N OTE : This disposition is nonprecedential. 

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

______________________ IN RE: ANGADBIR SINGH SALWAN, Appellant

______________________

2016

- 2079

______________________ Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 12/587,101.

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Decided: March 13, 2017

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A NGADBIR S INGH S ALWAN , Potomac, MD, pro se.

N ATHAN K. K ELLEY , Office of the Solicitor, United States Patent and Trademark Office , Alexandria, VA, for appellee. Also represented by M AI -T RANG D UC D ANG , K

AKOLI C APRIHAN

.

______________________

Before P ROST , Chief Judge, M AYER , and M OORE , Circuit Judges.

P ER C URIAM

.

Angadbir Singh Salwan appeals from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (“Board”) decision affirming the examiner’s rejection of all pending claims of U.S. PatentIN RE : SALWAN 2

Application No. 12/587,101 (“the ’101 applicati on” ). Because we hold the claims are directed to patent

ineligible subject matter, we affirm

. B ACKGROUND

D r. Salwan is the sole inventor of t he ’101 application

, which claims methods of transferring patient health information , includ ing electronic medical records (“EMR”), in a physician to patient network. The specification discloses that the network can be accessed by, inter alia

, physicians, patients, healthcare product suppliers, and related government agencies. U sers can access the ne twork to schedule appointments, fill out forms, watch educational video clips, create electronic superbills, su bmit insurance claims, bill patients, communicate with doctors and patients, transfer patient health records, conference by video, advertise to patients, sell healthcare produ cts, and rate healthcare providers. The parties agree that c laim 1 is representative:

1. A method for transferring patient health i nformation among healthcare user groups or p atients via a network, the method comprising:
providing at least one central data storage configured to receive and store patient health data from one or more private data storages of healthcare user groups, at least one central computer program e mbodied in at least one computer readable medium or embodied in at least one ce ntral server for processing and transferring patient health information stored in the one or more central data storages, and at least one device for providing user autho rization to access patient data stored in the
one or more centr al data storages, and configuring the central computer program or the central server for:IN RE : SALWAN 3

communicating through at least one computer program, which i ncludes EMR and billing software, embodied in a computer readable medium with at least one private data st orage storing electronic medical record (EMR) information originated, entered and controlled by at least one or more first healthcare service providers affil iated with the one or more healthcare user groups, including at least accounts information co nfiden tial for the first healthcare user groups, the confidential i nformation includes at least a ccounts information of one or more insurance companies, which is at least used by the billing software to calculate patient portion of the bill, and clinical data ge nerated by one or more service providers;
receiving from the at least one pr ivate data storage the EMR info rmation for storing, processing and transmission to at least one of the patients, or one or more second healthcare user groups, wherein the informati on confidential for the first healthcare user groups including at least the accounts i nformation of one or more insu rance companies is not received and stored at the central data storage;
storing the received EMR info rmation generated by the one or

more se rvice providers includingIN RE : SALWAN 4

at least one of health problems, medications, diagnosis, prescri ptions, notes written by the service Providers, diagnostic test results or patient accounts data in the at least one central data storage;
selectively retrieving the stored EMR information, generating one or more healthcare reports inclu ding one or more of health problem list, medication list, diagnoses r eport, prescription, diagnostic test result report, patient billing r eport; and
transmitting one or more healthcare reports to at least the second authorized healthcare user groups or the patient for revie wing.

On Janu ary 7, 2015, the examiner issued a Final R ejection of all pending claims ( claims 1, 7, 8, 10, 13, 18, 25, 28, 29, 32

– 34, 41, and 43

– 71 )

. The examiner rej ected all pending claims under (1) 35 U.S.C. § 101 for lack of patentable subject matter; (2) 35 U.S.C. § 112, first par agraph, for lack of written description; and (3) 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) for obviousness. The examiner also rejected claims 51, 52, 69, and 70 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, for indefiniteness

. Dr. Salwan appealed to the Board. T he Board adop ted the examiner’s a nalysi s and affirmed each of his rejections. Under § 101 , the Board determined that claim 1 is “directed to the abstract idea of billing and also to a fundamental economic practice of calculating a patient’s bill.” J.A. 11. It held that the recited method steps “fail to transform the nature of the claim as they are directed to generic computer structures for storing and transfe r-IN RE : SALWAN 5

ring information.” Id. Under § 112, first paragraph, the Board agreed with the examiner that the specification fails to provide support for claim 1’s limita tions that (1) the confidential information “is not received and stored at the central data storage” and (2) the EMR information is “entered and controlled” by healthcare user groups. The Board agreed with the examiner that the claim limitation in claims 69 and 70, “computing the quality of services,” is not supported by the specification. The Board incorporated the examiner’s analysis for rejec ting all pending claims for obviousness under § 103 (a)

. L astly, under § 112, second paragraph, the Board agreed with the examiner that (1) the limitation “the patient appointment request” in claims 51 and 52 is indefinite for l ack of antecedent basis

, and (2) the limitation “feedback” in claims 69 and 70 is indefinite because it fails define the

sc ope of the claim with reasonable certainty

. D r. Salwan appeals and w e have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A). Because we conclude that all pending claims are directed to patent

- ineligible subject matter, we do not reach the merits of Dr. Salwan ’s arg uments as to the Board’s rejections under §§ 103 and 112.

D ISCUSSION

We review the Board’s determination that claims are directed to patent

- ineligible subject matter de novo. In re Ferguson , 558 F.3d 1359, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2009). Se ction 101 provides that anyone who “invents or disco v ers any new and u seful process, machine, manufac ture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improv ement thereof” ma y obtain a patent. 35 U.S.C. § 101. To determine whether claims are patent eligible un der § 101

, we apply the Supreme Court’s two

- step test articulated in Alice Corp. Party v. CLS Bank International , 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014). First, we determine whether the claims are directed to a patent

- ineligible concept : laws of nature, natural phenomena , and abstract idea s

. Id.IN RE : SALWAN 6

at 2354

– 55

. If so, we then proceed to the second step and “examine the elements of the claim to determine whether it contains an ‘inventive concept’ sufficient to ‘transform’ the claimed abstract idea into a patent

- eligible appl ic ation.” Id. at 2357 (quoting Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc.

, 566 U.S. 66, 72

– 73, 79

– 80 (2012) )

. The Supreme Court has explained that “the mere recit ation of a generic computer cannot transform a patent

ineligible abstract idea into a patent

- eligible invention .” Id. at 2358.

At Alice step one, we hold that the claims are directed to the abstract idea of billing insurance companies and organizing patient health information. Representative claim 1 recite s storing, communicating, tran sferring, and reporting patient health information in a network. Among these steps, claim 1 recite s using billing software
to c alculate a patient’s bil l based on EMR and insurance information. It specif ies that account information of insurance companies is not shared

, whereas EMR info rmation —w hich includes

, inter alia

, medications , diagn oses, and test results

— is received, stored, and selectively retrieved to generate reports. This describes little more than the automa tion of a “method of organizing human activity” with respect to medical information. Alice , 134 S. Ct. at 2356.

Dr. Salwan argues that the claims are not directed to an abstract idea because the calculation of a patient’s bill and the transfer of patient EMR are not theoretical co ncepts. He argues the claims recite practical applications that are employed in a multi

- billion dollar medical billing industry. But while these concepts may be directed to practical concepts, they are fundamental economic and conventional business practices. Under the Supreme Court’s precedent in Alice , such concepts are often held to be abstract. See, e.g.

, id. at 2356 (holding the concept of intermediated settlement is an abstract idea directed to a “fundamental e conomic practice long prevalent in ourIN RE : SALWAN 7

system of commerce”) (citation omitted); Content Extra ction and Transmission LLC v. Wells Fargo Bank, Nat. Ass’n , 776 F.3d 1343, 1347 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (explaining

c laims directed to “the mere formation and manipulatio n of economic relations” and “the performance of certain financial transactions” have been held to involve abstract ideas)

. At Alice step two
, we agree with the Board that the recited method steps “fail to transform the nature of the claim as they are directed to generic computer structures for storing and transferring information.” J.A. 11. Co nsidering the claim elements individually and as a n o rdered combination, the claims merely implement long

known practices related to insurance billing and organi zing pa tient health information on a generic computer

. Dr. Salwan himself argues that the inventive aspect of the claims overcomes the exchange of patient health information “using fax machines, or sending paper doc uments by postal mail, which was ine fficient, costly and time consuming.” Appellant’s Br. 37; see also ’101 application at ¶¶ 110

– 113 (identifying as “main objectives of the present in vention” the ability to enable electronic communication of tasks “currently done man ually using paper, phone and fax machine” ). Given that the claims are directed to well

- known business practices, the claimed elements of a generic “network,” “computer

pro gram,” “central server,” “device,” and “ server for pr ocessing and transferring ” are simply not enough to tran sform the abstract idea into a patent

- eligible invention. See Alice , 134 S. Ct. at 2358. Dr. Salwan’s reference to features r ecited by the depend ent claims —s uch as video conferencing, patient appointment scheduling, patient registration forms, health

- related advertisements, and allowing physicia ns to create handwritten EMR

— does not alter our conclusion. We have considered Dr. Salwan’s remaining ar guments regarding patent eligibility and conclude they are without merit.IN RE : SALWAN 8

C ONCLUSION For the foregoing reasons, the Board’s decision is affirmed

. AFFIRMED

C OSTS

No costs.