Intellectual Ventures Big Case Shut Down By Judge Over Completely Bogus Patents

from the but-of-course dept

... the Court concludes as a matter of law, based on a clear and convincing evidence, that neither the '137 nor the '382 patent contains patentable subject matter under Section 101.... Nothing in the Court's Claim Construction establishes patentability, since however the claim terms may be construed each patent consists of nothing more [than] the entry of data into a computer database, the breakdown and organization of that entered data according to some criteria, disclosed in the '137 patent, but not the '382 patent, and the transmission of information derived from that entered data to a computer user, all through the use of conventional computer components, such as a database and processors, operating in a conventional manner. There is no inventive technology or other inventive concept that authorizes the protections of a patent, such as an improvement in the workings of the computer or the transmissibility of data or some other transformation of data into something qualitatively beyond the informational content of the data entered, even though the data might be organized and manipulated to disclose useful correlations. Rather, these patents are "drawn to a mental process -- i.e., an abstract idea."...

[Our] patent portfolio is deep and we have another action pending against Capital One in Maryland. We remain committed to defending our intellectual property rights, as well as those of our customers and investors.

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Late last fall, we highlighted some very questionable practices by Intellectual Ventures in suing a bunch of big banks for patent infringement. Our focus was on a particular patent, 6,182,894 , which was initially assigned to American Express, and which claimed to cover the concept of CID or CVV codes (those little extra three numbers on the back of your credit card you're supposed to type in as an added security measure). American Express, perhaps realizing how ridiculous it would be to sue over such a patent "donated" it to a non-profit, the Consumer and Merchant Awareness Foundation ("CMAF"), who explicitly promised that it would only be used to encourage better credit card security, and that it would never use the patent "against issuers, acquirers, merchants or consumers related to activity in the retail financial services and payment areas." Of course, it took all of about two years before CMAF effectively sold the patent to Intellectual Ventures, and then disappeared as an entity. IV, apparently, felt that it was not bound by the original promises, and started suing basically everyone. Soon after our story appeared exposing this questionable activity , Intellectual Ventures suddenly decided to drop that particular patent from its lawsuit. Shocking.However, it continued with a few other patents... but that all ended last week when a judge rejected the remaining patents as completely bogus:The two patents in question, 8,083,137 and 7,603,382 , describe some rather basic and obvious ideas that a couple of patent lawyers twisted around to make it appear like they were patentable. The '382 patent claims to patent offering up a custom webpage to a user based on their personal preferences. The '137 patent is about "administering financial accounts." In both cases, Joe Mullin in the link above notes that they appear to have really originated with patent lawyers. The '137 patent did come from an engineer, but it wasn't because of anything she invented. She was doing some retirement planning, and her patent lawyer husband thought that her ideas for tracking budgets could be patented. The '382 patent just came straight from a patent lawyer.And, of course, what the judge was noting above, is that neither should have been granted as patents in the first place, because both just involved basic data processing that any software could do. Neither did anything even remotely inventive. And, of course, the fact that both originated with patent lawyers highlights just how bogus IV's constant refrain is about how it's protecting individual inventors. It's never been about individual inventors at all.It's been about the lawsuits and the money.Which is why it should be no surprise to read about IV's response to this complete loss:In other words, okay, if we didn't get you with the first batch of bogus patents, we have tens of thousands of other bogus patents, and sooner or later, some judge will either let us win, or these banks will fork over lots of cash to make us go away.

Filed Under: patent lawyers, patents

Companies: capitol one, intellectual ventures