Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an opinion in Natural Alternatives International, Inc. v. Creative Compounds, LLC, 2018-1295 (March 15, 2019). Natural Alternatives sued Creative Compounds for infringing several patents related to dietary supplements containing beta-alanine. The district court granted Creative Compounds’ Rule 12(c) motion for judgment on the pleadings, holding all asserted patent claims were directed to patent ineligible laws of nature under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and lacked an inventive concept sufficient to render them patent eligible. Natural Alternatives appealed.
The Federal Circuit reversed in a split opinion, with Judge Moore writing for the majority. Addressing the asserted method claims, the Court noted that while mere discovery of a natural law does not constitute patent eligible subject matter, claims directed to a specific method of treatment are patent eligible. The Court explained, the method claims at issue require “specific steps to be taken in order to bring about a change in a subject, altering the subject’s natural state. Unlike the claims in Mayo, the [m]ethod [c]laims at issue are treatment claims.” Addressing the asserted product claims, the Court held the incorporation of the natural product, beta-alanine, into particular dosage forms with particular characteristics is sufficient to prevent judgment on the pleadings on patent eligibility. Addressing the asserted manufacturing claims, the Court held they were “not directed to the natural law or product of nature, but instead are an application of the law and new use of that product.” As such, they are addressed to patent eligible subject matter. The Court further held that fact issues concerning the presence of an inventive concept precluded judgment on the pleadings for all of the asserted claims. The majority opinion concluded with the cautionary note that “[w]e live in a natural world, and all inventions are constrained by the laws of nature. . . . [But] we must be careful not to overly abstract claims when performing the Alice analysis.”
Judge Reyna wrote separately, concurring-in-part and dissenting-in-part, to express his belief that the district court applied an erroneous claim construction, and that certain claims are indeed directed to patent ineligible subject matter when the proper claim construction is applied. Judge Reyna concluded by expressing concern over whether “the time has come for this court to reconsider whether a Rule 12(c) motion based on § 101 should be decided before claim construction.”
