Ameranth owns a few patents related to the automatic generation of menus, like in a restaurant setting where subsequent menu choices change depending on initial selections. These patents got involved in a Covered Business Method review by the PTO, which found that some of the claims were unpatentable under section 101.
On appeal to the Federal Circuit, the panel decided that in fact all the claims were unpatentable under 101.
Some claims already ineligible. The PTO had decided that some of the claims were directed to the abstract idea of generating a second menu from a first menu, and sending the second menu to another location. According to the Federal Circuit panel, the claims:
- “do not claim a particular way of programming or designing the software”;
- “are directed to certain functionality” (emphasis mine); and
- “are not directed to a specific improvement in the way computers operate”
Thus the claims were generic enough to qualify as an abstract idea.
Any other claimed steps (input/output, network communications, etc.) were “insignificant post-solution activity” of a type already known in the case law.
Even more claims ineligible. Most significantly, the PTO had found a few claims eligible because they required linking a menu to a specific customer at a specific table. The PTO had decided this functionality was novel (at least for mobile devices) in 2001. But the Federal Circuit reversed, citing in part a concession made at oral argument that restaurants have always been able to keep track of which customer at which table ordered which meal: “Merely appending this preexisting practice to those independent claims does not make them patentable.”
My views. On the whole, I agree with the outcome here: these claims are generic, don’t solve a truly technical problem, and simply involve automation of well-known activities. But as a side note, I dislike some formulations of this argument.
Petitioners argued that the table-linking claims were ineligible because they were a “classic example of manual tasks that cannot be rendered patent eligible merely by performing them with a computer.” There are many, many manual tasks performed by humans that would be amazing if computers could do them. We go much too far if we make this kind of argument without the appropriate qualifications.