Federal Circuit overturns computer memory patent finding
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has overturned a judge’s finding of patent ineligibility under Alice v CLS Bank.
The patent, US number 5,953,740, is owned by Visual Memory and is called “Computer memory system having programmable operational characteristics based on characteristics of a central processor”.
Yesterday, in a split precedential decision, the Federal Circuit reversed a finding on ineligibility made by District Judge Richard Andrews at the US District Court for the District of Delaware.
The Federal Circuit said the patent teaches that computer systems frequently use a three-tiered memory hierarchy to enhance performance: a low-cost, low-speed memory for bulk storage of data, a medium-speed memory that serves as the main memory, and an expensive, high-speed memory that acts as a processor cache memory.
Being the most expensive, the cache memory is typically smaller than the main memory and can’t always store all the data required by the processor.
“The ‘740 patent purports to overcome these deficiencies by creating a memory system with programmable operational characteristics that can be tailored for use with multiple different processors without the accompanying reduction in performance,” said the court.
Visual Memory sued Nvidia, a technology corporation, for infringement.
But Nvidia filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, believing that the claims were directed to patent-ineligible subject matter.
The district court granted Nvidia’s motion, finding that under step one of the Alice test, the claims were directed to the “abstract idea of categorical data storage”.
Its step-two analysis found no “inventive concept because the claimed computer components—a main memory, cache, bus, and processor—were generic and conventional”.
This was because, according to the district court, the patent’s programmable operational characteristics represent “generic concepts that determine the type of data to be stored by the cache, and the patent fails to explain the mechanism for accomplishing the result”.
Visual Memory appealed to the Federal Circuit.
“We conclude instead that the ‘740 patent claims an improvement to computer memory systems and is not directed to an abstract idea,” said Circuit Judge Kara Stoll.
Because the court concluded that the claims were not directed to an abstract idea, it didn’t proceed to step two of the Alice test.
The suit was reversed and remanded to the district court.
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