by Dennis Crouch
In Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute v. Amazon.com, Inc., No. 2024-1725 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 24, 2026), a panel led by Judge Dyk affirmed summary judgment invalidating U.S. Patent No. 7,177,798 as ineligible 35 U.S.C. § 101. The '798 patent claims a method for processing natural language inputs using case-based reasoning applied to a metadata database. Rensselaer and its exclusive licensee CF Dynamic Advances had asserted the patent against Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant technology. The district court (N.D.N.Y., Judge Sannes) granted Amazon's motion for summary judgment, finding the claims directed to patent-ineligible subject matter under Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l, 573 U.S. 208 (2014). The nonprecedential opinion applies the rule from Recentive Analytics, Inc. v. Fox Corp., 134 F.4th 1205 (Fed. Cir. 2025) (cert. denied) that applying a well-established AI technique to a new field does not overcome patent ineligibility. Judge Dyk authored both opinions.
