1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

receiving a sequence of symbols that have been optically captured from a rendered document;

determining that the sequence of symbols includes a particular symbol, word, or phrase that has been mapped to one or more actions;

selecting an action from the one or more actions; and

transmitting an instruction to a document management system to perform the selected action.

In addition to its gaping abstract idea problems, the patent claims priority to a collection of more than one hundred (100) provisional patent applications – 2004 priority date.

Despite this application being filed in 2016 and issued in 2017, the claims were never rejected on eligibility grounds – or on any grounds other than obviousness-type-double-patenting.  The notice of allowance explains:

The prior art of the record fail to teach or suggest singly and/or in combination a system and computer implemented method which provides for receiving a sequence of symbols that have been optically captured from a rendered document, determining that the sequence of symbols includes a particular symbol, word, or phrase that has been mapped to one or more actions, selecting an action from the one or more actions, and transmitting an instruction to a document management system to perform the selected action as prescribed for in the claimed invention.

I’ll also note here that the patent appears to be co-owned by Google and the widow of named inventor, Martin King.  More claims continue to be filed in the family, including pending APN 15/462,309, which has also been rejected only on one ground – obviousness type double patenting – without any consideration for Alice/Mayo.   The first claim of the ‘309 patent soon-to-issue is as follows (written as Claim 20):

Update:  the creator of the service has authored a piece explaining the analytics, and is available here.

Smart Sys. Innovations v. Chicago Transit Authority (Fed. Cir. 2017)

In a split opinion, the Federal Circuit has affirmed the district court’s judgment on the pleadings – R. 12(c) – that the asserted claims of SSI’s four patents are invalid under Section 101 for claiming an abstract idea.  U.S. Patent Nos. 7,566,003, 7,568,617, 8,505,816, and 8,662,390. (Claim 14 of the ‘003 patent – covering a method for validating entry to a city bus or train – is reproduced below).

The baseline for eligibility analysis is the two-step Alice test:

A patent claim falls outside § 101 where (1) it is “directed to” a patent-ineligible concept, i.e., a law of nature, natural phenomenon, or abstract idea, and (2) if so, the particular elements of the claim, considered “both individually and ‘as an ordered combination,’” do not add enough to “‘transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.”

Elec. Power Grp., LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (quoting Alice).

The patents here are are directed to a method for collecting fares – without dedicated fare-cards, paper tickets, or tokens.  Instead, the system uses credit/debit cards.   After “stripping” the patent claims from their technical jargon and obtuse syntax, the District Court ruled that the patents “really only cover an abstract concept [of] paying for a subway or bus ride with a credit card.”

On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed – holding that these steps were – as a whole – directed toward an abstract idea:

The Asserted Claims are not directed to a new type of bankcard, turnstile, or database, nor do the claims provide a method for processing data that improves existing technological processes. Rather, the claims are directed to the collection, storage, and recognition of data. We have determined that claims directed to the collection, storage, and recognition of data are not [sic] directed to an abstract idea.

Note here the suggestion from the court that “a new type of bankcard, turnstile, or database” could be patent eligible.  Here, the limitation to the field of mass-transit did not help the patentee: “merely limiting the field of use . . . does not render the claims any less abstract.” Quoting Affinity Labs.  In thinking through the step one, the majority looked toward the Alice focus on whether the claims are “directed to” an abstract idea.  According to the court – that question is separate and distinct from the “thrust,” “heart,” or “focus” of the invention.

According to the majority, Alice Step 2 is also easily met – because the tech-focused aspects of the claims are simply directed to the use of a general purpose computer and thus “offer no inventive concept that transforms them into patent-eligible subject matter.”  In the process of reaching this result, the court distinguished both Diehr and DDR Holdings:

• Diehr does not apply when, as here, the claims at issue use generic computer components “in which to carry out the abstract idea.”
• DDR Holdings does not apply when, as here, the asserted claims do not “attempt to solve a challenge particular to the Internet.”

Finally, the majority considered several ‘other arguments’ regarding eligibility:

• No preemption: Although one purpose of the abstract-idea exception is to limit preemption, the test itself does not actually consider preemption.  Thus, once the abstract idea analysis is completed “preemption concerns are … moot” Ariosa.
• Transformation:  Although the machine-or-transformation test “can provide a useful clue to the second step of the Alice framework” it does not overwhelm the primary search for an ‘inventive concept.’ Quoting Ultramercial.

Thus, the claims were all affirmed to be invalid and thus not enforceable.

The majority opinion was penned by Judge Wallach and joined by Judge Reyna.  Judge Linn filed an opinion dissenting in part. Judge Linn argues that the “gist” analysis by the Federal Circuit is improper:

The majority commits the same error as the district court in engaging in a reductionist exercise of ignoring the limitations of the claims in question and, at least with respect to the ’003 and ’617 patents, in failing to appreciate that the abstract idea exception—if it is to be applied at all—must be applied narrowly, consistent with its genesis. . . . All three nonstatutory exceptions are intended to foreclose only those claims that preempt and thereby preclude or inhibit human ingenuity with regard to basic building blocks of scientific or technological activity. They are intended to be read narrowly.

As the Supreme Court has done in its 101 analysis, Judge Linn linked his work back to cases such as Le Roy, Mackay, and Funk Bros. The language of those cases focus on “fundamental truths” and “hitherto unknown phenomenon of nature.”  In Benson and Alice, the court also explained “Phenomena of nature, though just discovered, mental processes, and abstract intellectual concepts are not patentable, as they are the basic tools of scientific and technological work.”

For Judge Linn, a method of charging a bank-card at a bus-turnstile does not fit into those expansive definitions.

Judge Linn’s opinion recognizes that his concern directly stems from the Supreme Court’s approach in Alice and Mayo.  He writes: “The problem with this test, however, is that it is indeterminate and often leads to arbitrary results.”  His solution is that the two part test should not be “applied in a legal vacuum divorced from its genesis” and the three exceptions should be treated consistently. Patents should not be struck down simply because they “seemingly fail the Supreme Court’s test.” Rather, the focus should be on whether the patents “attempt to appropriate a basic building block of scientific or technological work.”

The solution for Judge Linn: Focus on the language of the claims and each limitation when determining whether a claim is directed to an abstract idea – “a basic building block of scientific or technological activity” or instead to a “tangible application” that serves a “new and useful end.”

= = = = =

Here is Claim 14 of the ‘003 patent:

A method for validating entry into a first transit system using a bankcard terminal, the method comprising:

downloading, from a processing system associated with a set of transit systems including the first transit system, a set of bankcard records comprising, for each bankcard record in the set, an identifier of a bankcard previously registered with the processing system, and wherein the set of bankcard records identifies bankcards from a plurality of issuers;

receiving, from a bankcard reader, bankcard data comprising data from a bankcard currently presented by a holder of the bankcard, wherein the bankcard comprises one of a credit card and a debit card;

determining an identifier based on at least part of the bankcard data from the currently presented bankcard;

determining whether the currently presented bankcard is contained in the set of bankcard records;

verifying the currently presented bankcard with a bankcard verification system, if the bankcard was not contained in the set of bankcard records; and

denying access, if the act of verifying the currently presented bankcard with the bankcard verification system results in a determination of an invalid bankcard.

The district court dismissed this case for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted – R.12(b)(6) – after finding that the claims of all seven asserted patents were ineligible under 35 U.S.C. 101.  On appeal, the Federal Circuit has affirmed.  U.S. Patent Nos. 7,814,032, 7,818,268, and 8,073,787 (“Intelligent Mail Barcode”); Nos. 8,260,629 and 8,429,093 (“QR Code”); and Nos. 8,910,860 and 9,105,002 (“Personalized URL”).

The patents all involve an mailer (i.e. package or envelope) with an identifier on the outside such as a barcode, QR code, or URL.  Once delivered, information is communicated (via computers) to the recipient about the contents and the sender.

As Patently-O readers understand, abstract ideas themselves are not patentable. Likewise a patent directed to an abstract idea is also unpatentable, unless the claims include an additional inventive concept that goes beyond the unpatentable idea to “transform the nature of the claim into a patent-eligible invention.” Alice.

The Alice two-step inquiry first asks whether the claims are directed to an abstract idea.  Here, the courts agreed that the claims “are directed to the abstract idea of communicating information about a [mailer] by use of a marking.”  Under Step Two, the appellate panel found that the claims merely recited “well known and conventional ways to allow generic communication between a sender and recipient using generic computer technology.”  Invalid.

I have included claim 1 of the ‘002 patent below (issued post-Alice):

1. A method for providing electronic data to a recipient of a mail object, comprising:

using an output device to affix a single set of mail ID data to said mail object, said single set of mail ID data including at least recipient data, said recipient data comprising a personalized network address associated with said recipient of said mail object;

submitting said mail object to a mail carrier for delivery to said recipient of said mail object;

receiving said recipient data from a reception device of said recipient via a network; and

providing by at least one processor said electronic data to said reception device via said network in response to receiving said recipient data, said electronic data comprising a sender’s web page that identifies said recipient of said mail object and includes data corresponding to a content of said mail object;

wherein said electronic data is configured to be displayed to said recipient via a web browser on a display of said reception device.

Note – the patentee has at least one additional patent issued in the family (US 9,390,394). However, that new patent does not appear to include any new inventive elements that go beyond the prior family members.

Read it and weep: [Federal Circuit Opinion]

I’ll note here that I believe the force behind the patentee is patent attorney Todd Fitzsimmons who also runs his own LA County patent firm.

The AIPLA has now offered its legislative proposal for rewriting 35 U.S.C. § 101 that is quite close to that offered by the IPO:

Inventions Patentable

(a) Eligible Subject Matter.—Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or any useful improvement thereof, may obtainshall be entitled to a patent therefor, subject only to the conditions and requirements ofset forth in this title.

(b) Sole Exceptions to Subject Matter Eligibility.—A claimed invention is ineligible under subsection (a) only if the claimed invention as a whole exists in nature independent of and prior to any human activity, or can be performed solely in the human mind.

(c) Sole Eligibility Standard.—The eligibility of a claimed invention under subsections (a) and (b) shall be determined without regard to the requirements or conditions of sections 102, 103, and 112 of this title, the manner in which the claimed invention was made or discovered, or whether the claimed invention includes an inventive concept.

AIPLA statement. The AIPLA proposal is strikingly similar to that of the IPO’s (although not acknowledged by the AIPLA statement).

[DOCX File of Table: Comparing101Proposals] 

In this case, the appellate court affirmed summary judgment that all of the asserted claims of five EasyWeb patents are ineligible under the Mayo/Alice interpretation of 35 U.S.C. 101 and therefore invalid.

Representative Claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 7,685,247 is directed to a message-publishing-system that “accepts messages in multiple ways, such as by fax, telephone, or email” then verifies the message as being sent from an authorized sender, converts the message to a web format, and publishes the message on the Internet.  Although claim 1 is directed to a computer system, it includes a functionally claimed software component:

A message publishing system (MPS) operative to process a message from a sender in a first format, comprising:

a central processor;

at least one sender account;

at least one storage area configured to store at least a first portion of the message;

and software executing in the central processor to configure the processor so as to:

1. identify the sender of the message as an authorized sender based on information associated with the message in comparison to data in the sender account, wherein the identification is dependent upon the first format;
2. convert at least a second portion of the message from the first format to a second format; and
3. publish the converted second portion of the message so as to be viewable in the second format only if the sender has been identified as an authorized sender.

Following the now standard two-step eligibility analysis, the court first found the claim directed toward an abstract idea.

Claim 1 merely recites the familiar concepts of receiving, authenticating, and publishing data. As we have explained in a number of cases, claims involving data collection, analysis, and publication are directed to an abstract idea.

Of import here for the abstract idea finding is that the claim simply uses generic computer technology rather than improving-upon the technology or designing particularized components.

Moving to step-two, the court looked – but could not find – an “inventive concept” beyond the claimed abstract idea sufficient to “transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.” (quoting Alice).

Although EasyWeb argues that an inventive concept arises from the ordered combination of steps in claim 1, we disagree. Claim 1 recites the most basic of steps in data collection, analysis, and publication and they are recited in the ordinary order. In sum, all the claims are directed to the abstract idea of receiving, authenticating, and publishing data, and fail to recite any inventive concepts sufficient to transform the abstract idea into a patent eligible invention.

Its decision is not quite correct, the Federal Circuit does not find abstract ideas simply because a claim involves “data collection, analysis, and publication.”  However, when (as here), the claim is directed toward these activities at a high level of abstraction, then the Alice/Mayo approach easily fits.

Analytically, the decision adds further weight to the theory that steps 1 and 2 are closely linked and are highly likely to correlate with one another.

Once initiated, CBMs are identical to post-grant reviews (PGR) – allowing for patents to be challenged on any patentability grounds.  As implemented, this includes 101 and 112 challenges in addition to the more traditional obviousness and novelty grounds.   PGRs, however, are limited to only AIA-patents and must be filed within a 9-month window from issuance.  Those caveats have severely limited the number of PGR petitions filed thus far.   For CBMs, the AIA-patent restriction and 9-month window are both eliminated.  However, the statute creates a subject-matter limitation that restricts CBMs to only non-technological financial-services business method patents.

Another feature of the CBM program is that it is “transitional” – i.e., it sunsets in 2020 and no petitions will be accepted after that date.

Last week, I hosted a quick anonymous survey on the transitional Covered Business Method Review program — asking whether the CBM program should be allowed to sunset or somehow extended.  240 Patently-O readers responded with results shown in the chart below.  About 44% of responses favored ending of the program outright — allowing it to sunset.  About 29% favored extending the program as-is, with the narrow financial-services scope.  The remaining favored extension and expansion: 17% would expand the scope to include all information processing patents, and the remaining 10% would extend the program to include all patents.  This final option would essentially mean ending the 9-month window for PGR filing.

The survey also offered (but did not require) an explanation of the answer.  A variety of themes emerge from that explanation. The following are a few examples.

For patent challengers, the key response is that “it works” as a mechanism for cancelling patents, and could be extended to other technology areas.  

• CBM is a big success addressing one of the most abused categories of patents. Extend it to the very worst and most abused patents by including all of information processing and it can help clean up the system and make it stronger.
• Business methods are not the only abstract processes being patented by the Office Patent. A majority of all information processing methods (even those outside of the Business arts) suffer from encompassing non-statutory abstract processes without reciting subject matter that amounts to anything significantly more than said abstract processes.

The historic problem associated with poor business method examination quality has now been fixed. 

• It was intended to handle a temporary problem in a specific area.  State Street caused a flood of applications in an area that was new to the USPTO.  Now skills and databases have developed and the stats show that there is no particular need for either expanding or extending CBM.  Permanently singling out a particular subject matter for extra scrutiny could cause other countries to do the same in other areas.
• If the goal was to clean up shoddy and overly broad patents and applications, then most all of the necessary work should be done by then.  There are existing mechanisms in place that should be forcing quality such that this becomes redundant and therefore unnecessary.
• It was a political sop to begin with and should be allowed to expire per the legislation and the underlying political agreement.  It’s argument was to take care of “low-hanging fruit”, patents of old vintage, issued when the Office’s resources in this area were low.  8 years is more than enough time to pick that fruit.
• CBM petitions are declining because most of the patents intended for consideration have already been undone.

Patents need to be strengthened, not weakened. 

• The patent systems is already nearly dead.  Make patent owners in all areas feel the pain of having their patent rights trampled over by a kangaroo administrative court.
• Broad restrictions on patentability are harming U.S. competitiveness in the areas of its greatest strength.  China and the EU are poised to eat our lunch, and we are serving it up to them.
• A terrible idea from the outset.
• It (CBM) deprives some of the best technological innovators the chance to protect their valuable property.  Abandon CBM, and instead seek recourse to the traditional approaches (102, 103 and 112) to rid the patent landscape of those patents that don’t rise to the level of technological innovation.

The PTAB process is either corrupt or incompetent. 

• It has been abused by petitioners and PTAB has taken it too far.
• Go back to district court litigation. The present scheme is a disaster.
• The USPTO is turning into a mini-court system. That is not its competency. It needs to focus on technology, granting patents to those inventions that meet the basic statutory criteria, and leave the legal hair-splitting to courts.
• This is a corrupt Review that benefits a specific class of infringers and is detrimental to the development of new technology.

The approach should be ended because it violates the constitutional rights of patent owners.

• Unconstitutional.
• AIA has overstepped its boundaries on constitutional grounds as patents are private rights.
• All patent owners are entitled to due process, and that includes the right of access to a court of law before their patents are summarily cancelled by a political, the end-justifies-the means, so-called court.

Of course, there are other responses as well (perhaps more below in the comments).

The bottom line here, as you might expect, is that there is not yet any consensus on whether to extend the CBM program.  My own general framework begins with the recognition that CBM does no longer adds much value post Alice/Mayo and with district court eligibility determinations being done on the pleadings.  However, I would like to see the empirical evidence.   The point of creating legislation that sunsets is that it effectively places the burden of proof on anyone wanting to continue the program.  That work has not yet been done.

1. May patentable subject matter under § 101 properly be assessed by over-generalizing patent claims to a “gist”?
2. May a district court properly assess patentability under § 101 prior to authoritatively construing the patent’s claims?
3. May a district court adjudicating a motion for judgment on the pleadings on § 101 patentability grounds properly consider questions of patent enablement under 35 U.S.C. § 112?

We have an interesting case here where the district court expressly stated its approach to Mayo/Alice Step 1 is to distill the claimed invention to its “gist” and ask whether that gist is an abstract idea.

In its lawsuit against Google, Blue Spike asserted five related patents: U.S. Patent Nos. 7,346,472 (the “’472 Patent”), 7,660, 700 (the “’700 Patent”), 7,949,494 (the “’494 Patent”), 8,214,175 (the “’175 Patent”), and 8,712,728 (the “’728 Patent”).  Looking at asserted claim 1 of the ‘472 patent as an example: the claim requires comparing a query signal with a reference signal.  The process involves creating an “abstract” (essentially a hash or digital fingerprint) of each signal that uses “perceptual qualities” of each signal, and then comparing those abstracts.

The district court dismissed the case on the pleadings – holding that the asserted claims were all invalid as a matter of law for effectively encompassing an abstract idea.  On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed without opinion.

In its decision, the district court expressly “distill[ed] the gist of the claim[s]” and found that the gist of the claims is to “model, on a computer, ‘the highly effective ability of humans to identify and recognize a signal’ [using a method that] mirrors the manner in which the human mind undertakes the same task.” (quoting the patent specification).   Essentially, the court found, all of the claims are directed to the abstract idea – “the idea of comparing one thing to another.”  Moving on from there, the court recognized the computer implementation, but found no inventive concept in that implementation.  The patentee argues here that the court erred in its gist analysis, and compounded that error by failing to construe the claims prior to the gisting process:

[M]any trial courts have adopted the practice of reducing patent claims to a highly general “gist,” then assessing that gist to determine whether it is so abstract as to be unpatentable. Because distillation to a “gist” inherently abstracts from a patent’s specific claims, this approach builds in a bias towards invalidity. . . . Deciding eligibility before claim construction exacerbates the tendency noted above to ignore a patent’s specific claims and over-generalize its “gist.”

The petition also spends substantial time discussing the Federal Circuit’s new status quo of issuing a substantial number of no-opinion judgments under Rule 36:

[T]he Federal Circuit appears unwilling to shoulder the responsibility for clarifying the Alice/Mayo analysis. That court’s use of summary Rule 36 affirmances seems to be both commonplace and increasing. This is particularly true in cases concerning patentable subject matter under § 101. One recent report identified a dozen Federal Circuit appeals raising this issue decided by Rule 36 affirmances in 2016 alone. . . . [P]recedential opinions in § 101 cases are important not just for trial courts reviewing issued patents, but also for the PTO’s examiners who must determine whether to issue patents in the first place. When the Federal Circuit fails to write a written opinion, it fails to provide the USPTO with necessary examples to use in granting patent applications.

In this particular case, the R.36 judgment is not a law violation (since the case arose from the district court rather than the PTO) but should also not be an excuse for failing to properly resolve the case – certainly the issues raised are not resolved and there is need for explanatory precedent.

[Blue Spike Petition (April 6 2017)]

Douglas Dynamics v. Meyer Prods (W.D. Wisc 2017) [2017-04-18 (68) Order re post IPR invalidity defenses].After Douglas sued Meyer for infringing its U.S. Patent No. 6,928,757 (Snowplow mounting assembly), Meyer petition for inter partes review — alleging that several of the claims were invalid.  Although the “director” iniated the review, the PTAB eventually sided with the patentee – reaffirming the validity of the claims.

Back at the district court, Douglass asked the court to apply the estoppel provisions that of Section 315(e)(e):

The petitioner in an inter partes review … that results in a final written decision under section 318(a) . . . may not assert . . . in a civil action arising [under the patent laws] . . . that the claim is invalid on any ground that the petitioner raised or reasonably could have raised during that inter partes review.

35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2).  The question for the district court here, was the scope of estoppel – what constitutes grounds that were “raised or reasonably could have [been] raised” during the IPR.  Here, the court took a position for fairly strong estoppel:

If the defendant pursues the IPR option, it cannot expect to hold a second-string invalidity case in reserve in case the IPR does not go defendant’s way. In many patent cases, particularly those involving well-developed arts, there is an abundance of prior art with which to make out an arguable invalidity case, so it would be easy to have a secondary set of invalidity contentions ready to go. The court will interpret the estoppel provision in § 315(e)(2) to preclude this defense strategy. Accordingly, the court will construe the statutory language “any ground that the petitioner . . . reasonably could have raised during that inter partes review” to include non-petitioned grounds that the defendant chose not to present in its petition to PTAB.

In Shaw Industries Group, Inc. v. Automated Creel Systems, Inc., 817 F.3d 1293 (Fed. Cir.), the Federal Circuit wrote in dicta that no estoppel should apply to grounds that were petitioned, but not instituted.  The Wisconsin court here suggested some potential problems with that outcome, but decided to follow the CAFC’s lead, writing:

So until Shaw is limited or reconsidered, this court will not apply § 315(e)(2) estoppel to [petitioned but] non-instituted grounds, but it will apply § 315(e)(2) estoppel to grounds not asserted in the IPR petition, so long as they are based on prior art that could have been found by a skilled searcher’s diligent search.

What this means for the defendant here is that the only 102/103 arguments that it gets to raise are ones already deemed total failures by the PTAB – and thus are unlikely winners before a district court.

= = = = =

Of some importance, the PTAB’s final written decision was released in November 2016.  For estoppel purposes, that final decision is all that is required for estoppel to kick-in. However, the case currently on appeal to the Federal Circuit — already giving the defendant its second bite at the apple.

= = = = 

A contention that that claims lack eligibility would not be estopped under 315(e). However, thus far the defendant has not alleged that the snow plow assembly is an abstract idea – despite the fact that plowing snow may be done with a pencil pushing a slip of paper, and the elements of the claim are each individually well known in the art.