Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-19-01957/USCOURTS-ca13-19-01957-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
C. Douglass Thomas
Appellant

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________

IN RE: C. DOUGLASS THOMAS,

Appellant

______________________

2019-1957

______________________

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark 

Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 11/960,449.

______________________

Decided: April 8, 2020

______________________

C. DOUGLASS THOMAS, TI Law Group, PC, San Jose, 

CA, pro se. 

 BRIAN RACILLA, Office of the Solicitor, United States 

Patent and Trademark Office, Alexandria, VA, for appellee 

Andrei Iancu. Also represented by THOMAS W. KRAUSE,

AMY J. NELSON, FARHEENA YASMEEN RASHEED.

 ______________________

Before DYK, SCHALL, and O’MALLEY, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

C. Douglass Thomas appeals a decision of the Patent 

Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) affirming the examiner’s 

rejection of all pending claims in U.S. Patent Application 

No. 11/960,449 (“’449 application”) under 35 U.S.C. § 101. 

Case: 19-1957 Document: 35 Page: 1 Filed: 04/08/2020
2 IN RE: THOMAS

The ’449 application is titled “Method and User Interface 

for Requesting and Reviewing Notifications Pertaining to 

Publications.” J.A. 36. Independent claim 1 is representative of the subject matter at issue on appeal:

A computer-implemented method for notifying users having patents of subsequent publications that 

reference the patents of the users, said computerimplemented method comprising:

identifying a user patent associated with a 

user;

determining whether one or more subsequent 

publications reference the user patent;

producing a notification message for the user to 

inform the user of the one or more subsequent 

publications; and

sending the notification message to the user, 

wherein said identifying, said determining, 

said producing and said sending are performed 

by one or more computing devices,

wherein said sending comprises transmitting 

the notification message to the user as an electronic mail message,

wherein the notification message comprises an 

active link to a world wide web page containing 

the descriptive information about the one or 

more subsequent publications, and

wherein the method further comprises:

determining whether the one or more subsequent patents are associated with at 

least one notifiee that is one of a plurality 

of previously identified notifiees; and

Case: 19-1957 Document: 35 Page: 2 Filed: 04/08/2020
IN RE: THOMAS 3

determining a predetermined authorization type for publication notifications for 

the at least one notifiee; and

wherein said producing of the notification message includes an indication of the authorization

type for the at least one notifiee.

J.A. 27. 

Applying the two-step framework set forth in Alice 

Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208 (2014), the Board 

found that the claims are directed to the abstract idea of 

“alerting by notification message notice of a new publication indicated as relevant to the notifiee.” J.A. 4–9. The 

Board also found that the claims do not contain an inventive concept beyond the abstract idea. J.A. 23–24. We 

agree with the Board on both points. We therefore adopt 

the Board’s reasoning in its decision and its decision denying rehearing. See J.A. 1–25. 

We have considered Thomas’s arguments on the patent 

eligibility of the claims but find them unpersuasive. The 

decision of the Board is affirmed. 

AFFIRMED

COSTS

The parties shall bear their own costs.

Case: 19-1957 Document: 35 Page: 3 Filed: 04/08/2020