Elec. Power Grp., LLC v. Alstom S.A.

• Decision Date: 01 August 2016
• Docket Number: 2015-1778
• Citation: 119 U.S.P.Q.2d 1739,830 F.3d 1350
• Parties: Electric Power Group, LLC, Plaintiff-Appellant v. Alstom S.A., Alstom Grid, Inc., Psymetrix, Ltd., Alstom Limited, Defendants-Appellees
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Federal Circuit

830 F.3d 1350

119 U.S.P.Q.2d 1739

Electric Power Group, LLC, Plaintiff-Appellant

v.Alstom S.A., Alstom Grid, Inc., Psymetrix, Ltd., Alstom Limited, Defendants-Appellees

2015-1778

United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit.

Decided: August 1, 2016

Syed A. Hasan, Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie LLP, Glendale, CA, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by David A. Dillard, Kyle Wayne Kellar.

Angela Dawn Mitchell, Shook, Hardy & Bacon, LLP, Kansas City, MO, argued for defendants-appellees. Also represented by Peter Emanuel Strand, Christine A. Guastello ; Jamie Kitano, San Francisco, CA.

Before Taranto, Bryson, and Stoll, Circuit Judges.

Taranto, Circuit Judge.

This case involves the eligibility for patenting, under 35 U.S.C. § 101, of certain claims of three of Electric Power Group, LLC's patents, U.S. Patent Nos. 7,233,843 ; 8,060,259 ; and 8,401,710. Those patents describe and claim systems and methods for performing real-time performance monitoring of an electric power grid by collecting data from multiple data sources, analyzing the data, and displaying the results. See '710 patent, col. 1, lines 27–30; id. , col. 2, lines 43–49. Electric Power Group sued Alstom S.A., Alstom Grid, Inc., Psymetrix Limited, and Alstom Limited (collectively, Alstom) in the Central District of California, alleging infringement of various claims of the three patents. The district court granted Alstom summary judgment that the subject matter of Electric Power Group's asserted patent claims fails the tests for patent eligibility under governing precedent.

We affirm. Though lengthy and numerous, the claims do not go beyond requiring the collection, analysis, and display of available information in a particular field, stating those functions in general terms, without limiting them to technical means for performing the functions that are arguably an advance over conventional computer and network technology. The claims, defining a desirable information-based result and not limited to inventive means of achieving the result, fail under § 101.

I

Claim 12 of the '710 patent is representative of the asserted claims.¹ It reads:

12. A method of detecting events on an interconnected electric power grid in real time over a wide area and automatically analyzing the events on the interconnected electric power grid, the method comprising:

receiving a plurality of data streams, each of the data streams comprising sub-second, time stamped synchronized phasor measurements wherein the measurements in each stream are collected in real time at geographically distinct points over the wide area of the interconnected electric power grid, the wide area comprising at least two elements from among control areas, transmission companies, utilities, regional reliability coordinators, and reliability jurisdictions;

receiving data from other power system data sources, the other power system data sources comprising at least one of transmission maps, power plant locations, EMS/SCADA systems;

receiving data from a plurality of non-grid data sources; detecting and analyzing events in real-time from the plurality of data streams from the wide area based on at least one of limits, sensitivities and rates of change for one or more measurements from the data streams and dynamic stability metrics derived from analysis of the measurements from the data streams including at least one of frequency instability, voltages, power flows, phase angles, damping, and oscillation modes, derived from the phasor measurements and the other power system data sources in which the metrics are indicative of events, grid stress, and/or grid instability, over the wide area;

displaying the event analysis results and diagnoses of events and associated ones of the metrics from different categories of data and the derived metrics in visuals, tables, charts, or combinations thereof, the data comprising at least one of monitoring data, tracking data, historical data, prediction data, and summary data;

displaying concurrent visualization of measurements from the data streams and the dynamic stability metrics directed to the wide area of the interconnected electric power grid;

accumulating and updating the measurements from the data streams and the dynamic stability metrics, grid data, and non-grid data in real time as to wide area and local area portions of the interconnected electric power grid; and

deriving a composite indicator of reliability that is an indicator of power grid vulnerability and is derived from a combination of one or more real time measurements or computations of measurements from the data streams and the dynamic stability metrics covering the wide area as well as non-power grid data received from the non-grid data source.

'710 patent, col. 30, line 66, through col. 31, line 50. The district court treated claim 12 as representative, and so may we. On appeal, Electric Power Group's opening brief neither argues for the validity of any other claim if claim 12 is invalid nor presents any meaningful argument for the distinctive significance of any claim limitations other than those included in claim 12.

On Alstom's motion for summary judgment, the district court held that the asserted claims do not define subject matter that is eligible for patenting under § 101. The court concluded that the claims are directed to “the abstract idea of monitoring and analyzing data from disparate sources.” J.A. 27. The court then determined that the asserted claims lack an inventive concept in the application of that abstract idea, observing in particular that the “most significant additional limitations ... are those that limit the claim [s] to monitoring and analyzing data in the context of electric power grids.” J.A. 28.

We have jurisdiction over this appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1). We review the district court's grant of summary judgment of ineligibility de novo. Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp. , 822 F.3d 1327, 1334 (Fed. Cir. 2016).

II

Section 101 provides that “[w]hoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.” 35 U.S.C. § 101. The provision, however, “contains an important implicit exception: 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). The Supreme Court, setting up a two-stage framework, has held that a claim falls outside § 101 where (1) it is “directed to” a patent-ineligible concept, i.e. , a law of nature, natural phenomenon, or abstract idea, and (2), if so, the particular elements of the claim, considered “both individually and ‘as an ordered combination,’ ” do not add enough to “ ‘transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.” Id. at 2355 ; see Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc. , ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 1289, 1297–98, 182 L.Ed.2d 321 (2012).

The Supreme Court's formulation makes clear that the first-stage filter is a meaningful one, sometimes ending the § 101 inquiry. Alice , 134 S.Ct. at 2355 ; see Rapid Litig. Mgmt. Ltd. v. CellzDirect, Inc. , No. 2015–1570, 827 F.3d 1042, 1050–51, 2016 WL 3606624, at *6 (Fed. Cir. July 5, 2016) ; Enfish , 822 F.3d at 1335. At the same time, the two stages are plainly related: not only do many of our opinions make clear that the two stages involve overlapping scrutiny of the content of the claims, e.g. , TLI Commc'ns LLC Patent Litig. , 823 F.3d 607, 611–15 (Fed. Cir. 2016) ; Genetic Techs. Ltd. v. Merial L.L.C. , 818 F.3d 1369, 1375 (Fed. Cir. 2016), but we have noted that there can be close questions about when the inquiry should proceed from the first stage to the second, Enfish , 822 F.3d at 1339 ; see Rapid Litig. , 827 F.3d at 1050–52, 2016 WL 3606624, at *6–7 (explaining that stage-two analysis would reach same conclusion as reached at stage one); Bascom Global Internet Servs., Inc. v. AT&T Mobility LLC , No. 2015–1763, 827 F.3d 1341, 1348–49, 2016 WL 3514158, at *5 (Fed. Cir. June 27, 2016). Reflecting those points, we have described the first-stage inquiry as looking at the “focus” of the claims, their “ ‘character as a whole,’ ” and the second-stage inquiry (where reached) as looking more precisely at what the claim elements add—specifically, whether, in the Supreme Court's terms, they identify an “ ‘inventive concept’ ” in the application of the ineligible matter to which (by assumption at stage two) the claim is directed. See Enfish , 822 F.3d at 1335–36 ; Internet Patents Corp. v. Active Network, Inc. , 790 F.3d 1343, 1346 (Fed. Cir. 2015) ; cf. Bascom , 827 F.3d at 1348, 2016 WL 3514158, at *5 (“basic thrust”).

A

The claims in this case fall into a familiar class of claims “directed to” a patent-ineligible concept. The focus of the asserted claims, as illustrated by claim 12 quoted above, is on collecting information, analyzing it, and displaying certain results of the collection and analysis. We need not define the outer limits of “abstract idea,” or at this stage exclude the possibility that any particular inventive means are to be found somewhere in the claims, to conclude that these claims focus on an abstract idea—and hence require stage-two analysis under § 101.

Information as such is an intangible. See Microsoft Corp. v. AT & T Corp. , 550 U.S. 437, 451 n.12, 127 S.Ct. 1746, 167 L.Ed.2d 737 (2007) ; Bayer AG v. Housey Pharm., Inc. , 340 F.3d 1367, 1372 (Fed. Cir. 2003). Accordingly, we have treated collecting information, including when limited to particular content (which does not change its character as information), as within the realm of abstract ideas. See , e.g. , Internet Patents , 790 F.3d at 1349 ; OIP Techs., Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc. , 788 F.3d 1359, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2015) ; Content Extraction & Transmission LLC v. Wells Fargo Bank, Nat'l Ass'n , 776 F.3d 1343, 1347 (Fed....