Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an opinion in ChargePoint, Inc. v. SemaConnect, Inc. (March 28, 2019). ChargePoint sued SemaConnect for infringing four patents relating to networked charging stations for electric vehicles. The district court granted SemaConnect’s Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, holding all asserted patent claims were directed to abstract ideas and were not patent eligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101. ChargePoint appealed.
The Federal Circuit affirmed. Applying the two-step inquiry of Alice, the Court first addressed apparatus claims from one of the asserted patents, holding they not only “clearly involve[d]” the abstract idea of communication over a network, but also were “directed to” that abstract idea. In support of this conclusion, the Court noted the specification identified the problem to be solved as the absence of a communication network to allow drivers, businesses, and utility companies to interact efficiently with charging stations and that the patent’s summary described the invention as “[a] system for network controlled charging of electric vehicles . . . .” The Court further explained the broad claim language would encompass any mechanism for implementing network communication on a charging station. The Court applied similar reasoning to support its conclusion that the claims of the other three asserted patents were directed to abstract ideas. In discussing one set of claims, addressing a charging station able to “adjust the amount of electricity delivered to cars based on demand-response communications with utilities,” the Court explained that adjusting electricity flow based on demand response principles does not change that the claim is directed to an abstract idea and that demand response itself is an abstract idea. Adding one abstract idea to another abstract idea does not create a non-abstract claim.
In step two, the Court assessed whether the elements of each claim, individually and as an ordered combination, transformed the nature of the claim into a patent eligible application. The Court held the inventive concept identified by ChargePoint—network control of charging stations—was merely the abstract idea itself. “[A] claimed invention’s use of the ineligible concept to which it is directed cannot supply the inventive concept that renders the invention significantly more than that ineligible concept.” The other inventive concept identified by ChargePoint, demand response, was merely conventional knowledge and, therefore, could not be the inventive concept.