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3 January 2019Patents

Federal Circuit rejects patent appeal over dice game

Dutch company Marco Guldenaar Holding has failed in its attempt to patent the rules of a dice game after a US court rejected the company’s appeal of a decision by the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).

The precedential ruling was issued by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on December 28, 2018.

Marco Guldenaar filed the application with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in April 2010. The patent, titled “Casino game and a set of six-face cubic colored dice”, outlined a dice game in which only particular faces of the dice are marked.

The patent application was rejected on the grounds that the application was directed towards an abstract idea of “rules for playing a game” and “methods for organising human activities”. The examiner in the case also found that the claims outlined were unpatentable as obvious as they related to “matters old and well known to dice games”.

The PTAB rejected an appeal of the decision, supporting the view of the examiner that the patent application did not contain an “inventive concept”.

Marco Guldenaar claimed that the USPTO had used the category of “methods of organising human activities” as an “apparent shortcut”. The Federal Circuit rejected this argument, affirming the PTAB’s finding that the patent was directed towards an abstract idea of “rules for playing a dice game”.

The Federal Circuit found that the steps of placing a wager, rolling the dice, and paying out if a wagered outcome occurred were “purely conventional” and “insufficient to recite an inventive concept”.

In its appeal, Marco Guldenaar claimed that the game as outlined in the patent was not merely an abstract idea as it required physical steps. The Federal Circuit rejected this argument, noting that “the abstract idea exception does not turn solely on whether the claimed invention comprises physical versus mental steps”.

The court cited two US Supreme Court decisions, Alice Corp v CLS Bank International in 2014 and Bilski v Kappos in 2010, as precedent.

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