In IOENGINE, LLC v. Interactive Media Corp. d/b/a/ Kanguru Solutions, C.A. No. 14-1571-GMS, Judge Gregory M. Sleet denied Defendant’s motion for summary judgment of invalidity and non-infringement of the independent claims of the patent-in-suit (U.S. Patent No. 8,539,047), based on the contention that the patent was directed to patent-ineligible subject matter. Defendant argued the claims were directed to the abstract idea of “providing communication with computing devices.” The Court disagreed, finding the claims analogous to those held to not be abstract ideas in McRO, Inc. v. Bandai Namco Games Am. Inc., 837 F.3d 1299 (Fed. Cir. 2016), as they recited “a specific arrangement of components and a very specific implementation and structure of the executable program code.” Id. at 2 n.2 (citing McRo). The claims were also distinguishable from those in Ultramercial, Inc. v. Hulu, LLC, 772 F.3d 709 (Fed. Cir. 2014) as they defined “a tangible portable device with an unconventional hardware configuration that is able to run specific program code to provide the claimed functionality.” Id. “More important, the court agrees, as [Plaintiff] maintains, that the Independent Claims of the ‘047 patent are directed to a “specific asserted improvement in computer capabilities,” not to an abstract idea “for which computers are invoked merely as a tool,” citing the specification as support. Id. Having concluded the claims were not directed the abstract ideas, the Court did not reach step two of the Alice test.
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