The Software IP Report
Fed. Cir. Affirms Command and Control Patent-Ineligibility
By Charles Bieneman
Categories: Patent Eligibility, Software Patents, The Software IP Report
In a one-line per curiam Rule 36 judgment, the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s judgment on the pleadings that claims of patents directed to “command-and-control processing” recited ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Appistry Inc. v. Amazon.com Inc., No. 2015-2077 (Fed. Cir. Feb 10, 2017) (Judges Lourie, Hughes, and Stoll). The patents at issue were U.S. Patent Nos. 8,200,746 and 8,341,209, both entitled “System And Method For Processing Information Via Networked Computers Including Request Handlers, Process Handlers, And Task Handlers.” This post summarized, and links to, the lower court’s decision.
As we have previously noted, the increasing volume of patent-eligibility cases flowing through the Federal Circuit’s docket is resulting in an increasing number of cursory affirmances of findings of patent-ineligibility. As much as the seeming plasticity of the Alice/Mayo patent-eligibility test frustrates practitioners, there are, more and more, easy patent-eligibility cases.