Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-16-01197/USCOURTS-ca13-16-01197-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Evolutionary Intelligence LLC
Appellant
Millennial Media, Inc.
Appellee

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

EVOLUTIONARY INTELLIGENCE LLC,

Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

SPRINT NEXTEL CORPORATION, SPRINT 

COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY, L.P., SPRINT 

SPECTRUM L.P., SPRINT SOLUTIONS, INC., 

APPLE INC., FACEBOOK INC., FOURSQUARE 

LABS, INC., GROUPON, INC., LIVINGSOCIAL, 

INC., MILLENNIAL MEDIA, INC., TWITTER, INC., 

YELP, INC.,

Defendants-Appellees

______________________ 

2016-1188, 2016-1190, 2016-1191, 2016-1192, 2016-1194, 

2016-1195, 2016-1197, 2016-1198, 2016-1199

______________________ 

Appeals from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of California in Nos. 5:13-cv-03587-

RMW, 5:13-cv-04201-RMW, 5:13-cv-04202-RMW, 5:13-cv04203-RMW, 5:13-cv-04204-RMW, 5:13-cv-04205-RMW, 

5:13-cv-04206-RMW, 5:13-cv-04207-RMW, 5:13-cv-04513-

RMW, Senior Judge Ronald M. Whyte.

______________________ 

Decided: February 17, 2017

______________________ 

Case: 16-1197 Document: 12-2 Page: 1 Filed: 02/17/2017
2 EVOLUTIONARY INTELLIGENCE, LLC v. SPRINT NEXTEL CORP. 

TODD KENNEDY, Gutride Safier LLP, San Francisco, 

CA, argued for plaintiff-appellant.

 HEIDI LYN KEEFE, Cooley LLP, Palo Alto, CA, argued 

for all defendants-appellees. Defendant-appellee Facebook 

Inc. also represented by REUBEN HO-YEN CHEN, MARK R.

WEINSTEIN. 

 JAY E. HEIDRICK, Polsinelli PC, Kansas City, MO, for 

defendants-appellees Sprint Nextel Corporation, Sprint 

Communications Company, L.P., Sprint Spectrum L.P., 

Sprint Solutions, Inc. Also represented by KAREN ZELLE 

MORRIS, St. Louis, MO.

 PATRICK E. KING, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, LLP, 

Palo Alto, CA, for defendant-appellee Apple Inc. Also 

represented by ELIZABETH HEATHER WHITE; JEFFREY E.

DANLEY, SEED Intellectual Property Law Group, PLLC, 

Seattle, WA.

 CRAIG ROBERT SMITH, Lando & Anastasi, LLP, Cambridge, MA, for defendant-appellee Foursquare Labs, Inc. 

Also represented by ERIC P. CARNEVALE. 

 THOMAS LEE DUSTON, Marshall, Gerstein & Borun 

LLP, Chicago, IL, for defendants-appellees Groupon, Inc., 

LivingSocial, Inc. Also represented by TRON Y. FU. 

 CHRISTOPHER C. CAMPBELL, Cooley LLP, Reston, VA, 

for defendant-appellee Millennial Media, Inc. Also represented by NATHAN K. CUMMINGS. 

 STEVEN MOORE, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton 

LLP, San Francisco, CA, for defendants-appellees Twitter, 

Inc., Yelp, Inc.

______________________ 

Before LOURIE, MOORE, and TARANTO, Circuit Judges.

Case: 16-1197 Document: 12-2 Page: 2 Filed: 02/17/2017
EVOLUTIONARY INTELLIGENCE, LLC v. SPRINT NEXTEL CORP. 3

LOURIE, Circuit Judge. 

Evolutionary Intelligence, LLC (“EI”) appeals from 

the decision of the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of California, concluding that all claims 

of U.S. Patents 7,010,536 (“the ’536 patent”) and 

7,702,682 (“the ’682 patent”) (collectively, “the asserted 

patents”) are invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. See Evolutionary Intelligence, LLC v. Sprint Nextel Corp., 137 F. 

Supp. 3d 1157 (N.D. Cal. 2015) (“Decision”). 

EI owns the asserted patents, which have the same

written description and are directed to systems and 

methods for allowing computers to process data that are

dynamically modified based upon external-to-the-device 

information, such as location and time. See, e.g., ’536 

patent Abstract. 

EI sued Sprint Nextel Corporation and the other Appellees (collectively, “Sprint”) for infringement of the 

asserted patents. The district court granted Sprint’s 

motion to dismiss EI’s complaint and for judgment on the 

pleadings, concluding that all claims of the asserted 

patents are invalid under § 101 as being directed to the 

abstract idea of “searching and processing containerized 

data.” The court held that the invention merely computerizes “age-old forms of information processing,” such as 

those used in “libraries, businesses, and other human 

enterprises with folders, books, time-cards, ledgers, and 

so on.” Decision, 137 F. Supp. 3d at 1165. 

EI timely appealed to this court. We have jurisdiction 

pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1). On appeal, EI argues 

that the claims are patent eligible because: (1) they are 

not directed to an abstract idea, but rather to an improvement in the functioning of the computer itself; and 

(2) even if they were directed to an abstract idea, they are 

patent eligible as containing an inventive concept because 

they recite a specific arrangement of particular structures, operating in a specific way.

Case: 16-1197 Document: 12-2 Page: 3 Filed: 02/17/2017
4 EVOLUTIONARY INTELLIGENCE, LLC v. SPRINT NEXTEL CORP. 

We disagree on both accounts. First, the claims at issue here are directed to an abstract idea. We have held 

that “tailoring of content based on information about the 

user—such as where the user lives or what time of day 

the user views the content—is an abstract idea.” Affinity 

Labs of Texas, LLC v. Amazon.com Inc., 838 F.3d 1266, 

1271 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (describing Intellectual Ventures I 

LLC v. Capital One Bank (USA), 792 F.3d 1363, 1369 

(Fed. Cir. 2015)); see Elec. Power Group, LLC v. Alstom 

S.A., 830 F.3d 1350, 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (“collecting 

information, including when limited to particular content,” is “within the realm of abstract ideas”). The claims 

are unlike those in Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., where 

“the plain focus of the claims” was on “an improvement to 

the computer functionality itself,” 822 F.3d 1327, 1336 

(Fed. Cir. 2016), i.e., “a specific improvement—a particular database technique—in how computers could carry out 

one of their basic functions of storage and retrieval of 

data,” regardless of subject matter or the use to which 

that functionality might be put, Elec. Power, 830 F.3d at 

1354 (describing Enfish). Here, the claims are directed to

selecting and sorting information by user interest or 

subject matter, a longstanding activity of libraries and 

other human enterprises.

Second, the claims lack an inventive concept to transform the abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention. EI 

does not dispute that merely using a computer is not 

enough. Moreover, EI conceded that “containers,” “registers,” and “gateways” are “conventional and routine” 

structures. See Decision, 137 F. Supp. 3d at 1167. 

Whether analyzed individually or as an ordered combination, the claims recite those conventional elements at too 

high a level of generality to constitute an inventive concept. See, e.g., BASCOM Glob. Internet Servs., Inc. v. 

AT&T Mobility LLC, 827 F.3d 1341, 1350, 1352 (Fed. Cir. 

2016) (finding claims patent eligible where they “recite a 

specific, discrete implementation of the abstract idea,” in 

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EVOLUTIONARY INTELLIGENCE, LLC v. SPRINT NEXTEL CORP. 5

contrast to implementing the abstract idea “on generic 

computer components, without providing a specific technical solution beyond simply using generic computer

concepts in a conventional way”). 

We have considered EI’s remaining arguments, but 

find them to be unpersuasive. For the foregoing reasons, 

we affirm the judgment of the district court.

AFFIRMED 

Case: 16-1197 Document: 12-2 Page: 5 Filed: 02/17/2017