Source: https://www.carterdeluca.com/news/federal-circuit-lays-another-piece-software-patent-eligibility-puzzle/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 03:57:55+00:00

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Most patent practitioners would agree that, fundamentally, software patent claims are directed to patent eligible subject matter. Those same patent practitioners may not agree, however, if asked whether a court would find a particular set of software patent claims to be patent eligible. This uncertainty amongst patent practitioners is borne from the highly volatile legal landscape now encompassing software patent claims in the wake of Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l (“Alice”).
In Alice, the Supreme Court laid out a specific framework for analyzing patentable subject matter with one stark exception; it never set forth specific criteria for determining what constitutes an “abstract idea” and essentially adopted Justice Potter’s “I know it when I see it” approach. Notably, since Alice was decided in 2014, only two examples of software patent claims have been held to recite patent eligible subject matter by the Federal Circuit: DDR Holdings v. Hotels.com and Enfish. Indeed, most decisions since Alice have identified what is not patent eligible, leaving practitioners at a loss to define what is patent eligible. At best, practitioners have been pinning their hopes on drafting claims that avoid similarities to those on the ever growing list of non-patent eligible claims and where possible, identifying similarities to the claims from DDR Holdings or Enfish.
A method for automatically animating lip synchronization and facial expression of three-dimensional characters comprising: obtaining a first set of rules that define output morph weight set stream as a function of phoneme sequence and time of said phoneme sequence; obtaining a timed data file of phonemes having a plurality of sub-sequences; generating an intermediate stream of output morph weight sets and a plurality of transition parameters between two adjacent morph weight sets by evaluating said plurality of sub-sequences against said first set of rules; generating a final stream of output morph weight sets at a desired frame rate from said intermediate stream of output morph weight sets and said plurality of transition parameters; and applying said final stream of output morph weight sets to a sequence of animated characters to produce lip synchronization and facial expression control of said animated characters.
In view of the above claim construction, the district court, applying the two part Alice framework, found that “because the claims were not limited to specific rules, but rather ‘purport to cover all such rules,’ the claims merely call for application of the abstract idea of using rules.” Therefore, as noted above, the district court found that the claims were not directed to patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
[c]laim 1 requires that the rules be rendered in a specific way: as a relationship between subsequences of phonemes, timing, and the weight to which each phoneme is expressed visually at a particular timing . . . [t]he specific structure of the claimed rules would prevent broad preemption of all rules-based means of automating lip synchronization, unless the limits of the rules themselves are broad enough to cover all possible approaches.
The CAFC ultimately found that “[b]y incorporating the specific features of the rules as claim limitations, claim 1 is limited to a specific process for automatically animating characters using particular information and techniques and does not preempt approaches that use rules of a different structure or different techniques.” Therefore, when viewed as a whole, as required under step one of the Alice framework, “claim 1 is directed to a patentable, technological improvement over the existing, manual 3-D animation techniques . . . [and] therefore, is not directed to an abstract idea.” As a result of finding that claim 1 is not directed to an abstract idea, the CAFC did not even have to address step two of the Alice framework to find that claim 1 is patent eligible.
In light of the dearth of examples of software patent claims that have been held to be patent eligible, McRO provides meaningful guidance to practitioners who have been left with simply arguing that their claims are similar to those from DDR Holdings and Enfish. In one aspect, McRO further defines the role of preemption in determining whether a claim is directed to an abstract idea or is directed to patent eligible subject matter. The USPTO, in its § 101 guidance, greatly downplayed the significance of preemption and its effect on the patent eligibility of a claim. However, as evidenced in McRO, it appears to be possible to draft a claim that encompasses some, but not all, methods of accomplishing an end result. In this manner, preemption may play a larger role in establishing whether or not a patent software claim is directed to patent eligible subject matter.
Further, McRO reminds practitioners that the Alice analysis requires a reading of the claim as a whole while taking into account the specific details of the claim. The CAFC in McRO painstakingly details how specific elements of the claim, notably “requir[ing] that the rules be rendered in a specific way: as a relationship between subsequences of phonemes, timing, and the weight to which each phoneme is expressed visually at a particular timing,” can provide meaningful limitations that “would prevent broad preemption of all rules-based means of automating lip synchronization.” Therefore, practitioners should seek to aggressively respond to Examiner’s who grossly generalize the steps of a method without taking into account the specific recitations of each element of the claim, particularly when reading the claim as a whole. As illustrated by the now overturned district court’s decision in McRO, it is legal error to fail to consider specific details of the claim when performing a § 101 analysis under Alice.
As has been the suggestion since the decision in Alice, when drafting software patent claims, practitioners should strive to include meaningful limitations on any claimed process. The most important lesson gleaned from McRO is that the specific details of the claims in McRO limited the scope of the claim so as to not preempt all possible methods of performing the process. The CAFC found that these meaningful limitations ultimately rendered the claim patent eligible. To this end one should consider including in the specification multiple genus level methods or operations to achieve the desired result, and then carefully draft claims to either specifically claim a genus, or specific species within that genus.
Finally, McRO clearly establishes that a software patent claim performed on a general purpose computer directed to automating a manual process is not per se ineligible. Thus, it is once again important to provide context for software claims and it may be prudent to specifically describe prior art methodologies and to point out distinctions between the claimed process and the prior art in order to establish that the claims are “directed to a patentable, technological improvement over” the prior art. Taking the lessons from DDR Holdings, Enfish, and now McRO, practitioners are slowly being given the tools to effectively draft software patent claims and make arguments to successfully overcome both USPTO examiner rejections and challenges in the courts.
 134 S.Ct. 2347 (Fed. Cir. 2014).
 See also, Enfish LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 822 F.3d 1327 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (stating that “[t]he Supreme Court has not established a definitive rule to determine what constitutes an ‘abstract idea’ sufficient to satisfy the first step of the Mayo/Alice inquiry.”) (“Enfish”).
 Dist. Ct. Patentability Op., 55 F. Supp. 3d 1214, 1224.
 The ’576 Patent, cl. 1, col. 11, ll. 27-47.
 See, e.g., the ’576 Patent, col. 1, l. 14 – col. 2, l. 37.
 McRO at 7, citing the ’576 Patent at col. 2, ll. 31-33.
 McRO Reply Br. at 4 (emphasis removed).
 The ’576 Patent at col. 2, lines 35-37.
 The ’576 Patent at Col. 10, ll. 6-7.
 McRO at 14, quoting Dist. Ct. Patentability Op., 55 F. Supp. 3d 1214, 1227.
 See e.g., Supra, p. 1.
 McRO at 21, quoting In re TLI Commc’ns LLC Patent Litig., 823 F.3d 607, 611 (Fed. Cir. 2016).
 McRO at 21, quoting J.A. 4171 (Dist. Ct. Claim Construction Op. 16) (quoting the ’576 Patent, cl. 1).
 McRO at 21 (emphasis added).
 McRO at 22, quoting the ’576 Patent at col. 2, ll. 49-50.
 McRO at 24-25, quoting Alice, 134 S.Ct at 2358, citing Flook, 437 U.S. at 585-86; Bilski, 561 U.S. at 611; Alice, 134 S.Ct. at 2356.
 Id., citing Diamond v. Chakarabarty, 447 U.S. 303, 305 (1980).
 Id., quoting Le Roy v. Tatham, 55 U.S. 156, 175 (1853).
 McRO at 23, quoting Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 182 n.7 (emphasis added).
 McRO at 23, citing Enfish at 1336.
 Id. at 26 (emphasis added).
 Id., citing Kiyoshi Honda, Physiological Processes of Speech Processing, in Springer Handbook of Speech Production 7 (Jacob Benesty et al. ed., 2008).

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