Abstract ideas
Section 101 of the Patent Act allows patents on "any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof". 35 U.S.C. 101. But, the Supreme Court has held, it does not make laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas patentable. Ass'n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 133 S. Ct. 2107, 2116 (2013). Those things "are the basic tools of scientific and technological work" and therefore fail section 101's test for patentable subject matter. Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63, 67 (1972).
But what counts as an "abstract idea"? The Federal Circuit shed further light on the question last week.
Business methods
In Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int'l, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014), the Court declined to adopt a per se rule against patents that involve "business methods", which some people maintained do nothing more than describe patent-ineligible ideas about how to engage in commerce. The Court nonetheless struck down Alice Corp.'s patent on "financial intermediation" as not "inventive" enough to "transform" the concept of having a third-party intermediate a business transaction into something more than an abstract idea. See Blawgletter, June 19, 2014, "You Still Can't Patent Ideas".
safeBUY v. Google
Which brings us to the case the Federal Circuit decided last week.
In buySAFE, Inc. v. Google, Inc., No. 13- (Fed. Cir. Sept. 3, 2014), the patent owner, buySAFE, accused Google's "Trusted Stores" feature of infringing buySAFE's patent on "Safe transaction guaranty". As the court described it, the patent claimed a method in which
(1) a computer operated by the provider of a safe transaction service receives a request for a performance guarantee for an “online commercial transaction”; (2) the computer processes the request by underwriting the requesting party in order to provide the transaction guarantee service; and (3) the computer offers, via a “computer network,” a transaction guaranty that binds to the transaction upon the closing of the transaction.
buySAFE, slip op. 3.
The patent didn't get beyond an abtract idea, the panel ruled:
The [patent] claims are squarely about creating a contractual relationship—a “transaction performance guaranty”—that is beyond question of ancient lineage. See Willis D. Morgan, The History and Economics of Suretyship, 12 Cornell L.Q. 153 (1927). The dependent claims’ narrowing to particular types of such relationships, themselves familiar, does not change the analysis. This kind of narrowing of such long-familiar commercial transactions does not make the idea non-abstract for section 101 purposes. . . . The claims thus are directed to an abstract idea.
buySAFE, slip op. 9.
Nor did invoking the use of computers or limiting the claims to online transactions supply the necessary transformation of an abstract idea in an inventive way. Such "narrowing has long been held insufficient to save a claim in this context." Id.
Lesson
safeBUY will hearten companies that do business online — and not just those that use a "transaction guaranty" or the like. A patent must do more, under Alice Corp. and now buySAFE, than link a notion — however clever — to a device that carries it out. You need "something 'inventive' that somehow 'transforms' the unpatentable subject matter into something other than a law of nature, natural phenomenon, or abstract idea."
The test may sound about as abstract as the idea that didn't meet it. IT IS! But you don't need a patent on a legal principle. Nor could you get one.
C'est la guerre.