Court Opinion

ID: 8413483
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-02 20:25:10.392609+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:48:03.655403
License: Public Domain

MAYER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I write separately to address the argument advanced by OIP Technologies, Inc. that the district court erred in resolving the patent eligibility issue on the pleadings. Failure to recite statutory subject matter is the sort of “basic deficiency,” that can, and should, “be exposed at the point of minimum expenditure of time and money by the parties and the court,” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 558, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Addressing 35 U.S.C. § 101 at the outset not only conserves scarce judicial resources and spares litigants the staggering costs associated with discovery and protracted claim construction litigation, it also works to stem the tide of vexatious suits brought by the owners of vague and overbroad business method patents. Accordingly, where, as here, assert*1365ed claims are plainly directed to a patent ineligible abstract idea, we have repeatedly sanctioned a district court’s decision to dispose of them on the pleadings. See, e.g., Content Extraction & Transmission LLC v. Wells Fargo Bank, 776 F.3d 1343, 1349 (Fed.Cir.2014); Ultramereial, Inc. v. Hulu, LLC, 772 F.3d 709, 717 (Fed.Cir.2014); buySAFE, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 765 F.3d 1350, 1352 (Fed.Cir.2014). I commend the district court’s adherence to the Supreme Court’s instruction that patent eligibility is a “threshold” issue, Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593, 602, 130 S.Ct. 3218, 177 L.Ed.2d 792 (2010), by resolving it at the first opportunity.