Plaintiff Image Processing Technologies, LLC ("IPT") filed suit against Samsung in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Marshall Division), alleging infringement of three patents, including U.S. Patent No. 6,959,293.  The '293 patent, entitled "Method and Device for Automatic Visual Perception," claims improved visual perception processors and a method employing a "self-adapting" histogram calculation.  At issue here was a motion by Samsung for partial summary judgement that claim 29 is directed to patent-ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.  The District Court ultimately found that claim 29 is ineligible for patent protection under 35 U.S.C. § 101 mainly because the claim was lacking technical details due to being written so broadly.

Turning to details of the '293 patent, the patent is generally directed to image processing methods to enable real-time recognition, localization, and/or extraction of objects in images corresponding to certain criteria.  The '293 patent explains that generating histograms for evaluation of image data using image processing parameters (i.e., speed, direction, a time constant) in visual perception processors was already known in the art at the time of the invention.  For example, image processing devices could use histograms to more accurately capture the information from a scene or to control an automatism.  The prior art methods of generating histograms in image processing were used to acquire, manipulate, and process statistical information.

The '293 patent purports to advance over the prior art by claiming visual perception devices and methods for automatically detecting an event occurring in a space with respect to at least one parameter.

Claim 29 is representative and is reproduced below.

29.  A method of analyzing parameters associated with an event by an electronic device, comprising:
    a) receiving data representative of one or more parameters of the event being detected;
    b) calculating, for a given instant of time, a statistical distribution, defined as a histogram, of a selected parameter of the event being detected;
    c) classifying the data by comparing its value to classification criteria stored in a classification memory;
    d) enabling the calculating step when classified data satisfies predetermined time coincidence criteria; and
    e) automatically updating, for each instant of time, the classification criteria stored in the classification memory based on statistical information associated with the histogram.

Samsung alleged that claim 29 is directed to patent ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.  Section 101 analysis requires the court to determine if the claims are directed to excluded subject matter (i.e., an abstract idea), and if so, whether the claims include an inventive concept or some element or combination of elements sufficient to ensure that the claim in practice amounts to significantly more than a patent on an ineligible concept.

Abstract Idea

Claim 29 is directed to an "improved method" of analyzing parameters related to an event detected by an electronic device by generating a histogram while automatically updating the classification criteria.  The '293 patent specification repeatedly emphasizes the claimed method's use of a classification memory to automatically update classification criteria while the histogram is generated.

Samsung argued that claim 29 is directed to an abstract idea because it is directed to "a general process of collecting data, and analyzing the data using techniques that could be accomplished mentally or with the aid of a pen and paper," which is similar to claims found patent-ineligible in CyberSource Corp. v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2011) ("Methods that can be performed entirely in the human mind are unpatentable not because there is anything wrong with claiming mental method steps as part of a process containing non-mental steps, but rather because computational methods which can be performed entirely in the human mind are the types of methods that embody the 'basic tools of scientific and technological work' that are free to all men and reserved exclusively to none.").

Samsung argued that the claim has no limitation that prevents a human from performing the "histogram calculation" or adjusting the bin of the histogram at a "given instant of time."  Samsung argued that a teacher drawing histograms to analyze students' test scores would meet the requirements of claim 29.

In response, IPT argued that claim 29 is not directed to patent-ineligible subject matter because it is an automatic method of calculating a histogram to analyze, for a given instant of time, parameters of an event using an electronic device and a classification memory in that device.

However, the Court noted that IPT did not explain why the "automatically updating" limitation transforms the abstract idea of generating a histogram into one deserving patent protection.  Instead, IPT referred to a declaration by its expert witness who explained that updating classification criteria while the histogram is being formed, based on statistical information associated with the histogram, was a "novel and innovative approach" to analyzing parameters associated with an event for given instants of time.

The Court noted that this is not the correct inquiry for Alice step one abstract idea analysis because a novel and innovative claim is not necessarily an improvement to computer functionality.  A claim for a new abstract idea is still an abstract idea.  The search for a § 101 inventive concept is thus distinct from demonstrating § 102 novelty or § 103 non-obviousness.

The Court was persuaded that claim 29 is drawn to an abstract idea.  IPT did not explain, and the '293 patent does not describe, how the "automatically updating" limitation is an improvement to computer capabilities.  The claimed method of generating a histogram, even a histogram where the classification criteria are automatically updated, recites a conventional computer implementation of a mathematical formula.

Inventive Concept

Having found that claim 29 is directed to an abstract idea, the Court turned to the limitations of the claims to determine whether there is an "inventive concept" to "transform" the claimed abstract idea into patent-eligible subject matter.

IPT heavily relied on the Federal Circuit's decision in Amdocs (Israel) Ltd. v. Openet Telecom, Inc., 841 F.3d 1288, 1300 (Fed. Cir. 2016), in its argument that claim 29 is patent-eligible.  In Amdocs, the Federal Circuit noted that even if the court were to agree that claim 1 is directed to an ineligible abstract idea under step one, the claim is eligible under step two because it contains a sufficient 'inventive concept."  The claims at issue in Amdocs were directed to reducing congestion in network "bottlenecks," while still allowing the data to be accessible from a central network.  The claims required "computer code for using the accounting information with which the first network accounting record is correlated to enhance the first network accounting record."  The Federal Circuit had construed "enhance" as being dependent upon the invention's distributed architecture, and noted that in this context, "distributed" meant that the network usage records were processed close to their sources before being transmitted to a centralized manager.  Accordingly, under the claim construction, the claims entailed an unconventional technological solution (enhancing data in a distributed fashion) to a technological problem (massive record flows which previously required massive databases).

Unlike the claims in Amdocs, claim 29 does not recite a "technological solution to a technological problem specific to computer networks."  The '293 patent does not describe how automatically updating classification criteria while generating a histogram is an unconventional technological solution to a technological problem.  Other claims of the '293 patent appear to address particular problems in the realm of image processing, (i.e., a visual perception processor for automatically detecting an event occurring in a multidimensional space evolving over time with respect to at least one digitized parameter in the form of a digital signal on a data bus), but claim 29 is written broadly and generically as to claim a mathematical formula of generating a histogram.

IPT argued that the benefits of claim 29 include "improved operation with speedier processing that facilitates faster analysis and improved performance, improved classification range and improved anticipation characteristics."  However, these improvements are all described in the specification as improvements to a histogram processing unit, which is a claim term in a different claim in the '293 patent, unrelated to the method of claim 29.  The use of an "electronic device" to generate a histogram merely incorporates a computer to perform the "automatically updating" step faster, without achieving any substantively different result.

Thus, the Court found that claim 29 of the '293 patent was directed to an abstract idea and did not otherwise embody an inventive concept.  As a result, claim 29 of the '293 patent was found to be ineligible for patent protection under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

Image Processing Technologies, LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co. (E.D. Tex. 2017)
Order by Judge Rodney Gilstrap