Posts Tagged: "Visual Memory LLC v. NVIDIA Corp."

If there was a theme that emerged in 2017 it is the necessity to have what is specifically innovative disclosed in the claims. While not a particularly new concept, there were cases in 2017 where the Federal Circuit acknowledged that a patent eligible innovation may well have been disclosed in the specification, but which was not found in the claims. With many legacy software patents the description of the technology (if one actually existed) was only in the specification while the claims were written to be quite broad. The Federal Circuit requires both a thick technical description of the innovation and why it is an improvement (see Enfish) and incorporation of what is innovative into the claims… What follows picks up where my 2016 article left off and provides summary and analysis of the notable software patent eligibility cases decided by the Federal Circuit in 2017.

In Visual Memory LLC v. NVIDIA Corp., a district court dismissed a patent infringement complaint under FRCP 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim, because the patent was drawn to patent ineligible subject matter. On appeal, the Federal Circuit found that the patent “claims an improvement to computer memory systems and is not directed to an abstract idea.” Accordingly, the Court reversed and remanded for further proceedings.

The majority determined that the patent claims drawn to a computer memory system did not cover an abstract idea and, therefore, the second step of the Alice test was an unnecessary inquiry… “Our review of the ’740 patent claims demonstrates that they are directed to an improved computer memory system, not to the abstract idea of categorical data storage,” Judge Stoll wrote. “The specification explains that multiple benefits flow from the ’740 patent’s improved memory system.”