Holding: Claims directed to abstract ideas that rely on results‑oriented language, without explaining how the results are achieved or identifying any specific technological improvement, are patent‑ineligible.
US Patent No. 7,679,637 relates to a web conferencing system that includes time-shifting capabilities that allow a participant to observe a web conference in real-time, observe the conference on delay, or after the conference is completed. The ‘637 Patent also discloses allowing participants to watch the session at different playback rates while maintaining the same audio quality. This technology allows data streams to be viewed asynchronously, so that one part of the presentation may be reviewed while another aspect of the presentation is live.
The owner of the ‘637 Patent sued Google for infringement of several claims of the ‘637 Patent. Google moved to dismiss the complaint, alleging that the asserted claims were patent-ineligible under Section 101. The asserted independent claims 2 and 7 of the ‘637 Patent are each directed to a web conferencing system. The district court granted Google’s motion to dismiss, finding the asserted claims of the ‘637 Patent to be directed to patent-ineligible subject matter.
The Federal Circuit reviewed the district court’s decision using the Alice two-part test. Step One asks whether the claims at issue are directed to a patent-ineligible concept, such as an abstract idea. Step Two considers the elements of the claim both individually and as an ordered combination to determine whether the additional elements of the claim transform the nature of the claim into a patent-eligible application.
The owner of the ‘637 Patent argued that under Step One, the district court erred in finding the claims to be directed to the abstract idea of “playing back recorded content.” Instead, they argued that the asserted claims are directed to a specific improvement that allows a presentation to be reviewed asynchronously while the live session continues. However, the Federal Circuit stated that even with this more narrowly defined improvement, the claims are still directed to a patent-ineligible abstract idea because the claims do not describe how the goal of asynchronous review is achieved.
For software claims, Step One often depends on whether the claims focus on specific asserted improvements in computer capabilities. However, the claims do not need to explicitly recite the improvement. The improvement can be disclosed in other manners, such as (1) looking to the written description; (2) considering whether the technological improvement is embodied in the claims; and (3) analyzing whether the claims and written description describe how the improvement was accomplished.
In the ‘637 Patent, claims 2 and 7 use results-oriented language such as “arranged to allow,” “allow,” and “able to,” when describing certain results that the web conferencing system is able to achieve. However, claims 2 and 7 do not describe how these results are achieved or provide any specific technological improvement. Therefore, the Federal Circuit held that these claims are directed to patent-ineligible abstract ideas. The claims do not provide an explanation regarding how the client applications manipulate data streams to allow asynchronous review, and the written description does not fill this gap with a description of the underlying components for asynchronous review. Additionally, the written description does not suggest that the use of two client applications and data streams provides a solution to a particular problem, but instead merely suggests the application of known time-shifting functions to web conferencing systems.
For Step Two, the owner of the ‘637 Patent argued that the district court overlooked two inventive concepts recited in the asserted claims. The first alleged inventive concept was the two-client application system that allowed for manipulation of multiple data streams, and the second was a time-scale modification component. However, for Step Two, the owner of the ‘637 Patent mostly repeated the same arguments from the Step One analysis. The Federal Circuit found that the asserted claims’ use of results‑oriented language, without any specific implementation describing how to achieve the claimed results, is not sufficient to render a claim patent-eligible under Step Two. An inventive concept requires something more than the simple application of an abstract idea using well-known activities or components. The Federal Circuit also found that the time-scale modification component did not add an inventive concept, as this component was described in the specification as conventional and as using pre-established algorithms.
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