Federal Circuit Affirms § 101 Dismissal of Patent Suit

Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an opinion in Glasswall Solutions Limited v. Clearswift Ltd. , 2018-1407 (December 20, 2018). The district court dismissed Glasswall’s patent infringement action under Rule 12(b)(6) after concluding all asserted claims of Glasswall’s patents are invalid as patent ineligible abstract ideas under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The Federal Circuit affirmed. The Court explained that the claims required nothing more than the conventional manipulation of information by a computer. The Court characterized Glasswall’s claims as directed to “‘the filtering of electronic files and data’ by regenerating an electronic file without non-conforming data.” Instead of purporting to state how any of the claimed steps are to be performed, however, the Court concluded the claims are framed in “wholly functional terms.” The Court took particular note of the fact that the specifications of the patents themselves concede the claims are “implemented using known computer programming techniques.” The Court also distinguished the Glasswall claims from other claims it has found to be directed to patent eligible subject matter, relying on the absence in the Glasswall patents of any improvement in computer functionality (i.e. something allowing “the computer to do something it could not previously do”). The Court held Glasswall’s claims “fare no better under Alice Step 2, as they recite steps that do not amount to anything more than an instruction to apply the abstract idea of filtering nonconforming data and regenerating a file without it, plus the generic steps needed to implement the idea.” Finally, the Court explained the declaration submitted by Glasswall’s expert did not prevent dismissal on the pleadings because the alleged “factual” allegations contained therein were instead conclusory legal assertions, which the district court is “not bound to accept as true.”