Amdoc (Israel) Ltd. v. Openet Telecom, Inc., Federal Circuit Nov 2016 (Software Patents)
Amdoc sued Openet over four software patents directed to solving accounting and billing problems faced by network service providers. The district court held that the software patents were directed to patent-ineligible abstract ideas.
A split panel of the Federal Circuit reversed the district court.
The written descriptions of the software patents describe the same system, which allows network service providers to account for and bill for internet protocol (“IP”) network communications. The system includes network devices; information source modules (“ISMs”); gatherers; a central event manager (“CEM”); a central database; a user interface server; and terminals or clients. Network devices represent any devices that could be included on a network, including application servers, and also represent the source of information accessed by the…