The Fed. Cir. issues another 35 U.S.C. § 101 case, ending the several-months-long drought

Finally, after several months, the Fed. Cir. today issued another patentable subject matter case under 35 U.S.C. § 101: Technology in Ariscale v. Razer (nonprecedential). The district court below found patent ineligible claims directed to “‘[a] computer-implemented method for decoding a transmission signal’ that comprises steps including ‘receiving,’ ‘deinterleaving,’ ‘combining,’ and ‘decoding’ the information in the transmission signal.” I know what you’re thinking, “Could this be another Electric Power Group (EPG) case?” Well, technically, it is not (although EPG is cited). Nevertheless, it’s very close to EPG because the claim focuses on data analysis/manipulation. The court relied on Hawk Tech. (encoding and decoding image data and converting formats), RecogniCorp (encoding and decoding image data), and Digitech Image Techs. (gathering and combining data) in finding that the claims were directed to an abstract idea. The court further explained that the claims failed to disclose specific means or methods for performing the recited functions (citing to Two-Way Media) and that the claimed methods could be performed in the human mind or by using pencil and paper (citing to PersonalWeb). At Alice’s step two, the court said the claimed steps were all found in the prior art except for one, and for that step, it did not include the potentially claim-saving details from the specification.

Like so many other patents directed to data analysis/manipulation, this patent bites the dust too. A couple of months ago, I mentioned during my panel discussion at the AIPLA annual conference that I questioned what the Fed. Cir. would do with the machine-learning-model-training claims found patent eligible in the PTAB’s Ex parte Desjardins case (precedential). Well, cases like this one show that that is a very good question.