Eolas Technologies Incorporated v. Amazon.com, Inc., et al.

The Federal Circuit found that U.S. Patent No. 9,195,507 (the ’507 patent) “describes problems specific to the World Wide Web,” “explains how the invention purports to solve them,” and recites the solutions to those computer-network problems through “configuration requirements of a World Wide Web browser, World Wide Web pages, and the World Wide Web distributed hypermedia network.” Pet. App. 14a15a. These claims rebuilt the then-nascent Web in a manner that—for the first time—enabled secure and scalable “interactivity with remote objects on a client computer browser using distributed computing.” Pet. App. 12a. Yet the Federal Circuit concluded that these claims were not drawn to patent-eligible subject matter because, “[s]imply put, interacting with data objects on the World Wide Web is an abstraction.” Pet. App. 15a. The questions presented are:

1. Whether claims drawn to solving specific problems restricting the usefulness of an existing computer-network technology recite patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208 (2014).

2. Whether Alice’s two-step eligibility analysis under § 101 can properly subsume considerations of conventionality, functional claiming, and specificity of description—which traditionally fall under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102, 103, and 112.

3. Whether the claims of the ’507 patent are eligible for patenting under § 101 and Alice.