Mobile Acuity Ltd., v. Blippar Ltd., et al., No. 2022-2216 (Fed. Cir. (C.D. Cal.) Aug. 6, 2024). Opinion by Lourie, joined by Bryson and Stark.
Mobile Acuity owns two patents directed to methods and devices relating to storing information so that it can be accessed using a captured image. According to the patents, in the prior art the desire to attach information to locations in the real world was achieved by using barcodes or RFID tags attached to real world objects or by associating information with absolute positions in the world. The patents purport to provide an alternative mechanism to associate information with real world locations and objects that involves using a mobile imaging device to capture an image of a location, uploading the captured image to the server, and associating certain digital content with a target region of the captured image, which can be used to create a model image key for that location.
Mobile Acuity filed suit against Blippar, asserting infringement of both patents. Blippar filed a motion to dismiss, asserting that the patents were invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The district court granted Blippar’s motion, and likewise denied Mobile Acuity’s motion to amend the pleadings.
The Federal Circuit affirmed. Mobile Acuity argued that the district court committed four errors. First, Mobile Acuity argued that the district court erred in stating at oral argument that a challenge under § 101 is not an affirmative defense. The Federal Circuit agreed that a challenge to patent eligibility on § 101 grounds is an affirmative defense to a claim of patent infringement, but nonetheless ruled that the district court’s misstatement at oral argument was harmless because the court ultimately applied the correct legal standard.
Second, Mobile Acuity argued that the claims Blippar identified as representative are not representative of all the asserted claims. The Federal Circuit explained that while the initial burden to make a prima facie showing that a group of claims are “substantially similar and linked to the same” ineligible concept (i.e., identify a representative claim) is on the patent challenger, once this occurs that burden shifts to the patent owner to present non-frivolous arguments as to why the eligibility of the identified representative claim cannot fairly be treated as decisive of the eligibility of all claims in the group. The Federal Circuit determined that Mobile Acuity failed to identify any limitations in any of its claims that are materially different from the claims the district court treated as representative.
Third, the Federal Circuit agreed that the claims are directed to patent-ineligible subject matter. At step one of Alice, the Federal Circuit reasoned that Mobile Acuity’s claims are directed to the abstract idea of receiving information, associating information with images, comparing the images, and presenting information based on that comparison. The court explained that claims reciting generalized steps of collecting, analyzing, and presenting information, using nothing other than the conventional operations of generic computer components, are directed to abstract ideas. The Federal Circuit rejected Mobile Acuity’s assertions that certain claim elements rendered the claims not abstract (corresponding portions of images and matching interest points) because the claims themselves provided no details as to how the corresponding portions of images or matching interest points were actually determined. At step two of Alice, the Federal Circuit rejected Mobile Acuity’s assertion of an inventive concept where that inventive concept was an abstract idea itself, explaining that the abstract idea cannot supply the inventive concept.
Finally, addressing Mobile Acuity’s assertion that the district court erred by denying its motion to amend because amendment would be futile, the Federal Circuit agreed that the proposed amendment would not cure the defects in the operative complaint because the proposed changes were nothing more than “the implementation of an abstract idea with conventional computer operations,” which are not more than the abstract idea itself.