Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-16-01004/USCOURTS-ca13-16-01004-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
AKM Enterprise, Inc.
Appellee
TDE Petroleum Data Solutions, Inc.
Appellant

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

TDE PETROLEUM DATA SOLUTIONS, INC.,

Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

AKM ENTERPRISE, INC., DBA MOBLIZE, INC.,

Defendant-Appellee

______________________ 

2016-1004

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Southern District of Texas in No. 4:15-cv-01821, Judge 

Gray H. Miller.

______________________ 

Decided: August 15, 2016 

______________________ 

MALCOLM EDWIN WHITTAKER, Whittaker Law Firm, 

Houston, TX, argued for plaintiff-appellant.

PETER E. MIMS, Vinson & Elkins LLP, Houston, TX, 

argued for defendant-appellee. Also represented by 

JEFFREY TA-HWA HAN, Austin, TX.

______________________ 

Before LOURIE, WALLACH, and HUGHES, Circuit Judges.

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2 TDE PETROLEUM DATA SOLUTIONS v. AKM ENTERPRISE, INC. 

HUGHES, Circuit Judge. 

TDE sued Moblize for infringement of a patent directed to processing sensor data on an oil well drill. The 

district court dismissed the suit on the pleadings, finding 

that the asserted claims are patent-ineligible under 35 

U.S.C. § 101. We agree and affirm the district court’s 

judgment.

I 

TDE and Moblize are competitors that provide services to oil drilling companies. TDE filed suit against 

Moblize in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, alleging that Moblize infringes U.S. 

Patent 6,892,812.

The ’812 patent describes various processes for determining the state of an oil well drill. The disclosed 

processes start by receiving data from sensors deployed on 

the oil well, such as an RPM sensor that detects the 

number of revolutions per minute of the drill string (on 

which the drill bit is affixed), or a fluid pressure sensor 

that detects the pressure of drilling fluid in the stand 

pipe. See ’812 patent, col. 4–5. After receiving this sensor 

data, the processes then validate the data, i.e., accept 

data that is within an expected range and discard data 

that is expected to be erroneous. See id. at col. 6 ll. 30–47. 

Finally, based on the valid sensor data, the processes 

determine what the present state of the oil well drill is, 

e.g., drilling, sliding, or bore hole conditioning. See id. at 

col. 6 l. 48–col. 7 l. 24. The ’812 patent discloses several 

specific flowcharts that may be used in this last step to 

determine the state of the oil well drill. See id. at Figs. 3, 

4, 5A, and 5B.

The parties agree that claim 1 of the ’812 patent is 

representative:

1. An automated method for determining the 

state of a well operation, comprising:

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TDE PETROLEUM DATA SOLUTIONS v. AKM ENTERPRISE, INC. 3

storing a plurality of states for a well operation;

receiving mechanical and hydraulic data reported for the well operation from a plurality of 

systems; and

determining that at least some of the data is 

valid by comparing the at least some of the data to 

at least one limit, the at least one limit indicative 

of a threshold at which the at least some of the 

data do not accurately represent the mechanical 

or hydraulic condition purportedly represented by 

the at least some of the data; and

when at least some of the data are valid, 

based on the mechanical and hydraulic data, automatically selecting one of the states as the state 

of the well operation.

Moblize moved for dismissal of the suit under Federal 

Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), on the theory that the 

claims are patent-ineligible under § 101. The district 

court granted the motion, finding that the claims are 

directed to the abstract idea of “storing data, receiving 

data, and using mathematics or a computer to organize 

that data and generate additional information,” J.A. 9, 

and that the claims fail to recite an inventive concept 

beyond that abstract idea.

TDE appeals. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1295(a)(1).

II 

This court reviews a district court’s dismissal for failure to state a claim under the law of the regional circuit. 

See OIP Techs., Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 788 F.3d 1359, 

1362 (Fed. Cir. 2015). The Fifth Circuit reviews challenges to a dismissal for failure to state a claim under FRCP 

12(b)(6) de novo, taking the allegations of the complaint to 

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4 TDE PETROLEUM DATA SOLUTIONS v. AKM ENTERPRISE, INC. 

be true. See Scanlan v. Texas A&M Univ., 343 F.3d 533, 

536 (5th Cir. 2003). This court reviews the district court’s 

determination of patent eligibility under § 101 de novo. 

See DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P., 773 F.3d 

1245, 1255 (Fed. Cir. 2014).

III 

A patent may be obtained for “any new and useful 

process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, 

or any new and useful improvement thereof,” 35 U.S.C. 

§ 101, but “[l]aws of nature, natural phenomena, and 

abstract ideas are not patentable.” Alice Corp. v. CLS 

Bank Int’l, 134 S. Ct. 2347, 2354 (2014). The nowfamiliar Alice test instructs that a patent claim is ineligible under § 101 if (1) the claim is “directed to one of those 

patent-ineligible concepts” (i.e., a law of nature, natural 

phenomena, or abstract idea) and (2) the claim elements, 

when considered “both individually and ‘as an ordered 

combination’” do not “‘transform the nature of the claim’ 

into a patent-eligible application.” Id. at 2355 (quoting 

Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 132 

S. Ct. 1289, 1296–98 (2012)).

Turning to the first step of the Alice inquiry, we conclude that claim 1 is directed to an abstract idea. The 

steps of claim 1 recite operations performed by any general-purpose computer. As we recently reiterated in 

Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A., No. 2015-1778,

2016 WL 4073318, at *3 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 1, 2016), claims 

generally reciting “collecting information, analyzing it, 

and displaying certain results of the collection and analysis” are “a familiar class of claims ‘directed to’ a patentineligible concept.” Claim 1 of the ’812 patent recites all 

but the “displaying” step. Therefore, it is evident from 

our precedent that claim 1 is the sort of data gathering 

and processing claim that is directed to an abstract idea 

under step one of the Alice analysis. See, e.g., id.; OIP 

Techs., 788 F.3d at 1363; Digitech Image Techs., LLC v. 

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TDE PETROLEUM DATA SOLUTIONS v. AKM ENTERPRISE, INC. 5

Elecs. For Imaging, Inc., 758 F.3d 1344, 1351 (Fed. Cir. 

2014).

Turning to the second step of the Alice inquiry, we 

find nothing in claim 1 that adds anything more to the 

abstract idea of storing, gathering, and analyzing data. 

TDE does not and cannot argue that storing state values, 

receiving sensor data, validating sensor data, or determining a state based on sensor data is individually inventive. And none of TDE’s arguments show that some 

inventive concept arises from the ordered combination of 

these steps, which, even if true, would be unpersuasive 

given that they are the most ordinary of steps in data 

analysis and are recited in the ordinary order. While the 

specification arguably provides specific embodiments for 

the step of “automatically selecting one of the states as 

the state of the well operation,” claim 1 recites none of 

those details. Instead, claim 1 simply recites generic 

computer functions that amount to nothing more than the

goal of determining the state of an oil well operation. As 

we discussed at greater length in Electric Power, the 

claims of the ’812 patent recite the what of the invention, 

but none of the how that is necessary to turn the abstract 

idea into a patent-eligible application. See Electric Power, 

2016 WL 4073318, at *4–5. Therefore, we find that claim 

1 is patent-ineligible under § 101.1

 

1 Although TDE asserted the other 114 claims contained in the ’812 patent, it made no attempt in either its 

briefs or at oral argument to distinguish those claims 

from representative claim 1, other than to state that the 

systems (reciting generic hardware) are different from the 

methods. See Oral Argument at 5:00–6:40 (July 5, 2016), 

available at http://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/

default.aspx?fl=2016-1004.mp3. Those arguments are 

insufficient to demonstrate eligibility under § 101. 

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6 TDE PETROLEUM DATA SOLUTIONS v. AKM ENTERPRISE, INC. 

IV 

For these reasons, we affirm the district court’s judgment finding claims 1–115 patent-ineligible under § 101.

AFFIRMED

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