Interval Licensing LLC v. AOL Inc., CASE NO. C10-1385-MJP

Decision Date16 June 2016
Docket NumberCASE NO. C10-1385-MJP
Citation193 F.Supp.3d 1184
Parties INTERVAL LICENSING LLC, Plaintiff, v. AOL INC, et al., Defendants.
CourtU.S. District Court — Western District of Washington

Justin A. Nelson, Matthew Behncke, Max L. Tribble, Susman Godfrey, Eric J. Enger, Robert A. Bullwinkel, Michael F. Heim, Nathan J. Davis, Heim Payne & Chorush, LLP, Houston, TX, Andres C. Healy, Edgar Guy Sargent, Matthew R. Berry, Susman Godfrey, Seattle, WA, Douglas R. Wilson, Heim Payne & Chorush LLP, Austin, TX, Oleg Elkhunovich, Susman Godfrey, Los Angeles, CA, for Plaintiff.

Cortney S. Alexander, Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner LLP, Atlanta, GA, Elliott C. Cook, Robert L. Burns, Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner LLP, Reston, VA, Gerald F. Ivey, Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner, Washington, DC, Molly A. Terwilliger, Jeremy E. Roller, Scott T. Wilsdon, Yarmuth Wilsdon PLLC, Arthur W. Harrigan, Jr., Shane P. Cramer, Harrigan Leyh Farmer & Thomsen LLP, Steven O. Fortney, Summit Law Group, Christopher B. Durbin, Cooley LLP, Scott A.W. Johnson, Theresa Wang, Stokes Lawrence, Kevin C. Baumgardner, Steven W. Fogg, Corr Cronin Michelson Baumgardner & Preece, Mark P. Walters, Lowe Graham Jones, Seattle, WA, Clayton Thompson, David L. Alberti, Elizabeth Day, Marc C. Belloli, Yakov Zolotorev, Feinberg Day Alberti & Thompson LLP, Elizabeth L. Stameshkin, Heidi L. Keefe, Mark R. Weinstein, Cooley LLP, Warren S. Heit, Wendi R. Schepler, White & Case LLP, Palo Alto, CA, Derrick W. Toddy, J. Christopher Carraway, Jeffrey S. Love, John D. Vandenberg, Klaus H. Hamm, Kristin L. Cleveland, Klarquist Sparkman, Portland, OR, Michael G. Rhodes, Cooley LLP, Francis Ho, Matthew I. Kreeger, Michael A. Jacobs, Richard S.J. Hung, Morrison & Foerster, San Francisco, CA, Aaron Chase, Dimitrios T. Drivas, Kevin X. McGann, White & Case, New York, NY, Douglas S. Rupert, John S. Letchinger, Baker & Hostetler LLP, Chicago, IL, Jeffrey D. Neumeyer, Officemax Incorporated, Boise, ID, for Defendants.

ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS' MOTION FOR JUDGMENT ON THE PLEADINGS

Marsha J. Pechman, United States District Judge

THIS MATTER comes before the Court on Defendants' Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings. (Dkt. No. 372.) Having considered the Parties' briefing and all related papers, the Court GRANTS the motion.

Background

Plaintiff Interval Licensing, LLC brings suit against various defendants for patent infringement. (Dkt. No. 153.) Defendants AOL, Inc., Apple, Inc., Google, Inc., and Yahoo! Inc., now move for judgment on the pleadings, arguing that the asserted claims of U.S. Patent No. 6,034,652 ("the '652 patent") are invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l, ––– U.S. ––––, 134 S.Ct. 2347, 189 L.Ed.2d 296 (2014) because the claims are directed to an abstract idea and contain no inventive concept to render them patent eligible. (Dkt. No. 372.)

Plaintiff opposes the motion, arguing that the asserted claims of the '652 patent are valid because they are not abstract and include an inventive concept that enhances existing technology. (Dkt. No. 378.)

Discussion
I. Legal Standards
A. Judgment on the Pleadings

After the pleadings are closed, a party may move for judgment on the pleadings. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c). A judgment on the pleadings is properly granted when, taking all the allegations in the pleadings as true, the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Milne ex rel. Coyne v. Stephen Slesinger, Inc., 430 F.3d 1036, 1042 (9th Cir.2005).

B. Patent Invalidity under 35 U.S.C. § 101

Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable. Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l, ––– U.S. ––––, 134 S.Ct. 2347, 2354, 189 L.Ed.2d 296 (2014). Otherwise, monopolization of those tools through the grant of a patent might tend to impede innovation more than it would tend to promote it, thereby thwarting the primary objective of the patent laws. Id.(citing Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66, 132 S.Ct. 1289, 182 L.Ed.2d 321 (2012).) At the same time, courts must tread carefully in construing this exclusionary principle "lest it swallow all of patent law." Id.

Accordingly, in applying the § 101 exclusionary principle, courts must distinguish between patents that claim the "building blocks" of human ingenuity and those that integrate the building blocks into something more, thereby transforming them into a patent-eligible invention. Id. To distinguish patents that claim laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas from those that claim patent-eligible application of those concepts, courts first "determine whether the claims at issue are directed to one of those patent ineligible concepts." Id. If so, courts then ask "what else is there in the claims before [them]." Id. To answer the second question, courts "consider the elements of each claim both individually and ‘as an ordered combination’ to determine whether the additional elements ‘transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application." Id. The Supreme Court characterizes the second step as a "search for an inventive concept," i.e. an element or combination of elements that is sufficient to ensure that the patent in practice amounts to significantly more than a patent upon the ineligible concept itself. Id.

II. Step One: Patent-Ineligible Concept

The Court must first determine whether the claims at issue are directed to a patent-ineligible concept. The Parties agree that the asserted claims are directed to the operation of an "attention manager" system, but disagree about whether the attention manager system is a patent-ineligible abstract idea. (Dkt. Nos. 372 at 10-11, 378 at 13.)

Defendants argue the asserted claims are directed at the abstract idea of providing information to a person without interfering with the person's primary activity. (Dkt. No. 372 at 10-17.) In support of this contention, Defendants point to the Federal Circuit's construction of "attention manager" as "a system that displays images to a user either when the user is not engaged in a primary interaction or in an area of the display screen that is not used by the user's primary activity." (Id.(quoting Interval Licensing LLC v. AOL, Inc., 766 F.3d 1364, 1376 (Fed.Cir.2014) ).) Defendants argue that the "attention manager" as construed recites the idea of providing information to a user at a certain time or location without restricting how that result is to be accomplished, therefore doing nothing more than reciting the abstract idea of providing information to a person without interfering with the person's primary activity. (Dkt. No. 372 at 10-17.) Defendants argue that the claims recite instructions for acquiring and requesting information, for scheduling the display of information, and for displaying the information, and that these are basic and long-practiced acts used by humans to communication information. (Id.)

Interval argues that the claims are "directed to the operation of an attention manager system," which, as construed by the Federal Circuit, is a not an abstract idea but rather a "multitiered, networked architecture of computers that communicates in a predefined manner to facilitate the automatic provision of information from multiple content providers to an interested user in a [ ] non-invasive manner." (Dkt. No. 378 at 13-22.) Interval argues that multiple claim elements are non-abstract, that Defendants' analogies are inapplicable, and that the tasks performed by the system are "not the sort of mental process that the Supreme Court has found to be an exception to the general rule of patent eligibility." (Id. at 13-14) (citing Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63, 93 S.Ct. 253, 34 L.Ed.2d 273 (1972).)

The Court finds that the asserted claims are directed to the abstract idea of providing information to a person without interfering with the person's primary activity. This basic and longstanding practice can be found in, for example, a television station's use of a breaking news ticker across the bottom of the screen. The text-only news ticker provides information to viewers without interfering with the primary activity: the main story then being reported by the on-screen news anchor. Similarly, a lawyer's legal assistant may provide her with messages or mail in a manner that does not interfere with her primary activity: participating in a conference call. This could be accomplished at a certain time (delivering the message between telephone calls) or in a certain location (placing the message in the corner of her desk).

Interval's arguments that multiple individual claim elements are non-abstract are unavailing. See Internet Patents Corp. v. Active Network, Inc., 790 F.3d 1343, 1346 (Fed.Cir.2015) ("Under step one of Mayo/Alice, the claims are considered in their entirety to ascertain whether their character as a whole is directed to excluded subject matter."). Interval's assertion that patent-ineligible abstract ideas can be found "only where the claims involve mathematical algorithms or business methods involving fundamental economic practices" is also incorrect. As the Supreme Court explained in Alice, the operative question is whether or not the patent claims are directed toward an abstract idea, and not whether or not the invention could be classified into one of Plaintiff's categories. Alice, 134 S.Ct. at 2356–57 ; see also Internet Patents Corp., 790 F.3d at 1348–49. Finally, the Court rejects Interval's attempts to remove the claims from the realm of the abstract by including unclaimed elements or importing requirements it previously argued against. (See Dkt. Nos. 300, 341.)

The Court finds that elements of all of the claims at issue (claims 15-18 of the '652 patent ) are directed towards the same abstract idea—providing information to a person without interfering with the person's primary activity, as discussed above—whether analyzed individually or as an ordered combination. Claims 15 and 18 are...

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2 cases
  • Interval Licensing LLC v. AOL, Inc.
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — Federal Circuit
    • 20 d5 Julho d5 2018
    ...concurring-in-part, dissenting-in-part filed by Circuit Judge Plager. Chen, Circuit Judge.In our previous decision in Interval Licensing LLC v. AOL, Inc. , we upheld the district court's judgment invalidating claims 1–4 and 7–15 of U.S. Patent No. 6,788,314, and claims 4–8, 11, 34, and 35 o......
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