History of Software Patents

Broadband iTV sued Amazon in the Western District of Texas alleging patent infringement of five patents relating to user interfaces. Amazon moved for summary judgment, arguing that all asserted claims were patent ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The district court granted Amazon’s motion, finding the claims were directed to an abstract idea and the patents failed to provide an inventive step that transformed that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.   Four of the patents are related:  U.S. Patent Nos. 10,028,026 (’026 patent); 9,648,388 (’388 patent); 10,536,750 (’750 patent); and 10,536,751.

The ’026 patent and its related…

USC brought suit for infringement against Facebook, Inc. (now Meta Platforms, Inc.), asserting that its “News Feed” feature infringes claims 1–17 of U.S. Patent No. 8,645,300.  The software patent relates to a search engine software method for predicting which webpages to recommend to a web visitor based on inferences of the visitor’s “intent.”  The software patent states that website navigation can be enhanced “by recording a visitor’s intent and recording page rankings that indicate how well the pages of a website match the visitor’s intent.” The software patent further explains that visitor intent can be inferred from historical intent data, the Uniform Resource Locator, the user’s visits, and optional user intent confirmation.  The lower court, the Western District…

Trinity Info Media, LLC sued Covalent, Inc. for infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 9,087,321 and 10,936,685 relating to methods and systems for connecting users based on their answers to polling questions. U.S. Patent No. 9,087,321 teaches that its claimed invention is “directed to a poll-based networking system that connects users based on similarities as determined through poll answering and provides real-time results to the users. The claimed invention of the ’685 patent is “directed to a poll-based networking and ecommerce system that connects users to other users, or products, goods and/or services based on similarities as determined through poll answering and provides real-time results to the users.

Claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 9,087,321 is representative and recites:

1. A poll-based…

Any ineligibility judgment should apply to only claims asserted in a complaint if held patent-ineligible after a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.

Hantz sued Sage alleging that Sage infringed U.S. Patent Nos. 8,055,559 and 8,055,560. Sage moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), arguing that the complaint asserted patent-ineligible claims under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The district court concluded that the asserted patents are ineligible under § 101.

Hantz maintained that the district court’s ineligibility judgment extended to all claims of the asserted patents, not just claims 1 and 31–33. According to Hantz, any ineligibility judgment should apply to only claims 1 and 31–33 of the asserted…