First, abstract ideas are not patentable and include a prohibition against patenting an abstract idea or law of nature without significantly more.
Abstract Idea Examples are individually identified by the courts:
- fundamental/longstanding economic practices
- certain methods of organizing human activity
- an idea of itself
- mathematical relationships/formulas
What Is “Significantly More” for a Business Method?”
- Improving another technology or technical field.
- Improving the functioning of the computer itself.
- Meaningful limitations beyond generally implementing the abstract idea via a computer (or some other technology).
In DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P. the court upheld claims directed to managing the look and feel of e-commerce web pages to provide “store within a store” functionality to product pages. The majority stated that “the claimed solution is necessarily rooted in computer technology in order to overcome a problem specifically arising in the realm of computer networks.”
Identify a technical problem/effect as a system/method such as hardware element + functionality of how hardware elements interact and overcome the problem.
In DDR Holdings, LLC the “problem” was the problem of retaining website visitors that, if adhering to the routine, conventional functioning of Internet hyperlink protocol, would be instantly transported away from a host’s website after ‘clicking’ on an advertisement and activating a hyperlink.
Business Method patents need drawings of flow charts to briefly define the steps or data/file manipulation, mock or actual screen shots to show what each step will look like to an end user, and written description to further explain each step; and the drawings must show technicality.
DDR Holdings, LLC patent 7,818,399
In Ultramercial, Inc. v. Hulu, LLC (Nov. 14, 2014) the claims were directed to a “method for distribution of products over the Internet via a facilitator,” i.e., to monetize content. The process [steps] of receiving copyrighted media, selecting an ad, offering the media in exchange for watching the selected ad, displaying the ad, allowing the consumer access to the media, and receiving payment from the sponsor of the ad all describe an abstract idea, devoid of a concrete or tangible application.”
Ultramercial, Inc patent 7346545
Comparison: Ultramercial claims “broadly and generically claim ‘use of the Internet,” were rejected whereas DDS Holdings claims “how interactions with the Internet are manipulated to yield a desired result—a result that overrides the routine and conventional sequence of events ordinarily triggered by the click of a hyperlink.”