July 2013

Spotlight Info

In Ultramercial, Inc. v. Hulu, LLC, No. 10-1544 (Fed. Cir. June 21, 2013), the Federal Circuit reversed and remanded the district court’s judgment that the subject matter of U.S. Patent No. 7,346,545 (“the ’545 patent”) is not a “process” within the language and meaning of 35 U.S.C. § 101.  The Federal Circuit noted that the claims recite a method for monetizing and distributing copyrighted products over the Internet, which the Court noted easily satisfies the meaning of a “process” under § 101 and hence falls within an eligible subject matter category.  The Court also had to decide whether the claim is meaningfully limited to something less than an abstract idea that preempts the use of an abstract concept.  In finding the claimed steps require intricate and complex computer programming, the Court noted that the claim involved not an abstract idea, but a very specific application of the idea.  See this month’s edition of Last Month at the Federal Circuit for a full summary of this decision.