Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its opinion in Trading Technologies International, Inc. v. IBG LLC, 2017-2323 (April 30, 2019). The Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted a petition filed by IBG for covered business method (“CBM”) review of U.S. Patent No. 7,783,556, which “relates to displaying market information on a screen.” In a final written decision, the Board held all claims of the ’556 patent addressed patent ineligible subject matter and were, therefore, invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The patent owner, Trading Technologies, appealed.
The Federal Circuit affirmed. The Court first concluded the ’556 patent was eligible for CBM review. Trading Technologies argued the ’556 patent was ineligible for CBM review because it claimed a technological invention, an express statutory exception to the CBM review process. The Court disagreed, explaining the ’556 patent merely provides “a trader with new or different information in an existing trading screen,” which “is not a technical solution to a technical problem.” Instead, the Court stated, “it focuses on improving the trader, not the functioning of the computer.”
The Court also affirmed the Board’s decision on the merits of the § 101 analysis. Applying Alice step one, the Court concluded the claims are directed to a patent-ineligible concept because the claimed advance over the prior art—providing a trader with additional financial information to facilitate trades—is an abstract idea. The Court explained that steps, such as “identifying a long or short position taken by a user” or “computing by the computing device a plurality of values” representing “a profit or loss if the long or short position is closed at a price level,” merely automated manual processes using a generic computer. Turning to Alice step two, the Court held the claims failed to recite any inventive concept: “Even if no trading screen had previously displayed P&L values, ‘a claimed invention’s use of the ineligible concept to which it is directed cannot supply the inventive concept that renders the invention ‘significantly more’ than that ineligible concept.’”
The Court refused to consider Trading Technologies’ argument that the CBM review procedure is unconstitutional under the Seventh Amendment, Article III, the Due Process Clause, and the Takings Clause. Because these constitutional challenges were addressed in only four conclusory sentences in Trading Technologies’ brief, the Court held they were waived.