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 v. Google (nonprecedential) is yet another example.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 “away message.” The claims were drafted functionally. Doesn’t this remind you of the automatic email response you set while on vacation? It did to me. In any event, this case just wasn’t a close call. The district court had granted a motion to dismiss for lack of patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

At Alice’s step one, the patent owner argued that the claims were directed to a technological solution to a technological problem. The court disagreed, stating that improving “a user’s experience via a mobile device automatically entering inactive mode … alone does not amount to a ‘technological improvement’ under our precedent.” (emphasis in original). The court concluded: patent owner’s “argument fails to suggest that the claims … are directed to anything other than an abstract idea of adding a communication-suppression function to a phone.”

At step two, the patent owner argued that the claimed limitations were a “specific combination” that were nonconventional. The court called this argument “merely conclusory” and stated that the patent owner had not shown how or why the sequence of steps were “anything more than a description of the abstract idea of suppressing notifications on a cell phone.”

Trying to get functional claims by the Federal Circuit is a tough task. So, when you combine that with well-known functionality, you’re really asking for trouble.