VS Tech v. Twitter, 11–cv-0043 (E.D. Virginia 2011)
Trial is set for this week in the patent infringement lawsuit between VS Tech and Twitter. VS’s asserted U.S. Patent No. 6,408,309 claims a “method of creating an interactive virtual community of people in a field of endeavor” and has a February 2000 filing date. The inventor is Dinesh Agarwal who has also been a patent attorney since 1985. VS Tech was formed to pursue the lawsuit and is headquartered in Mr. Agarwal’s law office address. The first two claims of the patent are reproduced below:
What is claimed is:
1. A method of creating an interactive virtual community of people in a field of endeavor, comprising the steps of:
a) selecting a field of endeavor;
b) compiling a list of members in the selected field;
c) selecting a member from the compiled list of members based on a preselected factor;
d) obtaining biographical information about the selected member;
e) processing the biographical information in a preselected format to create a personal profile of the selected member;
f) publishing the profile of the selected member on a machine readable media; and
g) allowing the selected member to interact with the profile.2. The method of claim 1, wherein the step (f) comprises publishing the profile of the selected member on a network of computers.
In his most recent judgment in the case, Judge Morgan denied Twitter’s motion for summary judgment of invalidity under 35 U.S.C. 101, 102 & 103 and non-infringement.
The section 101 decision is interesting in that the judge treated the machine-or-transformation test as a question of fact to be determined by the jury. “In light of all of the foregoing considerations, the Court finds that the evidence is sufficient for a reasonable juror to conclude that the ‘309 patent is linked to a particular machine or apparatus.” Like claim construction and obviousness, patentable subject matter is treated by the courts as a question of law. However, unlike claim construction, the appellate courts have never held that it must be the judge who decides section 101 issues.
- File Attachment: Denial of Summary Judgment (1542 KB)
- File Attachment: Twitter Motion for Summary Judgment (2814 KB)
- File Attachment: VS Tech Opposition Brief (2481 KB)
When the case was filed in January, Patent Law reporter Joe Mullin wrote “The central role of patent lawyers in suits like this raises questions about the health of the U.S. patent system. Patent lawyers are insiders in this system, and an increasing number of them aren’t satisfied just with being very-expensive service providers to patent owners. They’re seeing the millions made by so-called patent trolls and are eager to get into the game themselves. The patent office simply isn’t set up to say no to a persistent applicant, and the patent lawyers know that as well as anybody. Mike Masnick filed his story under the “bang-head-slowly dept.”
The following is the text of Twitter’s proposed jury instructions on what it terms “unpatentable subject matter”:
Even if an invention is both new and not obvious, a patent claim may be invalid if its subject matter is not patentable. The law establishes three categories that are not eligible for patents: laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas.
Twitter contends that the asserted claims of the ‘309 patent claim an unpatentable abstract idea. Methods which can be performed mentally, or which are the equivalent of human mental work, are abstract ideas which cannot be patented. An abstract idea is unpatentable even if the patent claim limits the idea’s use to a particular technological environment, or adds insignificant post-solution activity. Systems that depend for their operation on human intelligence alone cannot be patented.
A useful and important clue for determining whether a patent claims unpatentable subject matter is whether the claim is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or transforms a particular article into a different state or thing. This is called the “machine or transformation test.” To satisfy the machine prong of this test, the use of the machine must also impose meaningful limits on the claim’s scope. If the claim does not satisfy the machine-or-transformation test, this indicates that the claim may be invalid because it claims unpatentable subject matter.