Today in Bascom Global Internet Services, Inc. v. AT&T Mobility LLC, __ F.3d __(Fed. Cir. 2016)(Chen, J.), where a trial court had dismissed a patent infringement suit under Rule 12(b)(6) keyed to lack of subject matter patent-eligibility under Section 101, the appellate panel vacated the lower court’s decision based upon the issue as to whether there was an “inventive concept” to provide basis for patent-eligibility. The panel remanded the case to the trial court:
“We now turn to *** the search for an ‘inventive concept.’ The ‘inventive concept’ may arise in one or more of the individual claim limitations or in the ordered combination of the limitations. Alice [Corp. v. CLS Bank International, 134 S. Ct. 2347, 2355 (2014)]. An inventive concept that transforms the abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention must be significantly more than the abstract idea itself, and cannot simply be an instruction to implement or apply the abstract idea on a computer. Id. at 2358.
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“* * * The inventive concept inquiry requires more than recognizing that each claim element, by itself, was known in the art. * * * [A]n inventive concept can be found in the non-conventional and non-generic arrangement of known, conventional pieces.”
Regards,
Hal