In Free Stream Media Corp., dba Samba TV v. Alphonso Inc., [2019-1506, 2019-2133] (May 11, 2021) the Federal Circuit reversed the denial of Alphonso Inc.’s motion to dismiss on the ground that U.S. Patent No. 9,386,356 claims patent ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. §101. The ’356 patent is entitled “Targeting with Television Audience Data Across Multiple Screens.”

The district court rejected the argument that the claims were directed to an abstract idea of tailored advertising as argued by Alphonso, but the Federal Circuit agreed with Alonso, finding that the claims were directed to:

1. Gathering information about television users’ viewing habits;
2. Matching the information with other content (i.e., targeted advertisements) based on relevancy to the television viewer; and
3. Sending that content to a second device.

The Federal Circuit said that a relevant inquiry at Alice Step 1 is whether the claims in the patent focus on a specific means or method that improves the relevant technology or are instead directed to a result or effect that itself is the abstract idea and merely invoke generic processes and machinery.  

A claim must have the specificity required to transform the claim from one claiming only a result to one claiming a way of achieving it to avoid ineligibility. As a result, a claim is ineligible if it fails to recite a practical way of applying an underlying idea and instead is drafted in such a result-oriented way that it amounts to encompassing the principle in the abstract no matter how implemented.

The Federal Circuit noted that Samba asserted that its invention allows devices on the same network to communicate where such devices were previously unable to do so. However, the Federal Circuit noted that the asserted claims provide for how that is achieved only by stating that the mechanism used to achieve this communication is by piercing or otherwise overcoming a mobile device’s security sandbox. But the asserted claims do not at all describe how that result is achieved.

The Federal Circuit said that even assuming the specification sufficiently discloses how the sandbox is overcome, the asserted claims nonetheless do not.

There is nothing in the claims that demonstrates an improvement to computer functionality, and even assuming, as Samba argues, that the claimed advance is in the ability to pierce the sandbox of a mobile device, Samba has not demonstrated that this is something more than a mere use of a computer as a tool.  Therefore, the alleged technological improvement does nothing more than implement a computer to achieve the abstract idea of providing targeted advertising to the mobile device user.

The district court did not reach Alice Step 2, because it did not find the claims were directed to an abstract idea. The Federal Circuit determined that the claims simply recite the use of generic features, as well as routine functions, to implement the underlying idea. The claims here simply recite that the abstract idea will be implemented using conventional components and functions generic to the technology.