finding a method comprising (1) testing prices, (2) gathering statistics about how customers reacted to the prices, (3) using that data to estimate outcomes, and (4) acting on estimated outcomes (ie., automatically selecting and offering new prices based on estimated outcome) to be directed to the abstract idea of price optimization
How later courts described this case
- finding a method comprising (1) testing prices, (2) gathering statistics about how customers reacted to the prices, (3) using that data to estimate outcomes, and (4) acting on estimated outcomes (ie., automatically selecting and offering new prices based on estimated outcome) to be directed to the abstract idea of price optimization
- holding patent-ineligible claims which included “storing test results in a ‘machine-readable medium,’ ” because that and other limitations only “require[ed] conventional computer activities or routine data-gathering steps” which did not transform the abstract idea of “offer-based price optimization” into an inventive concept
- concluding that “relying on a computer to perform routine tasks more quickly or more accurately is insufficient to render a claim patent eligible,” where the “key distinguishing feature of the claims is the ability to automate or otherwise make more efficient traditional price- optimization methods.”
- concluding at step two that just because a computerized method might be able perform a task “more quickly or more accurately” than a human, this does not mean that the method is patent eligible
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
MAYER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I write separately to address the argument advanced by OIP Technologies, Inc. that the district court erred in resolving the patent eligibility issue on the pleadings. Failure to recite statutory subject matter is the sort of “basic deficiency,” that can, and should, “be exposed at the point of minimum expenditure of time and money by the parties and the court,” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 558 , 127 S.Ct. 1955 , 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Addressing 35 U.S.C. § 101 at the outset not only conserves scarce judicial resources and spares litigants the staggering costs associated with discovery and protracted claim construction litigation, it also works to stem the tide of vexatious suits brought by the owners of vague and overbroad business method patents. Accordingly, where, as here, assert *1365 ed claims are plainly directed to a patent ineligible abstract idea, we have repeatedly sanctioned a district court’s decision to dispose of them on the pleadings. See, e.g., Content Extraction & Transmission LLC v. Wells Fargo Bank, 776 F.3d 1343, 1349 (Fed.Cir.2014); Ultramereial, Inc. v. Hulu, LLC, 772 F.3d 709, 717 (Fed.Cir.2014); buy SAFE, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 765 F.3d 1350, 1352 (Fed.Cir.2014). I commend the district court’s adherence to the Supreme Court’s instruction that patent eligibility is a “threshold” issue, Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593, 602 , 130 S.Ct. 3218 , 177 L.Ed.2d 792 (2010), by resolving it at the first opportunity.