Source: http://dunlapcodding.com/phosita/2016/07/fed-cir-finds-%C2%A7-101-patent-eligible-subject-matter-bascom
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 08:45:40+00:00

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On June 27, 2016, a three judge panel of the Federal Circuit delivered a decision in BASCOM Global Internet v. AT&T Mobility LLC. The court held that while BASCOM’s asserted claims were directed to the abstract idea of filtering content, the claims contained an “inventive concept” that transformed the abstract idea into a particular, practical application of that abstract idea.
BASCOM sued for infringement of US Patent No. 5,987,606, titled “Method and System for Content Filtering Information Retrieved from an Internet Computer Network” (the ’606 patent). AT&T filed a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). The United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas granted the motion on the grounds that BASCOM failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted because the claims of the ’606 patent were invalid as a matter of law under 35 U.S.C. § 101. BASCOM appealed.
The ’606 patent describes a filtering system which avoids being “modified or thwarted by a computer literate end-user,” and avoids being installed on and dependent on “individual end-user hardware and operating systems” or “tied to a single local area network or a local server platform” by installing the filter at the ISP server. Unlike prior art filtering tools that existed on local servers and remote ISP servers, the claimed filtering tool retains the advantage of a filtering tool that is located on each local computer in that individuals are able to customize how requests for Internet content from their own computers are filtered instead of having a universal set of filtering rules applied to everyone’s requests.
In practice, the ISP server receives a request to access a website, associates the request with a particular user, and identifies the requested website. The filtering tool then applies the filtering mechanism associated with the particular user to the requested website to determine whether the user associated with that request is allowed access to the website. The filtering tool returns either the content of the website to the user, or a message to the user indicating that the request was denied. The ’606 patent describes its filtering system as a novel advance over prior art computer filters, in that no one had previously provided customized filters at a remote server.
In determining the eligibility of the asserted claims, the court applied the Mayo/Alice two-step analytical framework noting it was “set forth to help courts identify patents that, in essence, claim nothing more than abstract ideas.” It is important to note that Judge Chen was careful to point out that the Federal Circuit has “found software-related patents eligible under both steps of the test Alice sets out.” Specifically, the Federal Circuit found the claims in Enfish LLC v. Microsoft Corp. patent eligible under step one and the claims in DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P. patent eligible under step two. Both cases were used in the analysis of the presently asserted claims.
Further, Judge Chen emphasized that the court was giving all inferences to the non-moving party, which he seems to imply did not happen at the district court.
As Gene Quinn asserts in his analysis of this case on www.ipwatchdog.com, “[n]owhere else in the law is it so easy for a defendant to prevail on a motion to dismiss.” Before Alice, the Federal Circuit reasoned that a finding of patent ineligible subject matter was rare at the pleading stage of a patent infringement suit. See Ultramercial, Inc. v. Hulu, LLC, 722 F.3d 1335, 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2013)(Ultramercial II), vacated sub nom. WildTangent, Inc. v. Ultramercial, LLC, 134 S. Ct. 2870, 189 L. Ed. 2d 828 (2014). Following Alice, Mr. Quinn notes “to my knowledge this is the first decision to actually apply basic civil procedure protections in the context of a 12(b)(6) motion that argues patent claims are ineligible.” Just as he concluded, given all of the infringement cases decided on pre-trial motions, I think it will be interesting to see if other panels of the Federal Circuit and the district courts begin to apply one of the most fundamental rules of civil procedure to give the holders of a constitutionally protected property right their day in court.
In the decision, Judge Chen explained that “[t]he district court’s [eligibility] analysis in this case... looks similar to an obviousness analysis under 35 U.S.C. §103.” As many have observed, this is not an isolated issue. Judge Chen goes on to illuminate one of the veiled issues with such an approach, the analysis “lack[s] an explanation of a reason to combine the limitations as claimed.” In other words, the analysis is performed without any of the constraints limiting how and under what circumstances a combination of disparate prior art elements can lead to a proper conclusion of obviousness under Section 103. By circumventing the proper analysis, the test becomes more subjective and less transparent, never a good combination in the law.
In Judge Newman’s concurrence, couched in an argument for a more flexible approach to the determination of patent eligibility, she calls for a return “to the letter of Section 101, where eligibility is recognized for ‘any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter.’” She argues that any inventive concept that falls into one of the statutory categories that “is claimed so broadly or vaguely or improperly as to be deemed an ‘abstract idea,’ could be [invalidated] on application of the requirements and conditions of patentability” (i.e. novelty, nonobviousness, or subject matter eligibility).

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