Source: https://www.patent213.com/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 18:55:49+00:00

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The lack of clarity in the law with regards to patent subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 has made it difficult for patent attorneys to advise their clients with regards to patent protection for software inventions. Since the case law regarding subject matter eligibility is nebulous and seems to be ever changing, the USPTO guidance to its examiners regarding the eligibility of software is also nebulous and is not consistently applied by the patent examiners. Given this lack of clarity, it is exceedingly difficult for patent attorneys to advise their clients regarding their chances of receiving patent protection for software inventions. In an effort to get more consistent rulings from their patent examiners, the USPTO published the 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidelines (hereinafter, the “Revised Guidelines”). Overall, the Revised Guidelines do synthesize the current case law and provide clearer standards for patent examiners to follow when determining if claims to an invention, such as software, is too abstract to receive patent protection. Understanding the Revised Guidelines should make it somewhat easier for patent attorneys to advise their clients regarding software inventions.
Step 1: A claim must be directed to a process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter.
Step 2: This is a two-part analysis from Alice Corp.
Step 2A: Determine whether a claim is directed to a judicial exception (e.g., an abstract idea, a law of nature, or a natural phenomenon).
Step 2B: Even if a claim is determined to be directed to an abstract idea (or another judicial exception), the claim may still be patentable if any element, or combination of elements, in the claim is sufficient to ensure that the claim as a whole amounts to significantly more than an abstract idea.
The Patent Office asserts that the Revised Guidelines are “designed to more accurately and consistently identify claims that recite a practical application of a judicial exception.” To do this, the USPTO has segmented the Alice/Mayo test under Step 2 into three prongs, the first two applying to Step 2A and the last to Step 2B. In the first two prongs of the USPTO’s version of the Alice/Mayo test under the Revised Guidelines, the USPTO makes the distinction between claims that merely “recite” and claims that are “directed to” a judicial exception. In Prong One, the examiner must determine whether the claim recites a judicial exception and, in Prong Two, the examiner must determine whether the recited judicial exception is integrated into a practical application. If a claim recites a judicial exception but fails to integrate the exception into a practical application, then the claim is “directed to” a judicial exception and further analysis is needed under Prong Three (i.e., Step 2B). In Prong Three, a claim that does not integrate a judicial exception into a practical application may nonetheless be patent eligible if additional elements recited in the claim recite “significantly more” than the judicial exception.
Prong One is the first prong of the analysis under Step 2A. Prong One requires an examiner to evaluate whether the claim recites a judicial exception (i.e., an abstract idea, a law of nature, or a natural phenomenon). If no judicial exception is recited, this concludes the analysis and the claim is eligible. However, if the claim does recite a judicial exception, then it requires further analysis in Prong Two of revised Step 2A to determine whether it is directed to the recited judicial exception.
To determine whether a claim recites an abstract idea in Prong One, examiners are now to: (a) identify the specific limitation(s) in the claim under examination (individually or in combination) that the examiner believes recites an abstract idea; and (b) determine whether the identified limitation(s) falls within the subject matter groupings of abstract ideas enumerated in Section I of the 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance.
c) Mental processes – concepts performed in the human mind (including an observation, evaluation, judgment, opinion).
Claims that do not fall within the enumerated categories should not be treated as abstract ideas except in the rare circumstance that the claim limitation does not fall within the enumerated categories, but nonetheless the examiner still believes that the claim limitation should be treated as an abstract idea. In such a case, the examiner is to follow the guidance described in Section III. C of the Revised Guidelines for analyzing the claim. According to Section III. C of the Revised Guidelines, the examiner should initially treat the claim limitation as a tentative abstract idea and continue with the analysis in Prong Two and Prong Three to determine if the claim would be considered “directed to” the judicial exception and if the claim has additional elements that recite significantly more than the judicial exception. If the examiner believes that the tentative abstract idea is directed to the judicial exception and there aren’t additional elements that make the claims significantly more than the judicial exception, then the tentative abstract idea must be approved as an abstract idea by the technology center director.
If the claim is not integrated into a judicial exception, then the claim is “directed to” the judicial exception, and one must analyze the claim under Step 2B and Prong Three. One interesting part of the analysis from the Revised Guidelines is that it specifically excludes evaluations of whether the additional element is well-understood, routine, conventional activity from the analysis of Step 2A. In fact, the Patent Office expressly admits that a claim that includes conventional elements may still integrate the exception into a practical application and thus be patent eligible. Instead, the analysis with respect to well-understood, routine, conventional activity has been shifted to Step 2B and Prong Three.
A claim that does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application may still be patent eligible if the additional elements recited in the claims provide “significantly more” than the judicial exception. More specifically, if the element is unconventional and is more than well-understood, routine, conventional activity in the field, the claim may have an inventive concept (i.e., additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception itself) that makes the claim patent eligible. Whether the additional element(s) amounts to significantly more may depend on whether the additional element or combination of elements “adds a specific limitation or combination of limitations that are not well-understood, routine, conventional activity in the field, which is indicative that an inventive concept may be present” or instead “simply appends well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception, which is indicative that an inventive concept may not be present. One specific example of a situation where additional elements may provide significantly more relates to data gathering. In this example, the USPTO states that the examiner may consider the data gathering steps to be insignificant extra-solution activity under revised Step 2A, but may then determine under Step 2B that the data is gathered in an unconventional way and therefore includes an “inventive concept” that makes the claim patent eligible under Step 2B. However, a claim that does not meaningfully integrate the judicial exception into a practical application and does not include additional subject matter that amounts to significantly more should be rejected as patent ineligible.
Given the analysis under the Revised Guidelines, it is advisable that the patent practitioner stay away from the categories enumerated by the Patent Office under Prong One of the analysis. However, in some circumstances, this may not be possible. In such a case, the patent practitioner should try as much as possible to draft claims that are analogous to patent eligible claims written in Federal Circuit or Supreme Court cases or that clearly and unequivocally fall under the principles of patent eligibility in those cases. In this manner, the claims are likely to be considered integrated into a practical application of a judicial exception and thus be patent eligible under Prong Two. In the circumstance where neither of these are possible, the patent practitioner should try as much as possible to find what is unconventional about a client’s invention and focus the claims on these unconventional features in order to pass Prong Three of the analysis under the Revised Guidelines.
As we’ve covered in other summaries, the Federal Circuit continues to define the line between computer-implemented claims that are patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 for being directed to an abstract idea with no inventive concept applied to it and eligible claims directed to more than simply an abstract idea. The Federal Circuit’s recent decision in In re: Downing illustrates that broad, vague claims directed to an aspirational idea to be implemented on a computer will continue to be rejected. The decision further illustrates that such claims are also vulnerable to rejections under § 112. Applicants seeking computer-based claims should be mindful that claims addressing a technological problem in a specific, well-defined way remains the best path to avoid these pitfalls.
In Downing, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s decision that rejected all pending claims of the application as directed to ineligible subject matter, lacking adequate written description, and indefinite.
such that this product’s capabilities and features accommodate the full extent of resource types and resource planning (encompassing the five categories of planning noted) for operation by nontechnical or technical users in one unbundled computer file through end user interaction with displays.
The examiner rejected all pending claims on three grounds: 1) they were directed to patent-ineligible subject matter, 2) they lacked adequate written description support, and 3) they were indefinite. Specifically, the examiner concluded the claims were directed to the abstract idea of creating an electronic spreadsheet for personal management and did not contain significantly more than that idea as any additional limitations were generic computer elements. The examiner further concluded that the term “intangibles” in the asserted claims lacked adequate written description. The term was not included in the original specification, and the examiner rejected amendments to the specification to describe the term as introducing new matter. Finally, the examiner concluded the claims were indefinite for two reasons: 1) it was unclear what class of invention the claims were directed to and 2) the term “end user” lacked antecedent basis. On appeal, the Board affirmed the examiner’s rejections on all three grounds. Downing then appealed to the Federal Circuit.
Turning to the written description rejection, the Federal Circuit agreed that “intangibles” lacked sufficient written description. The court noted that written description must be judged as of the filing date. As a result, written description must be found in the originally filed specification, and any amendments to add new matter to the specification during prosecution are prohibited. Echoing the examiner’s statement, the court found that “intangibles” was not disclosed or mentioned in the original specification. The court also agreed with the examiner’s objection to Downing’s attempt to amend the specification to define “intangibles” during prosecution. Lastly, the court approved the Board’s finding that a person of ordinary skill in the art would not have understood “intangibles” to refer to several specific items Downing pointed to in the specification.
Finally, the Federal Circuit agreed that the claims were indefinite. The court explained that while the claims purported to be product-by-process claims—“wherein the product is produced by processes of”—the remaining limitations did not define the process for making the product. Instead, those claim limitations—“designing a diffusion-based proprietary forecasting technique on an Excel computer platform for operation within a resource planning framework,” “structuring presentations on the same computer platform,” and “constructing one-time settings for the structure, on the same computer platform”—described functions or features of the product. Because the claims did note recite the steps for making the claimed product, they were indefinite.
The court disagreed with the Board’s conclusion that the claims were also indefinite because “end user” lacked antecedent basis. The court noted that the claims referenced one “end user,” which could only refer to the end user of the product. Thus, lack of an antecedent basis for that term did not render it indefinite.
The claims at issue were exactly the type an applicant for a computer-implemented invention should seek to avoid—vague, difficult-to-follow claims directed to an aspirational idea to be implemented on a computer. The takeaway continues to be that an applicant seeking to avoid Alice eligibility problems should focus on defining a technological problem and claiming a specific implementation that solves that problem and improves computer functionality.
The U.S. Supreme Court presented a two-step framework for determining whether a claim contains patentable subject matter under the abstract idea exception to 35 U.S.C. § 101 in Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l. According to the framework erected in Alice, one must first “determine whether the claims at issue are directed to one of those patent-ineligible concepts,” such as an abstract idea. Then, if so, one must determine whether “additional elements transform the nature of the claim into a patent-eligible application.” Despite the Supreme Court’s Alice decision, Alice and its progeny have yet to provide a consistent and specific definition and/or test for what exactly is an abstraction under 35 U.S.C. § 101. As a result, the Federal Circuit has struggled to consistently apply Alice to computer software, and the law continues to be in flux.
Ancora Technologies, Inc. vs. HTC America, Inc. appears to be an attempt by the Federal Circuit to provide a test to determine whether the claimed computer-related subject matter is an abstraction. As noted by the Federal Circuit at page 11 of Ancora, the test provided in Ancora relates to step one of the Alice analysis. In short, Ancora requires that software claims identify the specific technological technique being used to solve a specific technological problem. Under this analysis, the Federal Circuit in Ancora held that the claims in the Ancora Technologies’ U.S. Patent 6,411,941 (the “‘941 patent”) were specific enough to pass step one of the Alice test. The Federal Circuit thus reversed the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington’s ruling that the claims of the ‘941 patent were directed to patent ineligible subject matter under Alice.
Of particular importance to the Federal Circuit’s analysis in Ancora is the verification structure stored in the erasable, non-volatile memory of the BIOS. BIOS memory is typically utilized to store start-up programs in a computer. However, this is not how the BIOS memory is being used in the ‘941 patent. Instead, the ‘941 patent teaches using the BIOS memory to store a verification structure that can be used to determine whether the program stored in volatile memory is licensed to run on that computer. The innovation taught by the ‘941 patent thus lies in the interaction between the verification structure stored in BIOS memory and the program that is stored in another memory structure to check for permission to run the program. This was a new and specific use of the BIOS memory. According to the ‘941 patent, using the BIOS memory instead of other computer memory makes it much harder to hack the verification structure because successfully hacking the BIOS memory would render the computer inoperable. The teachings of the ‘941 patent therefore solved a particular technological problem.
In cases involving software innovations, this inquiry often turns on whether the claims focus on ‘the specific asserted improvement in computer capabilities . . . or, instead, on a process that qualifies as an ‘abstract idea’ for which computers are invoked merely as a tool.’ Ancora at pg. 8 (citing Finjan, Inc. v. Blue Coat System, Inc., 879 F.3d 1299, 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (external citations omitted)).
The Federal Circuit begins its analysis by characterizing its holding in Enfish. The Federal Circuit in Ancora describes Enfish as holding that the patent claims at issue were not directed to an abstract idea. According to Ancora, the claimed self-referential tables in Enfish improved the way that computers operated and handled data, which enabled programmers to construct databases in new ways and with less configuration prior to launch.
The Federal Circuit then moves onto its holding in Visual Memory LLC v. NVIDIA Corp. According to the Federal Circuit in Ancora, the claims in Visual Memory were directed to an improved memory system that configured operational characteristics of a computer’s cache memory to accommodate different types of processors without compromising performance. Thus, the patent in Visual Memory was characterized by the Federal Circuit as being specifically directed to an improved computer memory system, not to the abstract idea of categorical data storage.
Next, the Federal Circuit characterizes its holding in Core Wireless Licensing S.A.R.L. v. LG Electronics, Inc. The claims in Core Wireless were directed to a method for making websites easier to navigate on a small-screen device. According to the Federal Circuit in Ancora, the claims were not directed to the abstract idea of indexing information but rather directed to a specific type of index for a specific type of user and thus were not abstract.
Finally, the Federal Circuit discusses its holding in Data Engine Technologies LLC v. Google LLC. According to the Federal Circuit in Ancora, the claims in Data Engine were a specific technological solution in the art of electronic spreadsheets. The claimed method in Data Engine solved the navigation difficulties of prior art spreadsheets by providing a highly intuitive, user-friendly interface with familiar notebook tabs for navigating the three-dimensional worksheet environment. In Data Engine, the court distinguished other cases in which the claims were held to be directed to abstract subject matter, such as displaying a graphical user interface, or collecting, manipulating and organizing information. According to the court in Ancora, the claims in Data Engine recited a specific structure of notebook tabs within a spreadsheet display that performs the specific function of navigating within a three-dimensional spreadsheet. This provided the specificity required to find that the claims were patent eligible.
The Federal Circuit in Ancora then asserts that claim 1 of the ‘941 patent is not directed to an abstract idea based on the precedents of the aforementioned cases. According to the Federal Circuit, preventing a computer from using a program without authorization is not abstract “if done by a specific technique that departs from earlier approaches to solve a specific computer problem” (Ancora at pg. 10). Claim 1 of the ‘941 patent specifically identifies how a functionality improvement is effectuated. More specifically, claim 1 recites a structure containing a license record (i.e., verification structure) stored in a particular modifiable portion of the computer’s BIOS memory and that structure is used for verification by interacting with the distinct computer memory that contains the computer program to be verified. The technological problem solved is the vulnerability of license-authorization software to hacking. The Federal Circuit in Ancora thus concludes that claim 1 of the ‘941 patent is not abstract under step 1 of Alice because “[i]n short, claim 1 of the ‘941 patent is directed to a solution to a computer-functionality problem: an improvement in computer functionality that has ‘the specificity required to transform a claim from one claiming only a result to one claiming a way of achieving it’” (Ancora at pg. 11, quoting SAP America, Inc. vs. InvestPic, LLC).
The court’s holding in Ancora is a reminder to patent prosecutors that vague and generic software claims are unlikely to pass the Alice test. Whenever writing a software patent, patent counsel should be able to identify the specific technological technique being used and the particular technological problem being solved by the technique. The specific technological technique should be worked into the claims, and the particular technological problem being solved should be discussed in the specification in detail. Certainly, identifying the electronic components and working these electronic components into the claims will go a long way to ensure patent eligibility. If not, the claims should at least identify the virtual “structures” produced by the software in order to solve the particular technological problem, like in Data Engine. Software claims that merely recite actions (e.g., the processing of information) performed by a computer are not likely to pass step one of the Alice test under Ancora.

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