Opinion ID: 1039945
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Related System and Method Claims

Text: We review the grant or denial of summary judgment applying the law of the relevant regional circuit. Teva Pharm. Indus. v. AstraZeneca Pharm. LP, 661 F.3d 1378, 1381 (Fed. Cir. 2011). The Third Circuit employs plenary review of a district court’s grant of summary judgment, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the non- 8 ACCENTURE GLOBAL SERVICES v. GUIDEWIRE SOFTWARE, INC. moving party. A.W. v. Jersey City Pub. Schs., 486 F.3d 791, 794 (3d Cir. 2007). We apply our own law, however, with respect to issues of substantive patent law. Aero Prods. Int’l, Inc. v. Intex Recreation Corp., 466 F.3d 1000, 1016 (Fed. Cir. 2006). Patent eligibility under § 101 presents an issue of law that we review de novo. Bancorp Servs., LLC v. Sun Life Assurance Co. of Can., 687 F.3d 1266, 1273 (Fed. Cir. 2012). This legal conclusion may contain underlying factual issues. Ultramercial, Inc. v. Hulu, LLC, No. 2010-1544, 2013 WL 3111303, at  (Fed. Cir. June 21, 2013). We recently evaluated 35 U.S.C. § 101 and its application to computer software in CLS Bank Int’l v. Alice Corp., 717 F.3d 1269 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (en banc). The plurality opinion in CLS Bank identified a two-step process, derived from the Supreme Court’s decision in Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., ___ U.S. ___, 132 S. Ct. 1289 (2012), for analyzing patent eligibility under § 101. First, the court must identify “whether the claimed invention fits within one of the four statutory classes set out in § 101.” CLS Bank, 717 F.3d at 1282. Second, one must assess whether any of the judicially recognized exceptions to subject-matter eligibility apply, including whether the claims are to patent-ineligible abstract ideas. Id. (citing Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1302–03). In the case of abstractness, the court must determine whether the claim poses “any risk of preempting an abstract idea.” Id. To do so the court must first “identify and define whatever fundamental concept appears wrapped up in the claim.” Id.; see also Ultramercial, 2013 WL 3111303, at  (Lourie, J., concurring) (same). Then, proceeding with the preemption analysis, the balance of the claim is evaluated to determine whether “additional substantive limitations . . . narrow, confine, or otherwise tie down the claim so that, in practical terms, it does not cover the full abstract idea itself.” CLS Bank, 717 F.3d at 1282 (citing Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1300; Bilski, 130 S. Ct. at 3231; Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. at 187). ACCENTURE GLOBAL SERVICES v. GUIDEWIRE SOFTWARE, INC. 9 Although CLS Bank issued as a plurality opinion, in that case a majority of the court held that system claims that closely track method claims and are grounded by the same meaningful limitations will generally rise and fall together. Id. at 1274 n.1 (Lourie, Dyk, Prost, Reyna, & Wallach, JJ., plurality opinion) (“[E]ight judges, a majori- ty, have concluded that the particular method, medium, and system claims at issue in this case should rise or fall together in the § 101 analysis.”). Those judges came to that conclusion because the method and system claims were so closely related that the system claim essentially implemented the process of the method claim on a general purpose computer. See id. at 1291 (“Despite minor differences in terminology . . . the asserted method and system claims require performance of the same basic process. Although the system claim associates certain computer components with some of the method steps, none of the recited hardware offers a meaningful limitation beyond generally linking ‘the use of the [method] to a particular technological environment,’ that is, implementation via computers.” (quoting Bilski, 130 S. Ct. at 3230)); id. at 1322 (Newman, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“[P]atent eligibility does not depend on the form of the claim, whether computer-implemented innovations are claimed as a method or a system or a storage medium, whether implemented in hardware or software. Patent eligibility does not turn on the ingenuity of the draftsman.”). That is the case here. The district court in this case held that the method claims of the ’284 patent are invalid under § 101. Accenture, 800 F. Supp. 2d at 621–22. That judgment was not appealed by Accenture. Appellant Br. 10 n.3. Because the judgment as to the method claims was not appealed, it is final and conclusive. See Engel Indus., Inc. v. Lockformer Co., 166 F.3d 1379, 1387 (Fed. Cir. 1999) (“An issue that falls within the scope of the judgment appealed from but is not raised by the appellant in its opening brief on appeal is necessarily waived.”); see also Miss. Chem. 10 ACCENTURE GLOBAL SERVICES v. GUIDEWIRE SOFTWARE, INC. Corp. v. Swift Agr. Chems., 717 F.2d 1374, 1376–77 (Fed. Cir. 1983). We conclude that the district court’s decision on patent-ineligibility of the system claims must also be affirmed, both because the system claims offer no meaningful limitations beyond the method claims that have been held patent-ineligible and because, when considered on their own, under Mayo and our plurality opinion in CLS Bank, they fail to pass muster. Although the issue of the patent eligibility of the method claims is not before us, as it has not been appealed, it is plain to us that, as the district court held, those claims are ineligible for patent. Because the ’284 patent’s method claims have been found to be patent ineligible, we first compare the substantive limitations of the method claim and the system claim to see if the system claim offers a “meaningful limitation” to the abstract method claim, which has already been adjudicated to be patent-ineligible. CLS Bank, 717 F.3d at 1291. Under this analysis, we compare the two claims to determine what limitations overlap, then identify the system claim’s additional limitations. Essentially, we must determine whether the system claim offers meaningful limitations “beyond generally linking ‘the use of the [method] to a particular technological environment.’” Id. (quoting Bilski, 130 S. Ct. at 3230). It is not disputed by the parties that the ’284 patent’s system claim 1 includes virtually the same limitations and many of the same software components as the patentineligible method claims. Both claims are for “generating tasks to be performed in an insurance organization.” ’284 patent col. 107 ll. 25–26, col. 108 ll. 11–12. Both the claimed system and the claimed method contain an insurance transaction database containing information relating to an insurance transaction “decomposed into a plurality of levels from the group comprising a policy level, a claim level, a participant level and a line level, wherein the plurality of levels reflects a policy, the information related ACCENTURE GLOBAL SERVICES v. GUIDEWIRE SOFTWARE, INC. 11 to the insurance transaction, claimants and an insured person in a structured format.” Id. col. 107 ll. 28–36, col. 108 ll. 20–30. Additionally, claim 1 and claim 8 both contain: a client component, id. col. 107 l. 40, col. 108 ll. 34–39; a task assistant, id. col. 107 l. 49, col. 108 l. 31; and an event processor, id. col. 107 l. 49, col. 108 l. 21. The system claims are simply the method claims implemented on a system for performing the method. Accenture only points to system claim 1’s inclusion of an insurance claim folder, a task library database, a server component, and a task engine in attempting to show that the system claim is meaningfully different from the ’284 patent’s method claims. However, these software components are all present in the method claims, albeit without a specific reference to those components by name. Although system claim 1 specifically includes a task engine, id. col. 107 l. 49, method claim 8 includes all the components required for a task engine. Compare id. col. 107 ll. 1–4 with id. col. 108 ll. 17–22. According to the specification, the task engine “follows a process of evaluating events, determining claim characteristics, and matching the claim’s characteristics to tasks defined in the Task Library.” Id. col. 107 ll. 1–4. Method claim 8, likewise, includes an event processor, “determin[es] characteristics,” and “appl[ies] the characteristics . . . to determine a task to be completed.” Id. col. 108 ll. 17–22. Method claim 8 thus includes the limitations of the task engine, albeit without calling it a task engine. Likewise, the server component of system claim 1 includes “an event processor, a task engine and a task assistant,” id. col. 107 ll. 48–49, all of which are present in the method of claim 8, id. col. 108 ll. 17–34. For the claim folder, system claim 1 describes the claim folder as a component within the insurance transaction database. ’284 patent col. 107 ll. 29–31 (“the insurance transaction database comprising a claim folder containing the information related to the insurance transaction”). The claim folder “manages claim infor- 12 ACCENTURE GLOBAL SERVICES v. GUIDEWIRE SOFTWARE, INC. mation . . . by providing a structured and easy to use interface . . . . [It] decomposes a claim into different levels that reflect the policy, the insured, the claim, the claimants, and the claimant’s lines.” Id. col. 83 ll. 117–19, col. 84 ll. 34–36. These levels are already present in the method claim’s insurance transaction database. In fact, method claim 8’s description of the insurance transaction database is an almost verbatim duplicate of system claim 1’s description, even without an explicit reference to the claim folder. The insurance transaction database of method claim 8 also stores insurance claims in a structured environment and decomposes them into different levels. Thus, the claim folder only provides insignificant activity that does not meaningfully differentiate the system claim from the method claim. Cf. Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 191–92 (1981) (“[I]nsignificant postsolution activity will not transform an unpatentable principle into a patentable process.”). Regarding the task library database, system claim 1 discloses that the task library database is “for storing rules for determining tasks to be completed upon an occurrence of an event.” Id. col. 107 ll. 38–39. However, in method claim 8, the information relating to the insurance transaction is applied to “rules to determine a task to be completed, wherein an event processor interacts with an insurance transaction database . . . .” Id. col. 108 ll. 19–22. The task library database is not mentioned in the specification, although it is apparently a database of the rules described as the Task Library, id. col. 107 ll. 5– 13, so that the only information relating to that component is provided by system claim 1 and its related dependent claims. Nevertheless, the task library database is simply a formalized collection of the rules that are present and applied to the insurance transaction information in method claim 8. Indeed, even the specification of the ’284 patent makes little distinction between the system and method claims. The patent describes the invention as “[a] com- ACCENTURE GLOBAL SERVICES v. GUIDEWIRE SOFTWARE, INC. 13 puter program . . . for developing component based software capable of handling insurance-related tasks.” Id. col. 3 ll. 23–25. The patent then discloses detailed software descriptions of the various software components without differentiating between the system or method claims. Further, although the patent’s Figure 1 shows a schematic diagram of the invention, one that includes computer hardware, the schematic’s hardware is merely composed of generic computer components that would be present in any general purpose computer. See id. fig.1 (disclosing a CPU, ROM, RAM, I/O Adapter, Communication Adapter, Display Adapter, and a User Interface Adapter). The patent calls Figure 1 a “representative hardware environment,” id. col. 1 l. 13, while also acknowledging that the hardware represented in Figure 1 “illustrates a typical hardware configuration of a workstation,” id. col. 1 ll. 12–15. The patent thus discloses that the representative hardware for the ’284 patent is a generic computer. In fact, other than the preamble to claim 1 stating that it is a system claim, the limitations of system claim 1 recite no specific hardware that differentiates it from method claim 8. Indeed, in this case “[t]he system claims are [akin] to stating the abstract idea [of the method claim] . . . and adding the words: ‘apply it’ on a computer.” CLS Bank, 717 F.3d at 1291 (plurality opinion) (citing Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1294). Because the system claim and method claim contain only “minor differences in terminology [but] require performance of the same basic process,” id. at 1291, they should rise or fall together. Accenture only cited four additional limitations in system claim 1, and we have already indicated why those limitations do not meaningfully distinguish the abstract idea over the patent ineligible method claim. While it is not always true that related system claims are patent-ineligible because similar method claims are, when they exist in the same patent and are shown to contain insignificant meaningful limitations, the conclusion of ineligibility is inescapable. Thus, like the 14 ACCENTURE GLOBAL SERVICES v. GUIDEWIRE SOFTWARE, INC. unappealed method claims, the system claims of the ’284 patent are invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101.