Eolas Technologies Incorporated v. amazon.com, Inc.
Eolas Technologies Incorporated v. amazon.com, Inc.
Opinion
Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 1 Filed: 02/01/2024
NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________
EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED, Plaintiff-Appellant
v.
AMAZON.COM, INC., GOOGLE LLC, WALMART, INC., Defendants-Appellees
---------------------------------------------
GOOGLE LLC, Plaintiff-Appellee
v.
EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED, Defendant-Appellant
REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Defendant ______________________
2022-1932, 2022-1933, 2022-1934, 2022-1935 ______________________
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in Nos. 4:15-cv-05446-JST, 4:17-cv-01138-JST, 4:17-cv-03022-JST, 4:17-cv-03023-JST, Judge Jon S. Tigar. Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 2 Filed: 02/01/2024
2 EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
______________________
Decided: February 1, 2024 ______________________
JOHN BRUCE CAMPBELL, McKool Smith, P.C., Austin, TX, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by JOSHUA WRIGHT BUDWIN, JAMES ELROY QUIGLEY, JOEL LANCE THOLLANDER.
CHARLES KRAMER VERHOEVEN, Quinn Emanuel Ur- quhart & Sullivan, LLP, San Francisco, CA, for defendant- appellee Google LLC. Also represented by JOCELYNE MA, DAVID ANDREW PERLSON; DEEPA ACHARYA, Washington, DC.
GABRIEL K. BELL, Latham & Watkins LLP, Washing- ton, DC, argued for all defendants-appellees. Defendant- appellee Amazon.com, Inc. also represented by RICHARD GREGORY FRENKEL, DOUGLAS ETHAN LUMISH, Menlo Park, CA; JOSEPH HYUK LEE, Costa Mesa, CA; AMIT MAKKER, San Francisco, CA; JEFFREY H. DEAN, Amazon.com, Inc., Seat- tle, WA.
MARK CHRISTOPHER FLEMING, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, Boston, MA, for defendant-appellee Walmart, Inc. ______________________
Before CHEN, BRYSON, and STOLL, Circuit Judges. STOLL, Circuit Judge. Eolas Technologies Inc. appeals from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California’s sum- mary judgment holding the asserted claims of Eolas’s U.S. Patent No. 9,195,507 invalid for claiming ineligible subject matter. Because we agree with the district court’s conclu- sion, we affirm. Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 3 Filed: 02/01/2024
EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 3
BACKGROUND I The ’507 patent claims priority from a patent filed in 1994. The ’507 patent specification notes that the limited processing power of a typical client computer and the low bandwidth of the Internet prohibited most users from in- teracting with large data objects on the Internet. See ’507 patent col. 5 ll. 39–52, col. 6 ll. 22–33. The specification de- scribes the present invention as taking advantage of dis- tributed hypermedia environments, such as that provided by the World Wide Web, and harnessing the remote com- puting power made available by distributed computing. 1 Id. col. 6 ll. 57–67; see also id. col. 7 ll. 1–6. The specification explains that tasks that would nor- mally be resource or bandwidth-intensive for a single com- puter—such as rendering large images or calculating spreadsheet cells—can be performed more effectively with distributed computing. For example, a new viewpoint of a large image or an updated calculation for a large spread- sheet can be computed on a remote computer and then sent to the client computer for display. See id. col. 7 ll. 1–33. Figure 5, shown below, illustrates an embodiment of the invention.
1 “Distributed” describes objects or processes that are located and/or processed across multiple computers on a network. See, e.g., ’507 patent col. 5 ll. 29–34; see Eolas Techs. Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., No. 6:15-cv-01038, 2016 WL 7155294, at *8 (E.D. Tex. Dec. 8, 2016) (Claim Construction Op.) (construing “distributed application” to mean an “application that is broken up and performed among two or more computers”). Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 4 Filed: 02/01/2024
4 EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
Id. Fig. 5. In this embodiment, a browser client 208 on the user’s computer requests and parses through a data object (e.g., hypermedia document 212), 2 and identifies an appli- cation for the application client 210 to invoke in order to interact with the data object. See id. col. 9 ll. 4–20, col. 9 ll. 29–33. The application client 210 communicates with the distributed network 206 (e.g., World Wide Web) to ac- cess the data object located on a server computer 204. Id. col. 9 ll. 34–40. Upon receipt of the data object from the application client 210, the browser client 208 displays the data object on the client computer 200. Id. col. 9 ll. 54–57; see also id. col. 9 l. 65–col. 10 l. 3. The specification also describes an example of an application performing multidi- mensional image visualization. Id. col. 9 ll. 34–35. In this
2 A “hypermedia document” is a document presented to a user in a computer system in which “the user is able to click on images, sound icons, video icons, etc., that link to other objects of various media types, such as additional graphics, sound, video, text, or hypermedia or hypertext documents.” ’507 patent col. 2 ll. 22–30. Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 5 Filed: 02/01/2024
EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 5
example, application server 220 performs the rendering and transformation calculations as the user interacts with the three-dimensional data object, with application client 210 updating the user’s view with each new viewpoint cal- culation. Id. col. 10 ll. 34–39, ll. 46–54. The specification describes a preferred embodiment in which the user inter- acts with the three-dimensional data object “within, or ad- jacent to, a window generated by browser client 208 that contains a display of hypermedia document 212.” Id. col. 9 ll. 59–61. According to the ’507 patent, having the application server 220 use the computing resources of the server com- puter 204, as described in the three-dimensional visualiza- tion example, is much faster than having the application client 210 executing on the client computer 200. Id. col. 10 ll. 60–64. Eolas argued before the district court that there is no substantial difference between method claims 32, 37, and 39 and system claims 19, 24, and 26. The district court agreed and determined these method claims were repre- sentative of the system claims. See Eolas Techs. Inc. v. Am- azon.com Inc., No. 17-cv-03022, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 243302, at *53–54 (N.D. Cal. May 16, 2022) (Summary Judgment Op.). Representative independent claim 32 re- cites: 32. A method, performed by a server computer con- nected to the World Wide Web distributed hyper- media network on the Internet, for disseminating interactive content via the World Wide Web dis- tributed hypermedia network on the Internet, the method comprising: A. receiving, by the server computer, a re- quest for information; and B. transferring, by the server computer, the information onto the World Wide Web Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 6 Filed: 02/01/2024
6 EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
distributed hypermedia network on the In- ternet, wherein: (i) a World Wide Web browser on a client computer connected to the World Wide Web distributed hyper- media network has been configured with a plurality of different interac- tive-content applications, each said interactive-content application be- ing configured to enable a user to interact, within one or more World Wide Web pages, with at least part of one or more objects while at least part of each of said one or more ob- jects is displayed to the user within at least one of said one or more World Wide Web pages, and (ii) at least part of the information is configured to allow the World Wide Web browser on the client computer to: a. detect at least part of an object to be displayed in a World Wide Web page, and b. cause a display of the World Wide Web page to a user, (iii) the World Wide Web browser has been configured to: a. select an interactive-content ap- plication, based upon the infor- mation, from among the different interactive-content applications, and Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 7 Filed: 02/01/2024
EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 7
b. automatically invoke the se- lected interactive-content applica- tion to enable the user to employ the selected interactive-content ap- plication to interact within the World Wide Web page with at least part of the object while at least part of the object is displayed to the user within the World Wide Web page, wherein the automatically invoked interactive-content application has been configured to operate as part of a distributed application config- ured to enable a user to perform the interaction through the use of com- munications sent to and received from at least a portion of the dis- tributed application located on two or more distributed application computers connected to the World Wide Web distributed hypermedia network on the Internet, the two or more distributed application com- puters being remote from the client computer. ’507 patent col. 23 l. 25–col. 24 l. 2. Eolas argues that independent claim 45 is patent eligi- ble for additional reasons not present in representative claim 32. In particular, Eolas emphasizes that claim 45 recites additional limitations of generating and sending computer commands to perform viewing transformations: 45. A method performed by one or more computers for coordinating distributed processing to enable dissemination of interactive content to a client computer, the method comprising: Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 8 Filed: 02/01/2024
8 EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
a. coordinating by the one or more comput- ers processing of at least part of a distrib- uted application to perform at least one task, b. coordinating by the one or more comput- ers communications sent to and received from at least a portion of the distributed application located on two or more separate computers connected to the World Wide Web distributed hypermedia network to enable the separate computers to work to- gether to perform the at least one task, wherein at least part of the distributed ap- plication has been implemented to be part of a distributed interactive-content applica- tion configured to enable a user to interact with at least part of an object, displayed within a World Wide Web page by the cli- ent computer, and c. generating and sending by the one or more computers commands over a network to coordinate activity of the separate com- puters working together to perform view- ing transformations to enable the interaction with at least part of the object, wherein: a. the two or more separate com- puters are remote from the client computer containing a World Wide Web browser configured to cause the display of the World Wide Web page, b. the World Wide Web browser has been configured with a plurality of different interactive-content appli- cations, each said interactive- Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 9 Filed: 02/01/2024
EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 9
content application being config- ured to enable a user to interact, within one or more World Wide Web pages, with at least part of one or more objects while at least part of each of said one or more objects is displayed to the user within at least one of said one or more World Wide Web pages, c. the World Wide Web browser has been enabled, by information that has been transferred onto the World Wide Web distributed hyper- media network, to detect at least part of the object and to display the world Wide Web Page, d. the World Wide Web browser has been configured to select an in- teractive-content application, based upon the information, from among the different interactive- content applications, and automat- ically invoke the selected interac- tive-content application, e. the automatically invoked inter- active-content application has been configured to operate as part of the distributed interactive-content ap- plication. Id. col. 24 l. 56–col. 25 l. 37. II Eolas filed suit against Amazon.com, Inc.; Google LLC; and Walmart, Inc. (collectively, “Appellees”) in the Eastern District of Texas for infringing certain claims of the ’507 Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 10 Filed: 02/01/2024
10 EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
patent. The cases were later transferred to the Northern District of California. During claim construction, the district court construed the claim limitation “World Wide Web browser on a client computer” to not require that the interactive content appli- cations be internal to the World Wide Web browser. 3 See Claim Construction Op., 2016 WL 7155294, at *12–13. In other words, the district court determined that the claim did not require relocation of the interactive content appli- cation into the World Wide Web browser. Appellees filed a motion for summary judgment, argu- ing that the claims 19, 24, 26, 32, 37, 39, and 45 are ineli- gible for patenting under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Applying the two-step test set forth in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Interna- tional, 573 U.S. 208 (2014), the district court concluded that under Alice step one, the asserted claims are “directed to the abstract idea of enabling interactivity with remote objects on a client computer browser using distributed com- puting.” Summary Judgment Op., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 243302, at *20. The district court determined under Alice step two that the purported inventive concepts of distrib- uted computing and improved security, whether
3 The court specifically construed the claim term “the World Wide Web browser on a client computer” to mean “a client computer application, separate from the in- teractive-content application, that allows a user to access the World Wide Web.” Claim Construction Op., 2016 WL 7155294, at *13 (emphasis added). This separation cuts against the notion that the interactive content application must be in the browser. Also, the court’s construction is consistent with the title of the ’507 patent, which refers to “Automatically Invoking External Application” and Fig- ure 8A of the preferred embodiment, which refers to launching an external application at step 290. ’507 patent Fig. 8A, col. 15 ll. 4–7, ll. 17–18. Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 11 Filed: 02/01/2024
EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 11
individually or as an ordered combination, embodied the abstract idea, and thus could not transform the claim be- yond the abstract idea as required to demonstrate eligibil- ity under Alice step two. Id. at *60–61. It also explained that the remaining aspects of the asserted claims lacked an inventive concept to transform the abstract idea into a pa- tent-eligible application because they cite generic computer components and functions. See id. at *61–62. The district court therefore held the asserted claims ineligible under § 101 and granted summary judgment in Appellees’ favor. Id. at *67–68. Eolas appeals. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1). DISCUSSION When reviewing a district court’s grant of summary judgment, we apply the law of the regional circuit. See Syn- opsys, Inc. v. Mentor Graphics Corp., 839 F.3d 1138, 1146 (Fed. Cir. 2016). Summary judgment in the Ninth Circuit is appropriate when, after drawing all reasonable infer- ences in favor of the non-moving party, there remains no genuine issue of material fact precluding the grant of sum- mary judgment. See Comite de Jornaleros de Redondo Beach v. City of Redondo Beach, 657 F.3d 936, 942 (9th Cir. 2011). Patent eligibility under § 101 is a question of law that may involve underlying questions of fact. See Mortg. Grader, Inc. v. First Choice Loan Servs. Inc., 811 F.3d 1314, 1325 (Fed. Cir. 2016). We review the district court’s ultimate conclusion on eligibility de novo. See Intell. Ven- tures I LLC v. Capital One Fin. Corp., 850 F.3d 1332, 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2017). We look to the two-step test articulated in Alice to determine whether a claim is eligible for patent- ing under § 101. See 573 U.S. at 217–18. For Alice step one, we must assess whether the claims at issue are di- rected to a patent-ineligible concept, namely a law of na- ture, natural phenomenon, or abstract idea. Id. at 217. If Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 12 Filed: 02/01/2024
12 EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
the answer is yes, we then consider the claim elements, both individually and as an ordered combination, to deter- mine whether they contain an “inventive concept” suffi- cient to “‘transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent- eligible application.” Id. at 217–18 (quoting Mayo Collab- orative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66, 72– 73, 78 (2012)). In other words, we must determine whether the claims recite additional features beyond the abstract idea, rendering the claims eligible for patenting. Those ad- ditional features must be more than “well-understood, rou- tine, conventional activity.” Mayo, 566 U.S. at 79–80. Starting with Alice step one, the district court deter- mined that representative claim 32 of the ’507 patent “is directed to the abstract concept of enabling interactivity with remote objects on a client computer browser using dis- tributed computing.” Summary Judgment Op., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 243302, at *27. On appeal, Eolas argues that this characterization is overgeneralized in that it fails to acknowledge the claim’s recitation of objects on the World Wide Web. See Appel- lant’s Br. 43–44. We agree. Eolas’s claims are not directed to computers, networks, or interacting with content gener- ally; rather, they recite interacting with content on the World Wide Web. For example, the body of claim 32 recites certain configuration requirements of a World Wide Web browser, World Wide Web pages, and the World Wide Web distributed hypermedia network. The district court’s char- acterization “disregard[s] th[e]se express claim elements” in a way that is “‘untethered from the claim language.’” TecSec, Inc. v. Adobe Inc., 978 F.3d 1278, 1295 (Fed. Cir. 2020) (quoting Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 822 F.3d 1327, 1337 (Fed. Cir. 2016)); see also Enfish, 822 F.3d at 1337 (warning against “describing the claims at such a high level of abstraction” in the § 101 analysis). The spec- ification further supports our understanding of what the claimed invention is directed to in that it describes Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 13 Filed: 02/01/2024
EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 13
problems specific to the World Wide Web and explains how the invention purports to solve them. At the same time, we are concerned that the district court’s characterization of what the claims are directed to is too specific in that the court included implementation de- tails—i.e., using distributed computing—that may be best left for consideration under Alice step two. See Summary Judgment Op., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 243302, at *60–61. In narrowly articulating what the invention was directed to under Alice step one and concluding that this subject matter was abstract, the district court eliminated any op- portunity to consider whether distributed computing trans- forms the invention into eligible subject matter under Alice step two. See BSG Tech LLC v. Buyseasons, Inc., 899 F.3d 1281, 1290 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (“After identifying an ineligible concept at step one, we ask at step two ‘[w]hat else is there in the claims before us?’” (quoting Mayo, 566 U.S. at 78 (modification in BSG)). We nonetheless agree with the district court that, even under our slightly modified view of what the claims are di- rected to, the claims are directed to an abstract idea under Alice step one. Simply put, interacting with data objects on the World Wide Web is an abstraction. See Ultramer- cial, Inc. v. Hulu, LLC, 772 F.3d 709, 714–15 (Fed. Cir. 2014). Eolas contends that it developed new functionality that was not previously available and thus its claims are eligi- ble under § 101. We are not persuaded by this particular argument. At best, the specification explains that prior art systems provided users “very little, if any, interaction with the[] data objects” on the World Wide Web due to the con- straints of client computers, ’507 patent col. 6 ll. 22–34, and thus “it [wa]s desirable to allow a user to manipulate data objects in an interactive way to provide the user with a better understanding of information presented and to al- low the user to accomplish a wider variety of tasks,” id. Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 14 Filed: 02/01/2024
14 EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
col. 6 ll. 37–41. But an abstract idea that is new or ground- breaking is not any less abstract. See Ultramercial, 772 F.3d at 714 (rejecting argument that “abstract ideas remain patent-eligible under § 101 as long as they are new ideas, not previously well known, and not routine activ- ity”). Case law from the Supreme Court and this court sug- gests that claims purporting to improve a technological process are not directed to an abstract idea under § 101. See Alice, 573 U.S. at 223; Visual Memory LLC v. NVIDIA Corp., 867 F.3d 1253, 1260 (Fed. Cir. 2017). According to Eolas, the ’507 patent claims capture “specific technologi- cal solutions to [three] specific technological problems,” and thus, the claims are not abstract under Alice step one. Appellant’s Br. 25. First, Eolas asserts that at the time of the invention, user interaction with data objects was lim- ited to downloading data objects “onto their client comput- ers and then launching external applications that would [then] permit manipulation” of the data objects. Appel- lant’s Br. 23. Eolas asserts that with the claimed inven- tion, “rather than downloading objects to be manipulated with outside-the-Web-browser helper applications, objects are embedded within Web pages and Web browsers are configured with applications that can be automatically in- voked to permit manipulation while the object is displayed within the Web page.” Appellant’s Br. 24. In other words, Eolas claims that inside-the-browser applications facilitate object manipulation. Second, Eolas contends that in addi- tion to relocating applications to reside within the Web browser, the claims address scalability with its distributed computing configuration: “new applications are broken up and distributed, with one part working in the browser and other parts on remote distributed application computers.” Id. Third, Eolas contends that, by invoking only applica- tions that are configured to be used with the Web browser, the invention improves security. Appellant’s Br. 24–25. In the alternative, Eolas relies on these same three aspects of Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 15 Filed: 02/01/2024
EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 15
the invention as alleged inventive concepts that would ren- der the claims eligible under Alice step two. See Appel- lant’s Br. 55–58. As noted above, Alice step two requires determining whether an element, or a combination of ele- ments, in the claim contains an inventive concept sufficient to “‘transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.” Alice, 573 U.S. at 217 (quoting Mayo, 566 U.S. at 72, 79). Finally, Eolas contends that claim 45’s additional limitation of “viewing transformations” provides an inventive concept that renders claim 45 patent-eligible. Appellant’s Br. 35. Whether analyzed as technological improvements un- der Alice step 1 or as inventive concepts under Alice step 2, none of Eolas’s three alleged concepts for representative claim 32 make the claim eligible. We likewise conclude that claim 45 does not recite additional features beyond the claimed abstract idea that render the claim eligible for pa- tenting. We consider each of Eolas’s alleged inventive con- cepts in turn below. First, Eolas contends that relocation of the interactive content application from outside to inside the World Wide Web browser itself was an important new structural change that improved interactivity with the World Wide Web. But we do not see this limitation anywhere in the claims and thus it cannot satisfy Alice step two. And Eolas did not challenge the district court’s claim construction, which does not require that the interactive content appli- cation be internal to the World Wide Web browser, on ap- peal. Furthermore, Eolas did not present this alleged inventive concept of relocating the interactive application in the web browser in its § 101 arguments before the dis- trict court below. Thus, not only do the claims not recite locating the interactive content applications within the browser, but it appears that Eolas waived this argument by not presenting it below. Relocation of the interactive content application within the web browser is therefore not Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 16 Filed: 02/01/2024
16 EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
an inventive concept that renders the claims eligible under Alice step 2. Second, Eolas asserts that the claims recite the in- ventive concept of distributed processing between the ap- plication in the browser and applications on remote distributed computers. But it is undisputed that, at the time of the invention, distributed processing was well-un- derstood, routine, conventional activity. See Summary Judgment Op., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 243302, at *61 n.12; Appellees’ Br. 54. For example, one of the named inventors of the ’507 patent confirmed that the inventors did not in- vent distributed computing, servers, or applications. J.A. 16647, 16649 (Martin Depo. at 63:9–18, 65:8–24). Moreover, as the district court explained, the claims merely describe a desired function or outcome without providing details of the claimed distributed processing. Specifically, claim 32 requires an automatically invoked in- teractive-content application “configured to operate as part of a distribution application” that “enable[s] a user” to in- teract with data objects within a World Wide Web Page. ’507 patent col. 23 ll. 54–62. And the rest of the claim re- cites that “a portion of the distributed application [is] lo- cated on two or more distributed application computers connected to the World Wide Web distributed hypermedia network on the Internet [with] the two or more distributed application computers being remote from the client com- puter.” Id. col. 23 l. 61–col. 24 l. 2. The claim thus recites distributed processing, but does not specify how the claimed configuration for distributed processing is any dif- ferent than generic distributed processing. For example, the claim does not specify how the processing is distributed among the distributed application computers. Nor does it require distributed processing among applications internal and external to the web browser. Without more, the dis- tributed processing as claimed is not an inventive concept that transforms claim 32 into a patent-eligible invention. Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 17 Filed: 02/01/2024
EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC. 17
Third, Eolas alleges its claims alleviate certain security concerns existing at the time of the invention by limiting the invoked interactive content applications to those con- figured to operate within the Web browser. But this al- leged inventive concept is not within the scope of the claims because, as noted above, the claims do not actually require that the interactive content applications be located within the browser. Indeed, the claims merely recite that the browser invokes interactive-content applications (which, under the district court’s construction, are separate from— i.e., external to—the “World Wide Web browser”). See ’507 patent col. 23 ll. 50–53 (“[T]he World Wide Web browser . . . select[s] an interactive-content application . . . from among the different interactive-content applica- tions.”); see also id. Title (“Distributed Hypermedia Method and System for Automatically Invoking External Applica- tion Providing Interaction and Display of Embedded Ob- jects within a Hypermedia Document”); id. col. 15 ll. 4–7, ll. 15–30. Thus, the claims are not eligible under either Al- ice step one or Alice step two based on this contention. Finally, turning to claim 45, Eolas asserts that the ad- ditional limitation requiring remote computers to generate and send computer commands to perform “viewing trans- formations” offers a 3D view that improves a computer net- work system’s specific technical features or operations. Appellant’s Br. 35. This additional limitation does not transform the abstract idea into a patent-eligible claim. The district court construed “viewing transformations” to mean “operations performed on data for visual display to a user.” Claim Construction Op., 2016 WL 7155294, at *16. This broad construction, which is unchallenged on appeal, encompasses visual display generally, something well- known in the art at the time of the invention. See, e.g., J.A. 16655–56 (Martin Depo. 145:18–146:2) (Inventor Mar- tin denying having invented sending commands to a re- mote server to perform visualization processes); J.A. 12150–51 (prior art publication describing sending Case: 22-1932 Document: 59 Page: 18 Filed: 02/01/2024
18 EOLAS TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED v. AMAZON.COM, INC.
scientific visualization to remote computers); ’507 patent col. 6 ll. 2–4 (explaining in background of the invention sec- tion that “a variety of visualization techniques . . . have been developed”); J.A. 13047 (Inventor Doyle describing ex- isting visualization systems in a 1994 proposal). Nor does anything else in the claim or the specification show how the recited viewing transformation differs from conventional visual display. Thus, the “viewing transformations” limi- tation in claim 45—construed as “operations performed on data for visual display to a user”—fails to transform the abstract idea into an eligible technical solution. See, e.g., Elec. Power Grp., LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350, 1355 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (stating that “‘displaying concurrent visu- alization’ of two or more types of information . . . is ‘insuf- ficient to pass the test of an inventive concept in the application’ of an abstract idea’” (quoting buySAFE, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 765 F.3d 1350, 1353, 1355 (Fed. Cir. 2014)). For all of the above reasons, we conclude that the claims are directed to an abstract idea under Alice step 1 and that the alleged inventive concepts identified by Eolas do not otherwise transform the abstract nature of the claims to render the claims patent-eligible. We thus agree with the district court’s judgment that the asserted claims of the ’507 patent are not eligible for patenting. CONCLUSION We have considered Eolas’s remaining arguments and find them unpersuasive. Because the district court cor- rectly concluded that the ’507 patent claims are directed to ineligible subject matter, we affirm. AFFIRMED
Reference
- Status
- Unpublished