Claims Directed to Monitoring and Analyzing Data Held to Be Invalid under § 101

In Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A., Appeal No. 2015-1778, the Federal Circuit upheld the district court’s grant of summary judgment that the claims were not directed to patent-eligible subject matter under § 101.

The claims were directed to monitoring and analyzing data from disparate sources in the context of electric power grids. The Federal Circuit applied the Alice/Mayo test and found that the claims were directed to an abstract idea and did not go beyond stating the collection, analysis, and display of available information in general terms.

Federal Circuit Declines to Reverse a District Court’s Grant of a Stay Pending IPR

In Murata Machinery USA v. Daifuku Co., Ltd., Appeal No. 2015-2094, the Federal Circuit upheld a district court’s refusal to lift a stay pending completion of inter partes review proceedings, but vacated the district court’s cursory refusal denying a request for a preliminary injunction and remanded for further proceedings.

Murata filed a patent infringement suit against Daifuku. Daifuku petitioned for inter partes review of all asserted patents and the district court stayed the litigation while the inter partes review was pending. Murata then filed motions to lift the stay and for entry of a preliminary injunction, which were both denied. The district court did not make any factual findings related to the preliminary injunction, separate and apart from its findings on the motion to lift the stay.  Murata appealed.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit noted that it typically does not have interlocutory jurisdiction over a district court’s decision to stay or not stay a case.  But in this case, because the stay was linked to the denial of a preliminary injunction, the issues were inextricably linked, giving the Federal Circuit discretion to consider the stay on appeal.  The Federal Circuit declined to lift the stay because circumstances supporting the stay had not changed in a manner that would make the stay inappropriate. However, the Federal Circuit then held that the district court’s cursory denial did not satisfy FRCP 52(a)(2), which requires that a court state findings and conclusions supporting denial of a preliminary injunction. The Federal Circuit therefore remanded for further proceedings, noting that even a “limited analysis” may be sufficient to support denial of a preliminary injunction.

Federal Circuit Revisits Its Finding of No Willfulness in Halo

In Halo Elecs., Inc. v. Pulse Elecs., Inc., Appeal Nos. 2013-1472, -1656, on remand from the Supreme Court, the Federal Circuit vacated the district court’s judgment of no willful infringement and remanded so that the court could reconsider its decision not to enhance damages. In remanding the case to the district court, the Federal Circuit instructed the district court to take the jury’s unchallenged finding of subjective willfulness into account as “one factor in its analysis” for enhancing damages under § 284.  The Federal Circuit’s subtle choice of words may suggest that willful infringement is not a predicate to a finding of enhanced damages, leaving possible that enhanced damages may be levied even in the absence of a finding of willful infringement.

Common Sense Cannot Be Used to Supply a Missing Claim Limitation in an Obviousness Analysis

In Arendi S.A.R.L. v. Apple Inc., Appeal No. 2015-2073, the Federal Circuit reversed the PTAB’s finding that certain claims were obvious, holding that it was not obvious to supply a missing claim limitation using “common sense” alone.  

Arendi asserted the ’843 Patent against Apple, who then filed an IPR petition on obviousness grounds, arguing that a prior art reference taught all but one claim limitation.  The PTAB found the claims invalid as obvious and used common sense to supply the missing claim limitation.

The Federal Circuit reversed, noting that common sense is normally applied in the context of a motivation to combine references, not to supply missing claim elements.  Moreover, in the rare cases when missing elements are supplied by common sense, the limitations are unusually simple and the technology particularly straightforward.  Here, the missing claim limitation was essential to the claim-at-issue.  Finally, the Court noted that unsupported assertions of common sense, without any reasoning or analysis of the evidence, are improper.