Patent Eligibility of Machine Learning

I’m providing some of my slides from my webinar yesterday on the patent eligibility of machine learning. These slides include an updated list of abstract ideas found by the Federal Circuit as well as the slides for the Electric Power Group (EPG) line of cases. The EPG section includes Recentive, RPI, and Ollnova, which is…

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Yet Another Example of Electric Power Group (EPG) Killing a Patent

In today’s AGI SureTrack LLC, v. Farmers Edge Inc. case, the Federal Circuit used EPG to once again strike down a patent for failing to recite patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The technology involves collecting farming operation data using devices attached to farming equipment while the equipment is operating and then processing…

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TJTM Tech. v. Google: Functional Claims Directed to Suppressing Cell Phone Notifications While Driving Found Patent Ineligible

If you follow my posts, you’ve seen a lot of functional claims struck down recently by the Federal Circuit. Today’s TJTM Tech. v. Google (nonprecedential) is yet another example. The technology involves suppressing incoming notifications from “calls, texts, emails, etc.” on a mobile phone to prevent distracted driving and automatically notifying the sender with an…

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RFC Lenders of Texas v. Smart Chemical Solutions: Functional Claims Directed to Monitoring Vehicles for Unauthorized Usage Fail to Recite Patentable Subject Matter

In today’s RFC Lenders of Texas v. Smart Chemical Solutions case (nonprecedential), the Federal Circuit needed very little analysis to affirm a district court’s grant of a motion to dismiss, finding the claims ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The technology involves monitoring vehicles for unauthorized usage. The claims were functionally drafted (e.g., “detecting movement…

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Summarize, Analogize, and Euthanize (SAE): the Federal Circuit’s standard patentable-subject-matter process.

In today’s Nantworks v. Niantic case (nonprecedential), the Federal Circuit killed two patents directed to data analysis/manipulation by using its normal SAE process. The case involved two patents: the ‘518 (mapping augmented-reality (AR) objects and rendering them on a display) and the ‘051 (incorporating visual objects into a digital representation of an environment surrounding an…

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Another patentable-subject-matter take down by the Electric Power Group (EPG) line of cases!

In yesterday’s In re McFadden Fed. Cir. case (nonprecedential), the court struck down an application directed to “generating one distribution of information items, then comparing it to a previous distribution of information items, to determine how information should be presented to a consumer.” If Mr. McFadden’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he had another one…

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