by Dennis Crouch
On appeal, the Federal Circuit has affirmed that Intellectual Ventures’ asserted patent claims are invalid for lacking eligible subject matter. Intellectual Ventures v. Capital One (Fed. Cir. 2015) (Patent Nos. 8,083,137, 7,603,382, and 7,260,587).
The basic idea behind the patent ‘137 patent is to help users budget and then stick to their budget. Incredibly important task that many of us find quite challenging. The court identified Claim 5 as representative. That claim includes two steps: (1) storing a user profile with a set of categories – each with a pre-set budget limit; an (2) transmitting a summary of transactions for a category along with the pre-set budget limit. Claim text:
5. A method comprising:
storing, in a database, a [user] profile … containing one or more user-selected categories to track transactions associated with said user identity, wherein individual user-selected categories include a user pre-set limit; and
causing communication, over a communication medium and to a receiving device, of transaction summary data in the database for at least one of the one or more user-selected categories, said transaction summary data containing said at least one user-selected category’s user pre-set limit.
In reading this claim in the context of Alice Corp., the Federal Circuit first found it directed to the abstract idea of “tracking financial transactions to determine whether they exceed a pre-set spending limit (i.e., budgeting).” In Alice Corp. step two, the court found no inventive concept: “it is clear that the claims contain no inventive concept. . . . Instructing one to ‘apply’ an abstract idea and reciting no more than generic computer elements performing generic computer tasks does not make an abstract idea patent eligible.”
The court similarly agreed that the claims of the ‘382 patent are also ineligible. Claim 1 provides:
A system for providing web pages accessed from a web site in a manner which presents the web pages tailored to an individual user, comprising:
an interactive interface configured to provide dynamic web site navigation data to the user, the interactive interface comprising:
a display depicting portions of the web site visited by the user as a function of the web site navigation data; and
a display depicting portions of the web site visited by the user as a function of the user’s personal characteristics.
Thus, the claim relates generally to a system for customizing information based upon information known about a user and also web-site navigation data (such a the time-of-day a site is being visited). With Alice Corp. step 1, the court agreed that the aforementioned gist is in fact an abstract idea because such information tailoring is “a fundamental . . . practice long prevalent in our system . . . .” Quoting Alice Corp. Regarding Alice Corp step 2, the court found no inventive concept. Intellectual ventures had argued that its approach provided a dynamic and real-time application of the concepts — however, the court rejected that argument on its facts — finding that “the claims are not so limited.”
Of special concern for the patentees here is the claimed “interactive interface” configured to implement the method. Intellectual Ventures argued that device provided an inventive application of the broader idea. The Federal Circuit disagreed – finding that “nowhere does Intellectual Ventures assert that it invented an interactive interface …. Rather, the interactive interface limitation is a generic computer element.”
Intellectual Ventures third patent included claims with more substance, including a process of sorting, scanning, and organizing images obtained from hard copy prints. However, those asserted claims were found not-infringed.
Objective actual history is match for the “editorial controls.”
Well, that may not be exactly true, but calling that playing card emblem of a dark inverted heart cleaved with a dagger something other than a spade does not in fact change that item into a heart, a diamond or a c1ub.
We should all keep in mind that the holding is: software patent held unconstitutional.
Anyone with a sense of care for the rule of law would (and should – even if just an academic), readily grasp that the Court itself would be acting unconstitutionally by violating the constitutional separation of powers to write that software patents are against the law.
Ben Deere: Are you, MM suggesting that almost all database patents (Oracle, SAP), Credit card processing patents (Visa, Mastercard), Social Network patents (Facebook) etc. are now invalid?
I haven’t looked at all the claims but most of them are probably deeply flawed. Credit card processing? Seriously? The rush of banksters into the patent game — immediately followed by hordes of bottom feeding patent attorneys looking to grift off the banks — was a sure sign that our patent system had been corrupted.
With respect to Facebook, in particular, I think it’s safe to assume their portfolio is 99% pure junk. Nobody “invented” networking with other people and the use of the pre-existing Internet for that purpose (i.e., sharing information) has to be one of the most obvious developments in the history of human civilization.
Because G-g-g-grifters.
Or something.
(Damm those people wanting to make money)
/off sardonic bemusement
people wanting to make money)
Everybody wants some money. The grifters I’m referring to are people who already have money — tons of it — and want more. They just dont’ want to work for it. And why should they? They are the most important people who ever existed. How do we know that? They told us so! People who find their behavior disagreeable, well, they’re just jealous.
LOL
Is this the dubious dissembling dichotomy (again) about your obsession with “ultra rich” by attacking the form of innovation most widely accessible by everyone…?
Funny how you never account for that disparity.
“has to be one of the most obvious developments”
Great – there is a section of law called 103 to deal with obviousness.
Integrity-whhaaaat?
” I think it’s safe to assume their portfolio is 99% pure junk”.
There you go folks. Any time during the day when you are troubled by something, just repeat this for a good laugh.
Any time during the day when you are troubled by something, just repeat this for a good laugh.
You want laughs? I got a million of ’em:
8650497
1. A computer-implemented method comprising:
accessing object information associated with one or more social networking system objects;
accessing information related to a question and a plurality of answers to the question;
associating an answer with a social networking system object;
receiving a request from a viewing user to view object information associated with the object associated with the answer, the question and the answer displayed in a first social networking system interface;
in response to receiving the request, generating a second social networking system interface that comprises a display of the object information associated with the object associated with the answer, the second interface configured to be displayed within the first interface; and
providing the second interface for display to the viewing user within the first interface.
Complete unadulterated cr*pola. Here it is in plain English by the way, without the scrivening gobbgleydook: [T]he question and answer system allows users to pose a question or answer a question by linking a portion of the question or answer to an object in the social networking system or otherwise providing structured data. Then, in the display of the question and its answers, the user interface provides additional information about the objects. a question that asks people to state their favorite restaurant may be answered by users who tag the answers with pages or other objects associated with each restaurant in the answers. The user interface may display the answers along with additional information about the tagged objects, such as maps to each restaurant and a listing of other friends who have checked-in to that location. In this way, the user interface provides personalized social context about the question and its answers to each viewing user.
Because nobody ever presented questions about objects to a group of people before the Internet. What a joke of a patent system.
Your assertion was 99%. You have a long way to go.
What about something more technical like operating systems (ios, Windows), or database processing (Oracle, SAP). Surley the technical aspects make these patent worthy? (Noted that some courts have said “technical” patents to printer output adjustments are not patentable, and color profile software are not patentable)
Rejoice, it turns out there is a Sanity Clause….
Everybody knows there is no Santa Clause.
In all seriousness, is Malcolm Mooney (MM) a full-time blogger? He posts on Patently-O with such frequency I find it hard to believe he has any occupation or job … a retiree? In fact, he’s so busy posting on Patently-O, I don’t see how he can have any knowledge on any of the things he writes about, since he doesn’t have time for anything else. Myself and others – I’m sure – are full time attorneys who deal with these legal issues day in and day out, and though our levels of expertise may vary, we do at least bring to this blog some real world experience. I don’t see how this MM person can say the same.
Yes. He’ll vehemently deny it of course, but he is. And it is not just patently-o. He trolls around other patent-related websites as well.
He also posts on other patent sites as well and uses sock puppets. He has been posting with this frequency for 11 years.
His sockpuppet exploits were especially thrilling at PatentDocs, where Dr. Noonan through down a challenge to come into the light.
But it is not really the amount of time or even the Beleib system that is most unsettling. It is instead the debauchery of how he goes about his propaganda: the relentless spin and manipulation of not just what the law is as written, but of what others post. He absolutely refuses to engage in a meaningful dialogue. It is not even that he uses as hominem, as that device can be effectively used while still being inte11ectually honest and not twisting things beyond recognition.
It really isn’t all that much to ask for – to recognize when a valid point is made and to integrate that point in discussions going forward.
Sadly, it is quite apparent that he had a different mission.
I would be shocked if MM wasn’t being paid by the anti-patent lobbying groups. I think too that MM dominating this blog and being a paid anti-patent blog brings up all sorts of issues regarding this blog.
^^^ at the very least, perceptions abound.
But hey, my advice – asked and delivered personally some three or four years ago was dutifully ignored. Then on the “ecosystem” thread we find out that Malcolm has been plying these very same short script C R P for nine years and running, and well, a rose by any other name and all.
Absolutely. Unfortunately, the moderators, if they exist at all, don’t appreciate the detraction. I’m for all opinions to be heard, but he spoils the quality of discussion with excessive posting of low-information opinions.
he spoils the quality of discussion with excessive posting of low-information opinions.
I’m certain I’ve posted more high quality information here in the past six weeks then you have in the past six years.
But, hey, enjoy your fantasy world! It’s really a pity there aren’t any other patent blogs out there where you can whine in your echo chamber all day long. How frightening that must be for you.
The Red Queen has so decreed – in the usual AccuseOthersOfThatWhichMalcolmDoes meme at that.
Go figure “folks” with optional [shrug] inserted here
You again show how broken your logic unit is. If we assume that you post many information-rich posts (I don’t agree with that), that would not negate all of your diatribe, rant, and insult, that is constantly and repetitively posted. Because you might have some constructive things to say doesn’t justify filling this space with a bunch of other stuff that is noise.
Another broken bit of logic: however much information I post is irrelevant. If I don’t post much here, or even if I don’t post much useful information, it has nothing to do with it. Whatever I do is irrelevant to the question of whether you post on this blog with such frequency and content that you in effect have turned this forum into your own personal platform for repeating the same message over and over and over (which you do). Fella, people who read Patently-O get it — you have certain opinions, and now everyone knows them. Why do you need to keep restating them multiple times per day? It’s a selfish use of a shared resource intended for exchange of information between many people.
True dialogue just is NOT what is wanted from the propagandist.
What I have always asked for is the inte11ectual honesty to accept counterpoints made and integrate those counterpoints into the discussion.
This appears to be simply too much to ask.
Ad hominems are always a fallacy. The thought that they are a “device [that] can be effectively used while still being inte11ectually honest and not twisting things beyond recognition” is beyond absurd.
The “always a fallacy” is simply not correct.
Methinks you should study the subject instead of just relying on your feelings.
The “art field” of persuasion and rhetoric is thousands of years old. You should not depend on your level of ignorance (“ordinary”) and elevate that as some pinnacle of veracity. That would be absurd.
How is it not correct? Again, your response is riddled with your favorite fallacy without any support. You should not be proud of your brand of “persuasion and rhetoric” based on the twin logical fallacies of ad hominem and strawmen.
A person may make an argument. That person may have disfavored characteristics. However, it is false to say that their argument is wrong because of their disfavored characteristics.
You might be successful of persuading laymen and moderately interested with that level of “persuasion and rhetoric.” However, such success is illusory because when someone make an ad hominem attack against you, those you could so easily persuade will easily be turned against you.
A person is not ignorant because they will not be fooled by your fallacies. Quite the opposite, actually.
It’s not context because that is how it is.
I am not going to even attempt to teach you thousands of years of rhetorical theory when you have already convinced yourself of the supremacy of your “feelings.”
You need to understand what ad hominem actually is and not rely on your feelings that it is only bad.
As for ignorance, your own unwillingness to learn and far-to-easy labeling of me is a great example of what is truly ignorant.
Own it with pride.
Change “context” to “correct” (damm autocorrect)
It appears that you are upset that I am willing to correctly point out that the emperor has no clothes. And in your upset state, you are labeling my unwillingness to accept your threadbare pontificating as ignorance.
I understand what an ad homenim is and that is has no place in a rational discussion.
As for ignorance, your own unwillingness to learn and far-to-easy labeling of me is a great example of what is truly ignorant.
The AccuseOthersOfWhatMalcolmDoes meme does not work for him.
Why do you think it will work any better for you?
(Hint: it won’t – you are still the one ignoring thousands of years of rhetorical knowledge)
No, I am just parroting your silly statement to you so you know how ridiculous it sounds.
I do not accept your unsupported claim of “thousands of years of rhetorical knowledge.” Regardless, bloodletting also is part of thousands of years of medical knowledge, yet I do not accept it as an acceptable practice. (“Just because it is old doesn’t make it a classic.”)
BTW, we can add another fallacy to your mix.
You can “parrot” all you want but all that you are doing is confirming the very thing that I am pointing out: you want to have your own rather limited feelings take the place of thousands of years of rhetorical learning.
Like I said: own your ignorance proudly. You wear it so well.
I have provided multiple links providing in great detail why you are wrong. You have not provided any rebuttal except a weak appeal to tradition and a bald assertion that you are correct. I have provided you an opportunity to show that you you have a weak grasp on the principles of “persuasion and rhetoric.” You have more than adequately taken the opportunity and shown, for all to see, that you have a weak grasp on the principles of “persuasion and rhetoric.”
Frankly OSitA, I haven’t bothered with your links because the words you have used have shown not an inkling of understanding of the topic.
Maybe try to fashion some small cognitive statement (and not just your Belieb-driven conclusion), and I might bother checking out your links.
Further, your view of “weak” and my persuading you are NOT in any way an indicator of the veracity of the points I provide. The history of rhetoric is what I say, not because it is I that says it – I say it because that is what the history is. And this is not a mere “tradition,” logic (not sure where you got that thinking – clearly you have had NO formal training in this art.
Methinks
What a freakin dork.
^^^ because that had anything to do with anything….
What a chump.
“anon” He absolutely refuses to engage in a meaningful dialogue.
Oh, Lookie! Billy and Company are up to their old tricks again.
Yes, let’s create a fantasy world where I never respond to his (or anyone else’s) super awesome arguments and where all my comments are simply falsehoods and propaganda. After all, no court — certainly not the Supreme Court or the Federal Circuit — has ever validated my plainly articulated views on subject matter eligibility, product-by-process claiming, inducing infringement, or a myriad other subjects. Nope! It never happened. At least not in Billy’s fantasy world.
So go right ahead, Billy. Keep clicking the heels of your ruby slippers together. Congress is gearing up to re-institute State Street Bank because nothing is more important than your happiness. Golly, that sounds nice — it must be true, right?
LOL
Who is “Billy” and what are his tricks?
Maybe you want to try those short declarative sentences you are always on about.
I am curious too. Who is Billy? Where does that one come from?
Anyone who takes the time to read your posts should realize that you are a slippery eel that avoids any facts inconsistent with your agenda. Your m.o.: take someone’s comment with perhaps five assertions in it, find the least significant assertion and mock it (as well as the commentor), and ignore the most relevant point(s).
Anyone who takes the time to read your posts should realize that you are a slippery eel that avoids any facts inconsistent with your agenda.
Anyone who takes the time to read your posts should realize that you have nothing to say.
as opposed to the propaganda that Malcolm has to say…
D’Oh!
If you are a fast typist or use Windows Speech to dictate (as I am at this moment) even long comments may take a matter of a minute or three.
I don’t agree with MM on every last point, but he (or she) is doing valuable work for the lurking audience here, and I appreciate it.
HierarchyOfPontificationBuckets, you are also being disingenuous (if you are not a sockpuppet anyway) to single out MM. You have been posting here at least as long as I have so you know both anon and NWPA post more words on more threads than MM does, and both are as rude and condescending (or worse) than MM is.
In fact, we all are….the community on this site is generally not going to be a fun place for people who don’t like to argue or who can’t take or dish an insult…the stakes in the real-world are high and there is plenty of sporting interest in the game.
PS, to consider MM as ‘anti-patent’ is a ridiculous strawman and the MOST basic tactic of bad-faith patent maximalists.
LOL – except for the fact that he is anti-patent (as his “arguments” as they are, are not in fact “moored” to real law and real facts are instead merely Belieb driven).
One big “Oops” for you there Mr. Snyder.
the fact that he is anti-patent
The funniest part about this inane and false statement is that even if I was “anti-patent” (and I’m not) … so what?
“Anti-patent” people have a right to express and defend their opinions, just as patent worshippers like you have that right.
Clearly you have not been paying attention Malcolm.
Or perhaps you have and you are just doing your usual twist of what others say.
I have no problem with the opinions – and every problem with the inte11ectually dishonest manner that you go about expressing that opinion.
Nine years and running.
To be honest, I suppose you are right about Mooney not being the only one. I guess those other folks (a) haven’t personally insulted me, and (b) don’t seem to be aggressively pushing a monothematic personal agenda under the pretense of commenting on Patently-O’s topical entries.
Also, my personal experience with Mooney has been that he never directly addresses counterpoints that don’t fit with his agenda. He ignores them completely. For someone who apparently has no problem typing voluminously and frequently, he could at least have the decency to acknowledge when a valid counterpoint has been raised. He advocates his views to the point of intellectual dishonesty. In that regard, I think he is unique on this blog.
Alas, he is not. He is simply the most vapid about it.
Who has made reasonable counterpoints to MM’s central two arguments?
1- no novel physical structure or mechanical/chemical change in matter=no patent.
2- patenting information and logic has enabled a generation of rent-seeking grifters to delegitimize the patent system.
Nobody that I have seen….
Martin, point 2 is extremely important. The people who advocate extending patentable subject matter far beyond its constitutional and statutory roots have brought the patent system as a whole into disrepute and have substantially caused, if not exclusively caused, the current troll phenomena that Congress is so eager to address in ways that substantially harm the patent system as a whole.
Yet these people, who advocate the patenting of junk, who bring the patent system as a whole into question, attack Malcolm and others like Malcolm, and as being anti-patent. It is quite clear to anybody with any sense of reality that the people who are tacking Malcolm for being anti-patent are themselves the reason for the problems in the patent system. They are the ones that are damaging the patent system, not Malcolm, who was only trying to bring common sense and rationality back into the system.
“Nobody that I have seen…”
You need to open your eyes.
Your 1 is just the error and fallacy of taking one optional claim format and pretending that it is the only legal claim format.
Your 2 is nothing but an unground Belieb statement – simply not tethered to law or facts.
Quite in fact, driving by such Beliebs and usurping the proper statutory basis of patent law was the very topic of the article written by Judge O’Malley that Ned Heller himself provided.
The ends do not justify the means.
And Malcolm IS anti-patent – don’t be f001ed by the huckster Ned and his “6-must-be-an-Einstein-because-he-aligns-with-me.
So MM won’t answer to your “optional claim format” doctrine ?
Pray tell, exactly how does it relate to the words of Section 101 or meaningful cases ? What is it, and who else is discussing it? Or is it a private little thing between you and the voices?
As to #2? You want to persuade out of my lived experience? Please proceed.
“Pray tell, exactly…”
Take a course in patent law. I am not here to teach you patent law basics and how the form of a claim intersects with each section of law.
“persuade out of [your] lived experience?”
Sorry, but I will have to decline that as well – if you are adamant about not learning, no one can persuade you otherwise. If you are not adamant, you already would have listened not only to me, but to your counsel as well (as you will recall that I have several times advised you to provide your counsel with your lack of understanding so that he (or she) may truly have informed consent. The adage I have used for others, fits you here and now: you can lead a horse to waters, but you cannot make him drink. I have led you to the waters of wisdom, the rest is up to you. To see, you have to unclench your eyes. You may not like what you see, but that is the way of reality.
Since the courts’ use of “distilling the invention”, and looking for the “inventive kernel” is a backtrack to previously reversed legal rules, why not go a step further? Why not bring back the “synergism” rule? Ironically, it might actually help patentees, although not in this IV, I think.
Since the courts’ use of “distilling the invention”, and looking for the “inventive kernel” is a backtrack to previously reversed legal rules
Sorry, but 101 jurisprudence is not a “backtrack to previously reversed legal rules.”
You either do not understand 101 jurisprudence or you don’t understand what those previously reversed rules were.
And yes people have been whining like you are right now for years. Please stop. You’re not accomplishing anything.
“you don’t understand”
LOL – another classic AccuseOthersOfThatWhichMalcolmDoes.
You just can’t help yourself, can you Malcolm?
Why don’t you back that up with some proof, or know-it-alls don’t bother with that kind of thing?
Why don’t you back that up with some proof, or know-it-alls don’t bother with that kind of thing?
1) Alice specifically has a consideration of the limitations individually and as a group. The fact that the analysis places more weight on the disclosure that advances the art does not mean the other limitations aren’t considered.
2) The “claim as a whole” language is generally used with a 102/103 analysis anyway. It wouldn’t be improper, for example, to say that a limitation which allows an embodiment to software per se inherently creates a 101 problem without considering how many statutory embodiments come from the other limitations and rest of the scope. 103 is a relative rejection (relative to the state of the art), some facets of 101 are an absolute rejection – there are different considerations.
When I look at the writings and speeches of Judge Rich, he emphasises how the patent reform act of 1952 got rid of each judge defining what was or was not an invention and replaced it with 103. Under Alice will each judge have a different idea of what is ‘something more’?
Slash, Judge Rich was a piece of work, lying through his teeth on a constant basis.
Trying reading Hotchkiss. Then read Rich’s version of Hotchkiss. Then read Hotchkiss again. He gets the case backasswords. I think he knew better. But he was an all out propaganda machine.
Some “propaganda machine there Ned – contributor to the Act of 1952 and most knowledgable patent judge ever…
But wait, he does not align with Ned-IMHO law, so he must be “bad.”
A corollary no doubt to the illness that is “6-is-an-Einstein-because-he-agrees-with-me” and the topical “just-enjoy-Malcolm’s-swagger.”
Amazing Ned how you lose all sense of objectivity when it comes to your hallowed Beliebs.
We are facing a paradox here. The statute requires a “whole contents” assessment, but there is a persistent tendency to ignore alleged “insignificant post-solution activity” in order to prevent intuitively undesirable decisions. This approach is actually inherited by Flook (June 22, 1978) from the German Federal Supreme Court Dispositionsprogramm decision (June 22, 1976) .
Paradoxes have no answers. The solution is to identify the entire approach as incorrect. While patent claims enumerate features of inventions, every patent must relate to a single inventive thought (“unity of invention”), a single “trick” so to say.
And then patents should not simply be considered a reward for brainwork. Patent law limitations are much better understood if patents are considered a means to obtain an exclusive right, as an exception to the fundamental freedom of competition if a capitalist society.
In these cases there is no reason whatsoever to grant an exclusive right. Incidentally, the problems of to many privileges (exclusive rights) was already acknowledged in 1623 when the british government issued the “Statute of monopolies”.
For further details please refer to my book “The Technology Criterion in Patent Law A controversial but indispensable requirement”, ISBN 978-90-5850-862-1, which contains a detailed comparson of patent law in the US and several European jurisdictions. Often problems are seen as political, but there are actually persistent systematic problems.
Reinier,
You are playing with kernels of truths again.
Benson and Flook are bad law to the extent that they inject Judicial law writing into the statutory law base. Further, and for some reason that escapes reason, both of those cases were curbed by the Diehr decision – explicitly.
Pundits, including academics who should know better, somehow continuously miss that.
Still the “Flook” approach is applied, in particular the notion of “insignificant post-solution activity”, which was introduced by Flook AFAIK. Diehr contains a complicated argument why it is in step with Flook – but not everybody may be convinced!
Flook has been constrained by Diehr.
You kind of missed that point – it is just not something up for debate.
Then “Diehr” is effectively ignored, since the idea of “insignificant post-solution activity (437 U.S. 584, 590, 98 S.Ct. 2522, 2525) is alive and kicking. In CLS v . Alice it was the computer implementation of the business method.
Note that at the moment of the subject-matter test (101) novelty of (part of) the invention is immaterial.
This paradox shows IMNHSO that something fundamental is wrong if an invention is seen as the sum of the parts. As so often, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. This is actually explained in Diehr: “a new combination of steps in a process may be patentable even though all the constituents of the combination were well known and in common use before the combination was made.” (450 U.S. 175, 188, 101 S.Ct. 1048, 1058).