Federal Circuit affirms Delaware Alice decision
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has backed a lower court in finding that patents owned by technology company Two-Way Media are invalid under the Alice v CLS Bank test.
Yesterday, November 1, the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision by the US District Court for the District of Delaware that had found patents claims to be ineligible under section 101.
“Because the claims are directed to abstract ideas and contain no additional elements that transform the nature of the claims into a patent-eligible application of the abstract ideas, we affirm,” said Circuit Judge Jimmie Reyna, on behalf of the court.
The patents, called “Multicasting method and apparatus”, are related as a series of continuation applications. US numbers 5,778,187; 5,983,005; 6,434,622; and 7,266,686 generally relate to a system for streaming audio/visual data over a communications system (such as the internet).
The Delaware court had granted a motion for judgment on the pleadings, filed by telecoms companies Comcast Cable and Verizon, and held that the patents were ineligible under section 101.
First, the lower court addressed claim construction, then evidentiary arguments, and finally addressed the patents’ eligibility under the two-step framework in Alice.
But Two-Way Media claimed that the Delaware court should have taken judicial notice of materials from prior proceedings before the US Patent and Trademark Office and other federal courts.
The district court denied the request, saying that the materials were irrelevant to a section 101 enquiry.
Under the two-part Alice test, the Delaware court found that the patent claims were directed to abstract ideas and didn’t recite an inventive-saving concept under the second step.
“The claims contained no saving inventive concept because although they recited some computer components, they required only ordinary functionality of these components,” said the Federal Circuit, explaining the lower court’s judgment.
In its appeal, Two-Way Media argued that the district court erred by oversimplifying the claims and ignoring claim limitations in the proposed constructions.
But the Federal Circuit disagreed, finding that claim 1 of the ‘187 patent, which is representative of all the claims of the ‘187 and ‘005 patents, is directed to an abstract idea.
On the second part of the Alice test, the court said that claim 1 “only uses generic functional language to achieve” the purported solutions.
Two-May Media also argued that the court had erred in not including the proffered evidence.
Again, the Federal Circuit disagreed with Two-Way Media.
“We find no error in the district court’s determination to reject Two-Way Media’s proffered material, as the court correctly concluded that the material was relevant to a novelty and obviousness analysis, and not whether the claims were directed to eligible subject matter,” said Reyna.
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