N OTE : This disposition is nonprecedential. 

# United States **Court of Appeals**  **for the Federal Circuit**

______________________ EVOLUTIONARY INTELLI GENCE LLC, Plaintiff

- Appellant

v. SPRINT NEXTEL CORPORATION, SPRINT COMMUNICATIONS COMPA NY, L.P., SPRINT SPECTRUM L.P., SPRIN T SOLUTIONS, INC., APPLE INC., FACEBOOK INC., FOURSQUARE LABS, INC., GROUPON, INC., LIVINGSOCIAL, INC., MILLENNIAL MED IA, INC., TWITTER, I NC., 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 No s . 5:13

- cv - 03587

- RMW, 5:13

- cv - 04201

- RMW, 5:13

- cv - 04202

- RMW, 5:13

- cv 04203

- 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

______________________EVOLUTIONARY INTELLI GENCE , LLC v. SPRINT NEXTEL CORP
. 2

T ODD K ENNEDY , Gutride Safier LLP, San Francisco, CA, argued for plaintiff

- appellant. H EIDI L YN K EEFE , Cooley LLP, Palo Alto, CA, argued for all defendants -appellees. Defendant -appellee Facebook Inc. also represented by R EUBEN H O -Y EN C HEN , M ARK R. W EINSTEIN
. J AY E. H EIDRICK , Polsinelli PC, Kansas City, MO, for defendants

- appellees S print Nextel Corporation, Sprint Communications Company, L.P., Sprint Spectrum L.P., Sprint Solutions, Inc. Also represented by K AREN Z ELLE M ORRIS , St. Louis, MO. P ATRICK E. K ING , Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, LLP, Palo Alto, CA, for defendant

- appellee Apple Inc. Also represented by E LIZABETH H EATHER W HITE ; J EFFREY E. D ANLEY , SEED Intellectual Property Law Group, PLLC, Seattle, WA. C RAIG R OBERT S MI TH , Lando & Anastasi, LLP, Ca mbridge, MA, for defendant

- appellee Foursquare Labs, Inc. Also represented by E RIC P. C ARNEVALE
. T HOMAS L EE D USTON , Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP, Chicago, IL, for def endants

- appellees Groupon, Inc., LivingSocial, Inc. Also represented by T RON Y. F U
. C HRISTOPHER C. C AMPBELL , Cooley LLP, Reston, VA, for defendant

- appellee Millennial Media, Inc. Also repr esented by N ATHAN K. C UMMINGS
. S TEVEN M OORE , Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP, San Francisco, CA, for def endants

- appell ees Twitter, Inc., Yelp, Inc.

______________________ Before L OURIE , M OORE , and T ARANTO , Circuit Judges.EVOLUTIONARY INTELLI GENCE , LLC v. SPRINT NEXTEL CORP
. 3

L OURIE , 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. P atents 7,010,536 (“the ’536 patent”) and 7,702,682 (“the ’682 patent”) ( collectively , “ the asserted patents ”) are invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 10 1

. See Evol utionary Intelligence, LLC v. Sprint Nextel Corp. , 137 F. Supp. 3d 1157 (N.D. Cal. 2015) (“ Decision ”)

. EI owns th e 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 Corp oration and the other A ppellees (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 compu terizes “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 i mpr ovement 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 stru ctures, operating in a specific way.EVOLUTIONARY INTELLI GENCE , LLC v. SPRINT NEXTEL CORP
. 4
We disagree on both accounts. First, the claims at i ssue 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 conte nt

— 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 co ntent,” is “within the realm of abstract ideas”)

. The claims are u nlike 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 partic ular database technique

— in how computers could carry out one of their basic functions of storage and retrieval of da ta,” 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 li braries and other human enterprises. Second , the claims lack an inventive concept to tran sform 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,” “regi sters,” and “gateways” are “conventional and rou tine ” structures. See Decision , 137 F. Supp. 3d at 1167. Whether analyzed individually or as an ordered combin ation, t he claims recit e those conventional elements at too high a level of generality to constitute an inventive co ncept. 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 abs tract idea ,” inEVOLUTIONARY INTELLI GENCE , LLC v. SPRINT NEXTEL CORP
. 5
contrast to implementing the abstract idea “ on generic computer components, without providing a specific tec hnical 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