Federal Circuit Invalidates Patent Claims As Non-Patentable Subject MatterAugust 8, 2014

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's recent decision in Digitech Image Technologies v. Electronics for Imaging, Inc., upheld a decision that patent claims directed to a collection of numerical data that lacks a physical component or manifestation as well as an abstract idea of organizing data through mathematical correlations are invalid.

The plaintiff, Digitech Image Technologies, filed infringement suits against 32 defendants in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, asserting claims of U.S. Patent No. 6,128,415 ("the '415 patent"). The '415 patent disclosed an "improved device profile" that describes spatial and color properties of a device within a digital image processing system and "includes both chromatic characteristic information and spatial characteristic information." The district court concluded that the "device profile" claims were directed to a collection of numerical data that lacks a physical component or physical manifestation and that a "device profile" is nothing more than information, thus not falling into one of the categories of eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C § 101. Furthermore, the district court concluded that the asserted method claims for generating a device profile encompass the abstract idea of organizing data through mathematical correlations were also ineligible under § 101.

On appeal, Digitech asserted that the district court erred in its findings that both the "device profile" and method claims were invalid. With regard to the "device profile" claims, the Court of Appeals stated that for under § 101, for all categories except process claims, the eligible subject matter must exist in some physical or tangible form. Here the "device profile" is comprised of two sets of data that describe a device dependent transformation—one set of data for color information and the other set of data for spatial information. Though Digitech argued that the "device profile" is hardware or software within a digital image processing system, the Court of Appeals concluded that the claims' only description of the device profile relates to the two sets of data and that data in its non-physical form simply does not fall under § 101.

Additionally, the Federal Circuit concluded that the '415 patent's method claims were drawn to an abstract idea because it describes a process of organizing information through mathematical correlations and is not tied to a specific structure or machine. The Court reasoned that without additional limitations, the employment of a mathematical algorithm to manipulate existing information in order to generate additional information is not eligible for patent protection. Specifically, the claim stated a process of combining two data sets into the "device profile" and was "so abstract and sweeping" as to cover any and all uses of a "device profile."

The full opinion is available here: http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions-orders/13-1600.Opinion.7-9-2014.1.PDF

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