Recentive Analytics, Inc. v. Fox Corp., et al.

Section 101 of the Patent Act provides that “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter” is eligible for a patent. This Court has created judicial exceptions that exclude “laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas” from the scope of patent-eligible subject matter. Alice Corp. Pty. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208, 217 (2014). Relying on these judicial exceptions, the Federal Circuit held Recentive Analytics, Inc.’s patent claims for dynamically generating and updating network maps and event schedules using iteratively trained machine-learning models are directed to unpatentable abstract ideas. The questions presented are:

1. Whether the Federal Circuit’s approach to patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 flouts this Court’s instruction to consider preemption, as discussed in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International and Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc.

2. Whether the Federal Circuit erred in holding that claims directed to the application of machinelearning techniques to new data environments are categorically ineligible for patent protection under Section 101, absent a showing of improvement to the underlying machine-learning model itself. (i)