New Functionality Struck Down as Abstract Idea in iCharts v. Tableau Software
In yesterday’s iCharts v. Tableau Software case (nonprecedential), the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s finding of patent ineligibility on a motion for judgment on the pleadings. This case is a great example of the Federal Circuit using “functionally drafted” as its own abstract-idea category, even when involving new functionality.
This case involved three related patents, all directed to self-contained, interactive charts. An interactive chart is “self-contained” when it can be downloaded and exist independently from the portal that created it while still maintaining its interactivity, including rendering the chart, receiving user input, and re-rendering the chart using that input. The three representative claims were all drafted functionally, stating the functionality that the self-contained, interactive chart can perform without stating how it performs that functionality. Indeed, the court stated, “there is nothing in the representative claims showing how to ‘generate,’ ‘re-render,’ or ‘update’ a self-contained, interactive chart. The claims are thus directed to ‘only a result’ as opposed to a ‘way of achieving it.'”
At step one, the patent owner argued that the claims are non-abstract “because they are directed towards an improvement in computer functionality, i.e., the creation of a ‘self-contained interactive chart.'” But the court basically said that, even if that were true, the claims are still abstract: “But even accepting iChart’s position that the Asserted Patents are directed to the idea of generating a self-contained, interactive chart, this idea, as reflected in the representative claims of the Asserted Patents, is still abstract.” The court stated, “[a]s ‘reflected repeatedly in our cases,’ claims can be ‘abstract’ under step one when they lack the ‘specificity required to transform a claim from one claiming only a result to one claiming a way of achieving it.'” The court warned, “[t]he claim itself ‘must identify “how” that functional result is achieved by limiting the claim scope to structures specified at some level of concreteness, in the case of a product claim, or to concrete action, in the case of a method claim.'” The court concluded that the representative claims are directed to the “abstract idea of ‘generating and sharing self-contained, interactive charts on computers’ or ‘across websites.'”
At step two, the court concluded that “neither the recited components nor steps of the representative claims do anything more than implement the abstract idea…. We conclude that there are no elements in the representative claims, individually or as an ordered combination, that capture an inventive concept sufficient to transform the claims into eligible subject matter.”
Key takeaway: A functionally drafted claim, even when directed to “new functionality,” can be treated as an abstract idea and struck down. As I’ve now mentioned many times, the Federal Circuit’s recent trend is to really cut back on functional claiming.