PTAB invalidates fintech patent in Alice challenge

The US Patent Trial and Appeal Board has invalidated the majority of claims of a Swedish company’s fintech patent under Alice, and rejected a motion to amend the claims.

Financial Services company Quantile Technologies challenged the eligibility of claims 1-22 of TriOptima’s US patent 7,613,649B2, titled the “system and method of implementing massive early terminations of long term financial contracts”.

The invention describes a network-based automated process that decreases the number of outstanding derivatives transactions (including bonds, equity and interest rates) in order to lower credit exposure, lower operating costs and decrease risk.

Quantile argued that the claims fail under step one of the US Supreme Court’s Alice framework, in that they relate to an abstract idea of “simplifying a trade portfolio through premature termination of certain transactions”.

In a judgment handed down on Friday, September 17, the PTAB agreed that the claims of challenged claims relate to abstract ideas, and were therefore unpatentable under Alice.

TriOptima proposed substitute claims 23-28 in a bid to amend the patent, but the board held that these claims also linked to abstract ideas and lacked an inventive concept.

Background

Quantile filed its petition to institute a covered business method patent review of claims 1-22 of the ‘649 patent on March 17, 2020.

TriOptima filed a timely preliminary response on July 27 2020, alongside a contingent motion to amend.

On September 23, 2020, the PTAB agreed to conduct a covered business method patent review of all the challenged claims and offered preliminary guidance on the motion to amend.

This is not the only TriOptima patent that Quantile has challenged. It also filed another business method patent review against related patent US number 8,010,441 B2.

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