Posts Tagged ‘supreme court’

Netflix, Inc. v. Rovi Corporation (NDCA 2015): Five TV guide patents dropped by abstract idea ineligibility

Wednesday, July 29th, 2015

How did we go from the claims in Alice being considered abstract, claims that clearly involved a well-known financial concept (e.g, intermediated settlement) merely implemented on a computer, to admittedly novel (and likely non-obvious) concepts inexorably tied to computing systems being considered abstract?

District courts and the CAFC seem to be quickly expanding the reach of the abstract idea to invalidate software implemented inventions. In Netflix v. Rovi (Netflix, Inc. v. Rovi Corporation, Case No. 11-cv-6591, NDCA 2015), the court uses the Alice/Mayo abstract idea test to invalidate as non-patentable subject matter claims directed to an admittedly unknown concept rooted in computer technology, just because the claims could be articulated as being directed to an abstract idea. This court, and many others, seem to have missed the part of Alice where the Supreme Court cautions that all claims at some level involve an abstract idea.

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Research Corporation Technologies Inc. v. Microsoft Corp.: Sanity Returns to Section 101 Abstraction Analysis

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bilski v. Kappos decision, there have been a raft of District Court and Board decisions that took the “abstract idea” exclusion for patentable subject matter past the point of absurdity.  Thankfully it did not take long for some sanity to return to the legal precedent on this all-important issue.   On December 8, a three judge panel (Judges Rader, Newman and Plager) of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that, to be found unpatentable under the abstract idea exclusion from 35 U.S.C. §101, an invention’s abstractness must “exhibit itself so manifestly as to override the broad statutory categories” of patent eligibility.  Research Corporation Technologies Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., Fed. Cir., No. 2010-1037, 12/8/10.  RCT v. Microsoft Federal Circuit Decision

The patents in question, owned by Research Corporation Technologies Inc. (for a profile of this company’s patent holdings see: http://www.patentbuddy.com/Company/Profile/RES-CORP-TECH-INC/155237), involved digital imaging process claims.  The Federal Circuit found that these claims, which had been found unpatentable under Section 101 by the district court, are patentable subject matter because they claim “functional and palpable applications in the field of computer technology.”

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The Board Takes Bilski for a Test Drive and Runs Over Some Software Claims

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

July and August have been busy months for the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences.  Not including the Ex Parte Proudler and Ex Parte Birger cases I previously reported on, the BPAI has issued at least ten opinions in which software-related claims were rejected under Section 101 in view of Bilski.  These opinions, excerpts of which are provided below, present both understandable and puzzling Section 101 rejections.  A number of the rejections are understandable due to a lack of computer structure or electronic functionality in the claim to tie the software elements to a machine implementation. Of particular note, it appears that machine limitations in method claims are not enough per se to bring the claim into the machine sphere of the machine or transformation test, according to these Board decisions, despite the PTO’s Interim Guidance, which seems to indicate otherwise.

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