In Experian Marketing Solutions, Inc. v. RPost Communications Ltd., Case CBM2014-00010 (June 19, 2014), the Patent Trial and Appeal Board denied a request for covered business method patent review even though it found that the patent included claims for “performing data processing or other operations used in the practice, administration, or management of a financial product or service.” Experian petition ExperianMktgSolutions_v_RPostCommLtd_CBM2014-0010
Archive for July, 2014
Experian Marketing Solutions, Inc. v. RPost Communications Ltd. – PTAB finds electronic messaging a “technological invention” outside ambit of Covered Business Method review
Thursday, July 17th, 2014Digitech Image Technologies, LLC v. Electronics For Imaging, Inc. — Data structures per se not patentable
Thursday, July 17th, 2014In Digitech Image Technologies, LLC v. Electronics For Imaging, Inc., Case No. 13-1600 (Fed. Cir. July 14, 2014), the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court decision invalidating all claims of Digitech’s patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,128,415). In making its decision, the court considered three independent claims of the ‘415 patent.
Independent claim 1 recites “A device profile … comprising … first data … and second data ….” Similarly, independent claim 26 recites “A device profile … comprising data ….” The claims do not recite any storage media holding the device profiles, but are entirely directed to the profiles themselves. These claims appear on their face to be directed to data structures per se, and the Federal Circuit so held, finding that claims 1 and 26 are “directed to information in its non-tangible form.”[1] Notably, the application that led to the ‘415 patent was filed on September 6, 1996, but In re Warmerdam, 33 F.3d 1354 (Fed. Cir. 1994) had already established that a “data structure” “is not one of the categories of subject matter recited in Sec. 101.” Thus, the rejection of this claim is based on case law from 1994, and does not reflect a post-Alice change.
