Opinion ID: 2802954
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Invalidity of Claims 60–68

Text: The district court also determined that claims 60–68 were invalid for failing to comply with 35 U.S.C. § 101. 4 “We review the district court’s determination of patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 de novo.” DDR Holdings, 4 Because the district court invalidated these claims before entering summary judgment of non-infringement on the remaining claims, it did not apply its non- infringement judgment to them. We note, however, that, because each of these claims as construed also requires link data, even if valid, they are not infringed. 14 ALLVOICE DEVELOPMENTS US, LLC v. MICROSOFT CORP. LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P., 773 F.3d 1245, 1255 (Fed. Cir. 2014). Section § 101 defines patentable subject matter and states: Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title. “Section 101 thus specifies four independent categories of inventions or discoveries that are eligible for protection: processes, machines, manufactures, and compositions of matter. ‘In choosing such expansive terms . . . modified by the comprehensive ‘any,’ Congress plainly contemplated that the patent laws would be given wide scope.”’ Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593, 601 (2010) (quoting Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303, 308 (1980)). If a claim is drawn to subject matter that falls outside the four statutory categories of § 101, it is not patent eligible. In re Nuitjen, 500 F.3d 1346, 1354 (Fed. Cir. 2007). This is true without regard to whether it might otherwise be ineligible because it encompasses a law of nature, natural phenomenon, or abstract idea. See Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 124 S. Ct. 2347, 2354 (2014). Except for process claims, “the eligible subject matter must exist in some physical or tangible form.” Digitech Image Techs., LLC v. Elecs. for Imaging, Inc., 758 F.3d 1344, 1348 (Fed. Cir. 2014). To be considered a machine under section 101, “the claimed invention must be a ‘concrete thing, consisting of parts, or of certain devices and combination of devices.’” Id. at 1349 (quoting Burr v. Duryee, 68 U.S. 531, 571 (1863)). Similarly, “[t]o qualify as a manufacture, the invention must be a tangible article that is given a new form, quality, property, or combination through man-made or artificial means. Likewise, a composition of matter requires the combination of two or ALLVOICE DEVELOPMENTS US, LLC v. MICROSOFT CORP. 15 more substances and includes all composite articles.” Id. (citing Diamond, 447 U.S. at 308). Here, claims 60–68 of the ’273 Patent do not recite a process or tangible or physical object and, thus, do not fall within any of the categories of eligible subject matter. Independent claim 60 is directed to a speech-recognition “interface”: A universal speech-recognition interface that enables operative coupling of a speech-recognition engine to at least any one of a plurality of different computer-related applications, the universal speech-recognition interface comprising: input means for receiving speech-recognition data including recognised words; output means for outputting the recognised words into at least any one of the plurality of different computer-related applications to allow processing of the recognised words as input text; and audio playback means for playing audio data as- sociated with the recognised words. ’273 Patent, col. 29 ll. 22–34. Similarly, independent claim 64 recites: A speech-recognition interface that enables operative coupling of a speech-recognition engine to a computer-related application, the interface comprising: input means for receiving speech-recognition data including recognised words; output means for outputting the recognised words into a computer-related application to allow processing of the recognised words as input text, in- cluding changing positions of the recognised words; and 16 ALLVOICE DEVELOPMENTS US, LLC v. MICROSOFT CORP. means, independent of the computer-related ap- plication, for determining positions of the recognised words in the computer-related application. ’273 Patent, col. 29 l. 65–col. 30 l. 9. Before the district court, Allvoice explained that the claimed interfaces are described in the ’273 Patent’s specification as “interface applications,” and, thus, that these claims are limited to software. See Pl.’s Opening Cl. Constr. Br. at 9–10, Allvoice Devs. US, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., No. 2:10-cv-2102 (W.D. Wash. Sept. 27, 2010), ECF No. 107 (“As indicated above, claims 60 and 67 [which is dependent on claim 64] according to their preamble are limited to the ‘interface’ which is described in the patent in suit as an ‘interface application.’ Hence, these claims are limited to software.”). Before this court, Allvoice clarifies that the claimed interfaces are “software instructions.” 5 Software may be patent eligible, but when a claim is not directed towards a process, the subject matter must exist in tangible form. Here, the disputed claims merely claim software instructions without any hardware limitations. Allvoice attempts to overcome this hurdle now by arguing that the claimed software must necessarily be in a machine readable, physical state in order to exist, and that the district court therefore should have concluded that these claims are directed to a manufacture, one of the four categories of patentable inventions. But, as this 5 Although Allvoice did not ground its opposition to Microsoft's motion for summary judgment on any benefits received from employing functional claiming under § 112(6), it is also significant that the means-plusfunction limitations, as construed by Allvoice, do not correspond to tangible structure, as opposed to software instructions. ALLVOICE DEVELOPMENTS US, LLC v. MICROSOFT CORP. 17 Court has recognized, instructions, data, or information alone, absent a tangible medium, is not a manufacture. See Digitech Image Techs., 758 F.3d at 1349–50 (rejecting a patentee’s attempt to argue that the disputed claims were subject matter eligible because the claim language did not describe “any tangible embodiment of this information (i.e., in physical memory or other medium) or claim any tangible part of the digital processing system”); In re Nuitjen, 500 F.3d at 1356 (declining to import a tangible medium element into the claims directed to only encoded signals, which were unpatentable under § 101). We decline to import or, as Allvoice argues, “imply” a tangible medium into claims that fail to recite or reference any such medium. 6 Because claims 60–68 are not directed to a tangible article and are not process claims, the district court did not err when it held these claims were not patent eligible, and, thus, invalid.