies should evaluate their technology stacks to identify protectable innovations so they do not leave value on the table or allow others to freely copy inventions that required significant time and resources to develop. Looking ahead, with foundational filings already underway across the industry, we expect an uptick in patent litigation in the insurance space over the next 10 years. The time to build the portfolios needed to survive and thrive in a more litigation-dense landscape is now. n Brian Ellsworth Partner, Intellectual Property - Patents Zack Higbee Partner, Intellectual Property - Patents The New Frontier: Patent Opportunities in Insurance Technology Patents are powerful tools that can lock competitors out of the market for new inventions and cement competitive advantages for patent owners. Over the last two decades, the insurance industry has faced an ever-shifting legal landscape that affects its ability to use patents to protect key innovations. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the insurance industry filed patent applications on a wide range of business processes, including methods for selling, pricing, and optimizing insurance offerings and profitability. The Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Alice v. CLS Bank undercut many of these filings by limiting patents on abstract business and insurance concepts, leaving the industry with little clarity on how to protect different types of innovation. For more than a decade, many insurance-related service innovations were dismissed as mere “business methods” and deemed ineligible for patent protection. That characterization overlooks the reality that most insurancerelated innovations are deployed at scale and maintained using a complex array of systems and technologies. Spotlight on Patents Alston & Bird’s Intellectual Property – Patent Prosecution, Counseling & Review Team 9 8 Spotlight on Patents
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