Groupon succeeds in Fed Circuit patent fight

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has backed online marketplace Groupon in a patent dispute with Delaware-based Evolutionary Intelligence.

The lawsuit concerned two US patents: numbers 7,010,536 and 7,702,682. Both are directed to systems and methods for allowing computers to process data that is modified based on “external-to-the-device information”.

Back in 2012, Evolutionary  sued Groupon, alleging infringement of the patents at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

The following year the case was transferred to the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

But the court did not rule in Evolutionary’s favour—it granted Groupon’s motion to dismiss the claim.

It also held that all patent claims were invalid under 35 USC section 101 as being directed to the abstract idea of “searching and processing containerised data”.

The court held that the invention merely computerises “age-old forms of information processing”, such as those used in libraries, businesses and other “human enterprises with folders, books, time-cards, ledgers, and so on”.

Evolutionary appealed to the Federal Circuit, arguing that its claims are patent-eligible for two reasons.

First, Evolutionary asserted that the claims are not directed to an abstract idea, but rather to an improvement in the functioning of the computer itself.

Second, it added that even if the claims are directed to an abstract idea, they are patent-eligible as containing an inventive concept because they “recite a specific arrangement of particular structures, operating in a specific way”.

The Federal Circuit  disagreed with both arguments on Friday, February 17.

Circuit Judge  Alan Lourie said that the claims are directed to an abstract idea.

He added that the claims were unlike those in Enfish v Microsoft, where the “plain focus” of the claims was on “an improvement to the computer functionality itself”.

Instead, the claims in this case were directed to “selecting and sorting information by user interest or subject matter, a longstanding activity of libraries and other human enterprises”.

On the inventive concept argument, Lourie said that the claims recite conventional elements at “too high a level of generalities” to constitute an inventive concept.

Tom Duston, partner at Marshall Gerstein and representative of Groupon, said: “In today’s decision, the Federal Circuit signalled its reluctance to extend its earlier Enfish decision.”

He added that despite Evolutionary’s arguments that the claimed invention related to particular improvements in the functioning of computers, “parroting the language of Enfish” the court looked beyond this.

The court concluded that the claims were directed to “nothing more than organising data” to tailor its use based on where a user lives or the time of day that the information is accessed.

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