In Voter-Verified, Inc., v. Election Systems & Software LLC<\/a>, [2017-1930] (April 20, 2018), the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s determination that\u00a0claims of The Reissue patent in suit\u00a0was\u00a0directed to voting methods and systems that provide for Have decided that consideration of\u00a0\u00a7101 was not barred, the Federal Circuit turned to whether the claims of RE 40,449 did in fact claim patentable subject matter.\u00a0 Election Systems argued that the claims\u00a0are directed to the abstract idea of \u201cvoting and checking The Federal Circuit agreed that the claims were directed to patent ineligible subject matter.\u00a0 Even though the claims encompassed both methods and systems, the Federal Circuit found\u00a0no distinction between them for \u00a7 101 purposes,\u00a0as “they simply recite the same concept.”\u00a0 The Federal Circuit said that the claims\u00a0as a whole are drawn to the concept\u00a0of voting, verifying the vote, and submitting the vote for\u00a0tabulation, and noted that humans have performed this fundamental\u00a0activity that forms the basis of our democracy for hundreds\u00a0of years.\u00a0\u00a0The Federal Circuit concluded that these steps were therefore nothing more than\u00a0abstract ideas.\u00a0 The Federal Circuit further found that\u00a0there was no inventive concept in the claims\u00a0sufficient to transform them into patent-eligible subject\u00a0matter. Neither party disputed that the claims recite the\u00a0use of general purpose computers that carry out the abstract idea, and the case law has consistently held that <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Voter-Verified, Inc., v. Election Systems & Software LLC, [2017-1930] (April 20, 2018), the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s determination that\u00a0claims of U.S. Reissue Patent RE 40,449 were\u00a0directed to patent-ineligible subject matter and are thus\u00a0invalid under 35 U.S.C. \u00a7 … Continue reading
\nU.S. Reissue Patent RE 40,449 were\u00a0directed to patent-ineligible subject matter and are thus\u00a0invalid under 35 U.S.C. \u00a7 101.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cauto-verification\u201d of a voter\u2019s ballot.\u00a0 The parties have previously litigated the validity and infringement of the patent prior to Alice v. CLS Bank, and thus a threshhold issue was whether Alice<\/em> was a\u00a0\u201csubstantial\u00a0change\u201d in the law such that issue preclusion does not\u00a0apply.\u00a0 The Federal Circuit held that Alice was not a substantial change in the law (noting that it was a mere application of Mayo<\/em>), but nonetheless concluded that\u00a0issue preclusion did not apply because\u00a0\u00a7101 invalidity was\u00a0never \u201cactually litigated\u201d — and in fact was “barely considered,” and in any event the issue of invalidity under \u00a7101 was not necessary\u00a0to the judgment in the first district court action.<\/p>\n
\nthe accuracy of a paper election ballot,\u201d which\u00a0represents\u00a0only a well-established human activity. Because the\u00a0patent only discloses use of general purpose computers, and the invention is essentially\u00a0automating a fundamental human activity, Election Systems argued that this was insufficient to transform the the claimed abstract idea into
\npatent-eligible subject matter.<\/p>\n
\nuse of standard components are not sufficient to transform\u00a0abstract claims into patent-eligible subject matter.<\/p>\n