NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________
BRIDGE AND POST, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant
v.
VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC., CELLCO PARTNERSHIP, DBA VERIZON WIRELESS, VERIZON INTERNET SERVICES INC., VERIZON ONLINE LLC, AOL INC., OATH INC., Defendants-Appellees ______________________
2018-1697 ______________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Nos. 3:17-cv-00094-JAG, 3:17-cv-00710-JAG, Judge John A. Gibney, Jr. ______________________
Decided: July 5, 2019 ______________________
DANIEL JOHNSON, JR., Dan Johnson Law Group, South San Francisco, CA, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also rep- resented by ROBERT G. LITTS; DENISE MARIE DE MORY, CHRISTINA M. FINN, LAUREN NICOLE ROBINSON, Bunsow De Mory LLP, Redwood City, CA.
DEANNE MAYNARD, Morrison & Foerster LLP, 2 BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
Washington, DC, argued for defendants-appellees. Also represented by SETH W. LLOYD, BRIAN ROBERT MATSUI; BITA RAHEBI, Los Angeles, CA. ______________________
Before PROST, Chief Judge, LOURIE and BRYSON, Circuit Judges. Opinion for the court filed by Chief Judge PROST. Opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part filed by Circuit Judge BRYSON. PROST, Chief Judge. Bridge and Post, Inc. appeals the decision of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, which dismissed Bridge and Post’s complaints under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). The district court held that the claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 7,657,594, 8,862,747, and 9,659,314 were ineligible for patenting under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Bridge & Post, Inc. v. Verizon Commc’ns, Inc., 319 F. Supp. 3d 818, 821 (E.D. Va. 2018). For the reasons dis- cussed below, we affirm. I Bridge and Post filed a complaint in February 2017 ac- cusing Verizon Communications, Inc., Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless, Verizon Internet Services Inc., Ver- izon Online LLC, and AOL Inc. (collectively “Verizon”) of infringing claims 1, 15, and 24 of U.S. Patent No. 7,657,594 (the “’594 patent”) and claims 1 and 10 of U.S. Patent No. 8,862,747 (the “’747 patent”). In October 2017, Bridge and Post filed a second complaint accusing Verizon and Oath Inc. of infringing claims 1, 20, and 21 of U.S. Patent No. 9,659,314 (the “’314 patent”), a newly issued continuation of the ’747 patent. The cases were consolidated shortly thereafter. BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC. 3
All three patents describe tracking a user’s computer network activity and using information gained about the user to deliver targeted media, such as advertisements. See ’594 patent col. 1 ll. 20–22. Tailoring advertisements based on real-time information about the user and their lo- cation allows a publisher to “maximize their advertising revenues.” Id. at col. 3 ll. 4–7. The concept of tailoring advertisements based on user data did not originate with these patents. The practice dates back at least to local radio and television advertise- ments, which played only for users located in specific cities and were published in-between otherwise national pro- grams. ’747 patent col. 1 ll. 28–33. In the computer con- text, prior art systems tracked users based on their personal accounts on a website, or by using small pro- grams, known as cookies, downloaded onto users’ devices. ’594 patent col. 1 ll. 28–33. A user’s location could be ap- proximately determined by the IP address of their device, but this was occasionally imprecise. ’747 patent col. 2 ll. 26–37. Moreover, cookie-based tailoring was disfavored as users expressed “concerns about privacy and data security” by routinely deleting their cookies and other tracking in- formation. Id. at col. 2 ll. 59–63. Bridge and Post contends that its patents solved the drawbacks of the prior art in two ways. First, its tagging and tracking system collects highly specific information about the user. For example, the ’594 patent discusses identifying a user as a male between ages 18 and 30 who lives in San Francisco and is attending a baseball game. ’594 patent col. 11 ll. 1–5. Based on this information, as well as the current time and weather report, the system can “determine that the optimized media should be an ad- vertisement for Coke® since it is a hot day at the ballpark, and the user will likely be getting lunch soon from one of the food vendors (who sells Coke® products).” Id. at col. 11 ll. 5–12. Second, according to Bridge and Post, its inven- tions solved the problem of privacy-concerned users 4 BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
deleting cookies and tracking data by using a persistent de- vice identifier which “may not be deleted nor changed.” Id. at col. 3 ll. 2–4. While each of the three patents at issue describes tracking a user on a network and serving tailored adver- tisements, the claims vary slightly. Claim 1 of the ’594 pa- tent recites “[a] method for providing directed media to a user on a network.” The claim requires receiving a user request to access a website, retrieving a “persistent device identifier” from the user’s device, and gathering current and historical information about both the user and the de- vice. ’594 patent claim 1. The collected information and identifier are analyzed to determine what advertisement (or other tailored media) should be shown to the user. Id. Claim 1 of the ’747 patent recites a related process in which a user’s request to a server is intercepted and “tagged” with an identifier that contains information about the user, including the user’s location and demographic in- formation. ’747 patent claim 1. The tagged request can then be passed to the server the user was trying to reach. Id. Claim 1 of the ’314 patent requires a similar “tagging” process. ’314 patent claim 1. Although neither the ’747 patent claims nor the ’314 patent claims recite the further step of determining what tailored advertisements should be shown based on the tagged user request, their shared specification makes clear that the purpose of tagging is to “facilitat[e] the delivery of directed media.” ’747 patent col. 3 ll. 26–29. II We review a district court’s grant of a Rule 12(b)(6) mo- tion under regional circuit law. ChargePoint, Inc. v. Sema- Connect, Inc., 920 F.3d 759, 764 (Fed. Cir. 2019). The Fourth Circuit reviews a district court’s decision under Rule 12(b)(6) de novo and assumes all well-pleaded, non- conclusory factual allegations in the complaint to be true. Burnette v. Fahey, 687 F.3d 171, 180 (4th Cir. 2012). The BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC. 5
issue of patent-eligibility under § 101 is a question of law that we review without deference. Rapid Litig. Mgmt. Ltd. v. CellzDirect, Inc., 827 F.3d 1042, 1047 (Fed. Cir. 2016). Section 101 of the Patent Act provides that “[w]hoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.” 35 U.S.C. § 101. However, laws of nature, natural phenom- ena, and abstract ideas are not patentable. Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208, 216 (2014). In determining whether this exception applies, we use the two-step framework laid out in Mayo Collaborative Ser- vices v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 566 U.S. 66 (2012), and further detailed in Alice. We “first determine whether the claims at issue are directed to a patent-ineligible con- cept.” Alice, 573 U.S. 218. If they are, we move to step two and “consider the elements of each claim both individually and ‘as an ordered combination’ to determine whether the additional elements ‘transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.” Id. at 217 (quoting Mayo, 566 U.S. at 77–78). This step represents “a search for an ‘inventive concept’—i.e., an element or combination of ele- ments that is ‘sufficient to ensure that the patent in prac- tice amounts to significantly more than a patent upon the ineligible concept itself.’” Id. at 217–18 (quoting Mayo, 566 U.S. at 72–73) (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). A We begin our step one analysis by determining whether the claims are “directed to” an abstract idea. Alice, 573 U.S. at 217. We do so by “looking at the ‘focus’ of the claims.” Elec. Power Grp., LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350, 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (quoting Enfish, LLC v. Mi- crosoft Corp., 822 F.3d 1327, 1335–36 (Fed. Cir. 2016)). In doing so, we “consider the ‘claims in their entirety to 6 BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
ascertain whether their character as a whole is directed to excluded subject matter.’” ChargePoint, 920 F.3d at 765 (quoting Internet Patents Corp. v. Active Network, Inc., 790 F.3d 1343, 1346 (Fed. Cir. 2015)). While the specification is “helpful in illuminating what a claim is directed to . . . the specification must always yield to the claim language” when identifying the “true focus of a claim.” ChargePoint, 920 F.3d at 766. Moreover, “not every claim that recites concrete, tangible components es- capes the reach” of step one. In re TLI Commc’ns LLC Pa- tent Litig., 823 F.3d 607, 611 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (collecting cases). The fact that a claim “recite[s] components more specific than a generic computer” does not save a claim from abstraction. BSG Tech LLC v. Buyseasons, Inc., 899 F.3d 1281, 1286 (Fed. Cir. 2018). 1 Claim 1 of the ’594 patent recites: 1. A method for providing directed media to a user on a network, comprising: receiving a request from the user to access a content provider web site over a network through a network access device operated by the user; retrieving a persistent device identifier of the network access device; determining a current network address of the network access device and one or more charac- teristics of the access device, wherein the cur- rent network address is assigned to the network access device by a network service provider for a present network access session; retrieving historic information for the user, the historic information including patterns of us- age for the network access device, and wherein BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC. 7
the historic information comprises network ac- cess information including times and locations of network access and number of previous net- work accesses by the network access device; retrieving location-centric information for a lo- cation from which the user is accessing the net- work; generating a user profile based on the historic information for the user, the location-centric information, and the one or more characteris- tics of the access device; storing the user profile as a record that identi- fies the user through the current network ad- dress and the persistent device identifier associated with the network access device; incorporating into the user profile one or more group characteristics identifying a group with which the user is associated; assigning a group identifier to the group based on the patterns of usage; analyzing the retrieved device identifier, his- toric information, and location-centric infor- mation to determine a directed media component to be provided to the user or the group on the network access device, and placing directed media referenced by the di- rected media component in the web site re- quested by the user request from the content provider, wherein the directed media com- prises content that is customized to the user based on the user profile. ’594 patent claim 1. The district court concluded that the claims of the ’594 patent are directed to the abstract idea 8 BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
of using persistent identifiers to implement targeted mar- keting. We agree. 1 The language of claim 1 makes clear that, as a whole, the claim is directed to the use of persistent identifiers to implement targeted marketing. Targeted marketing is a form of “tailoring information based on [provided] data,” which we have previously held is an abstract idea. Intel- lectual Ventures I LLC v. Capital One Bank (USA), 792 F.3d 1363, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2015). The concept is a “funda- mental practice” that dates back to newspaper advertise- ments. Id. (ellipsis omitted). Bridge and Post acknowledges as much in its complaint, alleging that “[t]ar- geted marketing and market segmentation were originally developed to increase the effectiveness of advertisements placed in traditional media such as radio, television, and printed newspapers and magazines.” J.A. 111 ¶ 12. The recited steps of “retrieving a persistent device identifier,” “determining” and “retrieving” information as- sociated with the identifier, “analyzing” the information, and “placing directed media” based on that analysis are nothing more than a computer-implementation of targeted
1 The district court considered claim 1 representa- tive of the ’594 patent. Bridge & Post, 319 F. Supp. 3d at 821. Because Bridge and Post did not challenge that deci- sion or separately argue any other claims in its opening brief, we likewise consider claim 1 representative. Alt- hough Bridge and Post argues for the first time on reply that claim 1 is not representative (Reply Br. 1), we will not consider that untimely argument. The single sentence summarizing the dependent claims in its opening brief does not preserve the argument that claim 1 is not repre- sentative. See United States v. Great Am. Ins. Co. of N.Y., 738 F.3d 1320, 1328 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (“It is well established that arguments that are not appropriately developed in a party’s briefing may be deemed waived.”). BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC. 9
marketing over the Internet. The remaining limitations, including “receiving a request . . . ,” “generating a user pro- file . . . ,” and “storing the user profile . . . ,” are generic computer functions performed in the service of implement- ing targeted marketing, and do not change the focus of the claim. See Intellectual Ventures, 792 F.3d at 1368 (holding that “a user profile” is a generic computer element used to implement an abstract idea). The specification, including its description of “the prob- lem facing the inventor” and “what the patent describes as its invention,” can also be useful in determining what a claim is directed to. See ChargePoint, 920 F.3d at 767 (cit- ing In re TLI Commc’ns, 823 F.3d at 612). Here, the speci- fication confirms that “the present invention relate[s] generally to network access and more particularly to providing directed media in a network” and to “systems and method[s] for determining directed media to provide to a user on a website.” ’594 patent col. 1 ll. 20–22, col. 2 ll. 1–8, 65–66. These statements are consistent with our de- termination that the claims of the ’594 patent are directed to the abstract idea of implementing targeted marketing using a persistent identifier. Bridge and Post argues that, because claim 1 requires “specific information . . . to be included in the user profile and utilized in determining directed media,” the ’594 pa- tent is not directed to an abstract idea but instead to a “technological solution to an internet-centric problem.” Ap- pellant’s Br. 36, 38–39. But as we have previously held, claims related to “customizing information based on (1) in- formation known about the user and (2) [specific] data” are directed to abstract ideas. Internet Patents Corp., 790 F.3d at 1346. The claim’s recitation of additional generic net- work elements does not change its character as a whole. Thus, the claims of the ’594 patent are directed to the ab- stract idea of using persistent identifiers to implement tar- geted marketing. 10 BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
2 Bridge and Post does not dispute that claim 1 of the ’747 patent is representative of that patent. Claim 1 re- cites: 1. A method of processing data sent from a user of a client computer over a network, comprising: intercepting a request that is in a hypertext transport protocol (HTTP) format from the cli- ent computer to a server computer over the net- work at a routing device within the network and coupled between the client and server com- puters, and prior to receipt by the server com- puter, wherein the network is the World Wide Web portion of the Internet, and further wherein the client computer is selected from the group consisting of: a personal computer, a mobile computing device, a cellular phone, a personal digital assistant, a media playback device, and a gaming device; extracting non-personal information about the user during a Media Access Control (MAC) layer process, wherein the non-personal infor- mation includes one or more of data related to the client computer, software on the client com- puter, information stored on the client com- puter regarding use of the client computer, and non-personal data associated with the user; creating a unique device identifier associated with hardware and corresponding to the client computer from the non-personal information, wherein the unique identifier is based directly on at least one of a MAC address, port identi- fier, or hardcoded identifier embodied in soft- ware or hardware and assigned to the client computer; BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC. 11
generating a local user identifier for the client computer by performing a one-way hashing op- eration on the unique device identifier; deriving instance information based on request timing information provided by the client com- puter, and geographic location and demo- graphic information for the client computer from information provided by a remote authen- tication server on the network; generating a request identifier associated with the intercepted request by combining and en- crypting, in a tag process executed on the rout- ing device, the local user identifier, instance information, and geographic location and de- mographic information in an alphanumeric string; embedding the alphanumeric string in an ex- tensible field of a packet within the request to generate a tagged request, wherein the exten- sible field comprises a portion of an HTTP header field of the packet that is normally un- used or essentially left blank; transmitting the tagged request to the server computer; providing appropriate decoding tools to the server computer to perform a decoding opera- tion on the tagged request to decode the re- quest identifier embedded in the HTTP extensible field; and receiving a request to decode the tagged re- quest from the server computer. The district court concluded that the ’747 patent was directed to the abstract idea of sending and receiving infor- mation over the Internet. We agree with Bridge and Post 12 BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
that this description is too reductive. However, we con- clude that the claims of the ’747 patent are directed to the abstract idea of communicating information using a per- sonalized marking. The claim language above shows that claim 1 is di- rected to receiving network traffic, adding a “tag” that iden- tifies the user or client computer that made the request, and sending that traffic onward. The remaining limita- tions are generic implementation steps in service of that goal. We have previously held that “us[ing] an identifier, in this case a personalized network address, to communi- cate information about a mail object” is directed to the ab- stract idea of “communicating information about a mail object using a personalized marking.” Secured Mail Sols. LLC v. Universal Wilde, Inc., 873 F.3d 905, 911 (Fed. Cir. 2017). The claims of the ’747 patent, which use an identi- fier derived from an existing “MAC address, port identifier, or hardcoded identifier embodied in software or hardware and assigned to the client computer” in order to “transmit[] a tagged request,” are directed to that same abstract idea. Despite Bridge and Post’s argument to the contrary, the ’747 patent is not analogous to the patents this court addressed in Enfish, 822 F.3d at 1335–36. The Enfish court distinguished between claims that focus on a specific improvement in computer capabilities, on the one hand, and an abstract idea that merely invokes computers as a tool, on the other. Id. at 1336. This case is the latter. Bridge and Post does not claim to have invented new net- working hardware or software. Nor does it claim to have invented HTTP header fields, user identifiers, encryption techniques, or any other improvement in the network tech- nology underlying its claims. The specification states that the invention filled a need for a system which would “en- sure higher access rates, longer browse times, and in- creased consumption of media” by users. ’747 col. 3 ll. 15– 22. But each of these goals is in the abstract realm—an improvement in the success or monetization of tracking BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC. 13
users with personalized markings in order to serve adver- tisements—not an improvement in networking or com- puter functionality. None of these alleged improvements “enables a computer . . . to do things it could not do before.” Finjan, Inc. v. Blue Coat Sys., Inc., 879 F.3d 1299, 1305 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (emphasis added). Such claims, whose fo- cus is “not a physical-realm improvement but an improve- ment in a wholly abstract idea,” are not eligible for patenting. SAP Am., Inc. v. InvestPic, LLC, 898 F.3d 1161, 1168 (Fed. Cir. 2018). Bridge and Post faults the district court for ignoring the “granular specifics” of its claim. Appellant’s Br. 45. But even a highly specific method for implementing an ab- stract idea is, at step 1 of the Alice test, still directed to that abstract idea. “[C]laims are not saved from abstraction merely because they recite components more specific than a generic computer.” BSG Tech, 899 F.3d at 1286. Moreo- ver, the fact that the ’747 claim is limited to a particular networking environment does not render the claims any less abstract. See Affinity Labs of Texas, LLC v. DirecTV, LLC, 838 F.3d 1253, 1259 (Fed. Cir. 2016). The specificity of claim 1 does not change the fact that, as a whole, the claim is directed to the abstract idea of communicating in- formation using a personalized marking. 3 The ’314 patent is a continuation of the ’747 patent. Bridge and Post contends that the ’314 patent is directed to the same “innovations” as the ’747 patent. Appellant’s Br. 20. Representative claim 1 recites: 1. A method for improving the selection of media for delivery to a targeted user of a client computing device, comprising: determining user information for a user; generating a user identifier for the user from the determined user information; 14 BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
tagging, with a network routing device, net- work traffic that is bound for a destination site, the tagging including: generating a request identifier by encrypt- ing the user identifier in an alphanumeric string, and adding the request identifier to the net- work traffic to generate tagged network traffic; transmitting the tagged network traffic to the destination site; receiving from a requester associated with the destination site a decode request to decode the tagged network traffic; decoding the tagged network traffic to obtain the user identifier; retrieving stored user information associated with the user identifier; and transmitting the stored user information to the requester. Based on this claim language, we conclude that the ’314 patent is also directed to the abstract idea of communi- cating information using a personalized marking. Funda- mentally, the claim is focused on “generating” an identifier, “tagging” the user’s traffic with that identifier, and “trans- mitting” the tagged traffic so that the user can be identi- fied. This language is consistent with the specification of the ’314 patent, which confirms that its invention generally relates “to tagging network traffic with user relevant infor- mation.” ’314 patent col. 1 ll. 20–24. The remaining limi- tations do not offer any concrete technological improvement, and merely implement that abstract idea. BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC. 15
Bridge and Post argues that its claims are not analo- gous to the claims in Secured Mail that we held were di- rected to an abstract idea. Appellant’s Br. 54. But there is no material distinction. In Secured Mail, we analyzed claims that required “generating . . . a barcode,” “affixing said barcode to said mail object,” and “submitting said mail object to a mail carrier.” 873 F.3d at 908. We concluded that the claims were directed to an abstract idea. Here, the ’314 patent recites “generating a user identifier,” “tagging . . . network traffic [with the user identifier],” and “trans- mitting the tagged network traffic to the destination site.” ’314 patent claim 1. The ’314 patent merely parallels the focus of the Secured Mail patents in a networking environ- ment. In both cases, “each step of the process is directed to the abstract process of communicating information about a mail [or network] object using a personalized marking.” Secured Mail, 873 F.3d at 911. The claims of the ’314 pa- tent are directed to exactly that abstract idea. B Having determined that the claims of the ’594, ’747, and ’314 patents as a whole are directed to an abstract idea, we next “consider the elements of each claim both individ- ually and ‘as an ordered combination’ to determine whether the additional elements ‘transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.” Alice, 573 U.S. at 217 (quoting Mayo, 566 U.S. at 78–79). Transformation of an abstract idea into a patent-eligi- ble claim “requires more than simply stating the abstract idea while adding the words ‘apply it.’” Alice, 573 U.S. at 222 (quoting Mayo, 566 U.S. at 72) (alterations omitted). Rather, transformation requires “additional features,” which must be more than “well-understood, routine, con- ventional activit[ies].” Alice, 573 U.S. at 225. Whether a claim “supplies an inventive concept that renders a claim significantly more than an abstract idea to which it is di- rected is a question of law,” although it may be informed by 16 BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
underlying factual determinations. BSG Tech, 899 F.3d at 1290 (internal quotation marks omitted). 1 Turning to the ’594 patent, the district court concluded that “the patent . . . does not invent a sufficiently new, non- conventional arrangement of known pieces to overcome a technical challenge.” Bridge & Post, 319 F. Supp. 3d at 825. We agree. Bridge and Post does not claim to have invented the persistent identifier and does not argue that any individual limitation of the ’594 patent is unconventional or non-rou- tine. Nor could it. The specification confirms that the claimed hardware is conventional: the “network access de- vice” can be “any digital device capable of communications over the network.” ’594 patent col. 3 ll. 26–32 (listing ex- emplary prior art devices). And the “device identifier may comprise” numerous existing persistent identifiers, such as a MAC address, IMSI, IMEI, or indeed “any anonymous de- vice identifier.” Id. at col. 3 ll. 36–42. Bridge and Post contends instead that the ordered com- bination of known steps claimed in the ’594 patent was nei- ther conventional nor routine. Appellant’s Br. 40. But patentability requires that the claimed combination of ele- ments amount to “significantly more than a patent upon the ineligible concept itself.” Alice, 573 U.S. at 219 (quoting Mayo, 566 U.S. at 73) (alterations omitted). The claims of the ’594 patent do not meet that standard. Even as an or- dered combination, the limitations of claim 1 recite no more than a computer implementation of the abstract idea of us- ing persistent identifiers to implement targeted marketing, lacking anything “significantly more.” Bridge and Post further contends that the ’594 patent is patent eligible at step two because, like the patent this court analyzed in DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P., “the claimed solution is necessarily rooted in computer BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC. 17
technology in order to overcome a problem specifically aris- ing in the realm of computer networks.” 773 F.3d 1245, 1257 (Fed. Cir. 2014). But as this court noted in DDR, “not all claims purporting to address Internet-centric chal- lenges are eligible for patent.” Id. at 1258. In that case, the court distinguished problems “necessarily rooted in computer technology,” like the visual presentation of a website, from claims that “recite the performance of some business practice known from the pre-internet world.” Id. The ’594 patent is the latter, as evidenced by its acknowl- edgement that tracking users in order to display advertise- ments was known in the pre-Internet world, and that its steps for accomplishing this on the Internet were conven- tional. We therefore hold that the asserted claims of the ’594 patent are unpatentable. 2 With respect to the ’747 patent, Bridge and Post iden- tifies two alleged inventive concepts at step two: (1) “inter- cepting a request . . . from the client computer to a server computer,” and (2) “embedding the alphanumeric string in an extensible field of a packet . . . wherein the extensible field comprises a portion of an HTTP header field of the packet that is normally unused or essentially left blank.” Appellant’s Br. 46–47, 49–50. We are not persuaded by ei- ther. Bridge and Post argues that the “intercepting” limita- tion “functions differently than prior art targeted content delivery systems.” Appellant’s Br. 46–47. That is not the test for eligibility. At Alice step two we assess “whether the claim limitations other than the invention’s use of the inel- igible concept to which it was directed were well-under- stood, routine, and conventional.” BSG Tech, 899 F.3d at 1290 (emphasis added). The “intercepting” limitation, even interpreted generously, amounts to no more than a com- puter-focused reformulation of affixing and using a person- alized marking. “As a matter of law, narrowing or 18 BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
reformulating an abstract idea does not add ‘significantly more’ to it.” Id. at 1291. Because this limitation does not add significantly more to the claim than the abstract idea itself, it does not provide an inventive concept at step two. Moreover, “intercepting” traffic is itself an abstract idea. As this court has noted, “communicating requests to a remote server and receiving communications from that server, i.e. communication over a network,” is an abstract idea. ChargePoint, 920 F.3d at 767. “[I]ntercepting” net- work traffic amounts to nothing more than that idea. Add- ing the abstract idea of intercepting traffic to the abstract idea of communicating information with personalized markings cannot result in a patent-eligible invention. See RecogniCorp, LLC v. Nintendo Co., 885 F.3d 1322, 1327 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (“Adding one abstract idea . . . to another abstract idea . . . does not render the claim non-abstract.”). The “embedding” limitation fares no better. Bridge and Post argues that because the claim language recites a por- tion of the header field that is “normally unused or essen- tially left blank,” it is unconventional on its face and survives at step two. Like the district court, we find that this limitation is insufficient to create an inventive concept. The specification of the ’747 patent makes clear that HTTP headers were known, and their use to store information was conventional in the art. See, e.g., ’747 patent col. 9 ll. 1–8 (noting that “[s]tandard HTTP requests include vari- ous content fields, such as headers” and identifiers can be stored “in the extensible space of the HTTP header in an appropriate format”). It further illustrates that there is no novelty in this method of storing data, and that “[i]n gen- eral, any extensible space of the header or similar portion of a pervasively used network traffic component can be used.” Id. at col. 12 ll. 40–42. This limitation merely in- structs the user to store information in a known portion of the conventional header field that is not already holding information. BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC. 19
Regardless of whether it is novel, the “embedding” lim- itation does not render the ’747 patent eligible. Where a claim’s “essential advance” is abstract, a novel method of performing that advance “does not avoid the problem of ab- stractness.” Affinity Labs, 838 F.3d at 1263. In Affinity Labs, this court found that the claims lacked an inventive concept “[e]ven assuming,” as the patent owner argued, that “the use of a downloadable application for presenting a graphical user interface . . . was novel as of the priority date of the patent.” Id. We noted that “the essential ad- vance is not in the process of downloading applications, but only in the content of this particular application,” which amounted to an abstract idea. Id. That logic applies equally here. The essential advance taught by the ’747 patent is not an HTTP header, or even the use of a particular HTTP header. This fact is clear from the patent’s statement that its invention can be implemented with “any extensible space of the header or similar portion of a pervasively used network traffic component.” Id. at col. 12 ll. 40–42. The claimed advance is a method of tagging and tracking user traffic, which amounts to nothing more than the abstract idea of communicating information using a personalized marking, regardless of whether the use of a particular HTTP header to perform that abstract idea was novel. We therefore hold that the asserted claims of the ’747 patent are unpatentable. 3 The district court found the claims of the ’314 patent ineligible at step two, as the patent “provides only a gener- alized recitation of standard Internet components and pro- cesses which highly resembles a physical process of tagging and tracking that would not be patent eligible in the phys- ical world.” Bridge & Post, 319 F. Supp. 3d at 827. We agree. As discussed above with respect to step one, the in- dividual limitations of the claims of the ’314 patent merely 20 BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
describe the steps necessary to implement the abstract idea of transmitting information with personalized markings, reformulated for the computer networking context. Unlike the ’747 patent, Bridge and Post does not iden- tify any arguably inventive limitations of the ’314 patent. It argues instead that its claims are analogous to those in BASCOM Global Internet Services. v. AT&T Mobility LLC, which this court held to be an eligible non-conventional and non-generic arrangement of otherwise conventional compo- nents. 827 F.3d 1341, 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2016). But BASCOM presented a solution that “improve[d] the performance of the computer itself,” making the computer “more dynamic and efficient.” Id. at 1351 (internal quotation marks omit- ted). No similar allegations are present here. The ’314 patent describes its solution as filling a need for “effective and efficient revenue modeling for advertising,” and “efficiently enabling the creation of dynamic ad campaigns and effective targeted ad serving,” which “facilitates the creation of comprehensive ad campaigns. ’314 patent col. 3 ll. 8–12; col. 10 l. 65–col. 11 l. 9. None of these statements reflects an improvement to “the performance of the computer itself.” The ability to run a more efficient advertising campaign, even if novel, and even if aided by conventional computers, is an advance “entirely in the realm of abstract ideas,” which we have repeatedly held to be ineligible. SAP Am., 898 F.3d at 1163; see also Elec. Power Grp., LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350, 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (claims that “specify what information it is desirable to gather, analyze, and display” using “conventional, generic technology” did not present an inventive concept). In the absence of any identified improvement to computer technology, or other identified inventive concept, the asserted claims of the ’314 patent are unpatentable. III Separate from its eligibility arguments, Bridge and BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC. 21
Post argues that the district court’s failure to cite to the allegations of its complaints constitutes reversible error in and of itself. Reply Br. 21. We disagree. It is true that, at the Rule 12(b)(6) stage, the district court must accept a complaint’s factual allegations as true. See ChargePoint, 920 F.3d at 764–65 (applying Fourth Circuit law). But we have never held that a district court is required to cite to a complaint, and we decline to create such a rule now. As this court has noted, patent eligibility can be deter- mined at the 12(b)(6) stage “when there are no factual al- legations that, taken as true, prevent resolving the eligibility question as a matter of law.” Aatrix Software, Inc. v. Green Shades Software, Inc., 882 F.3d 1121, 1125 (Fed. Cir. 2018). That is the case here. In its opening brief, Bridge and Post failed to explain how any particular factual allegation in either of its complaints, taken as true, would create a factual issue preventing resolution of the case as a matter of law. We need not address whether the issue is waived, however, because none of the allegations in Bridge and Post’s complaints would affect the outcome described above. As the district court correctly noted, it was not required to accept Bridge and Post’s legal conclusions as true, even if couched as factual allegations. Bridge & Post, 319 F. Supp. 3d at 823 n.3. That includes Bridge and Post’s re- peated characterization of its inventions as “technical in- novations.” J.A. 112–16 ¶¶ 14–19. The remaining allegations in the complaints, identified by Bridge and Post for the first time on reply, are related to the alleged novelty of the invention over the prior art. 2 But as discussed above
2 Bridge and Post identifies “paragraphs 12 through 19 of the Complaint” as allegedly providing relevant fac- tual allegations. Reply Br. 22. This citation appears to be a reference to its first complaint, asserting the ’594 and ’747 patents. See J.A. 108–116. We note that Bridge and 22 BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
with respect to step two, the ’594, ’747, and ’314 patents are directed to ineligible subject matter even if their conven- tional steps had never previously been applied in connec- tion with their respective abstract ideas. The district court’s lack of discussion of Bridge and Post’s complaints was, at worst, harmless error. IV We have considered Bridge and Post’s remaining argu- ments and find them unpersuasive. For the reasons dis- cussed above, the district court correctly determined that the asserted claims of the ’594, ’747, and ’314 patents are directed to abstract ideas, and lack any inventive concepts sufficient to transform the abstract ideas into patent-eligi- ble inventions. As such, the asserted claims all fail to recite patent-eligible subject matter under § 101. AFFIRMED
Post’s second complaint, asserting the ’314 patent, does not contain these paragraphs or any equivalent thereto. Therefore, as to that patent, Bridge and Post may not be entitled to rely on the allegations in those paragraphs. See J.A. 89–90. NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________
VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC., CELLCO PARTNERSHIP, DBA VERIZON WIRELESS, VERIZON INTERNET SERVICES INC., VERIZON ONLINE LLC, AOL INC., OATH INC., Defendants-Appellees ______________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Nos. 3:17-cv-00094-JAG, 3:17-cv-00710-JAG, Judge John A. Gibney, Jr. ______________________
BRYSON, Circuit Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part. I agree with the court that the asserted claims of the ’314 patent and the ’594 patent are drawn to unpatentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. I disagree with the court, however, as to its similar conclusion with regard to asserted claim 1 of the ’747 patent. 2 BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
The asserted claims of the ’314 and ’594 patents are drawn to an abstraction. They recite a series of functional steps, but do not recite with any specificity how those func- tional steps are to be carried out. Claim 1 of the ’747 pa- tent, by contrast, provides a specific and concrete way to accomplish the objectives set forth in the claims. It may be that the means set forth in the ’747 patent are not novel, and thus would not pass muster under a test for obvious- ness or anticipation under sections 102 or 103 of the Patent Act. But the means are not abstract, and thus they do not render the subject matter ineligible for patenting under section 101. The majority characterizes claim 1 of the ’747 patent as being “directed to receiving network traffic, adding a ‘tag’ that identifies the user or client computer that made the request, and sending that traffic onward.” That func- tional characterization overlooks the technique that claim 1 recites to accomplish those functions. That technique en- tails intercepting network traffic in HTTP format at a rout- ing device coupled between a client and server computer, embedding that traffic with an alphanumeric string iden- tifying client user information in an HTTP header field normally unused or left blank, and sending that traffic on- ward. The distinction between claims that recite functions or results (the “what it does” aspect of the invention) and those that recite concrete means for achieving particular functions or results (the “how it does it” aspect of the in- vention) is an important indicator of whether a claim is di- rected to an abstract idea. See Uniloc USA, Inc. v. ADP, LLC, Nos. 2018-1132, 2018-1346, 2018-1448, 2019 WL 2245938, *5 (Fed. Cir. May 24, 2019) (“It is true . . . that the goal of the claims is functional . . . . But the patent claims a particular improvement in how this is done . . . . This is the clear ‘focus’ of the claims . . . .”); see also Dia- mond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 182 n.7 (1981) (A patent may issue “for the means or method of producing a certain BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC. 3
result, or effect, and not for the result or effect produced.”); SRI Int’l, Inc. v. Cisco Sys., Inc., 918 F.3d 1368, 1375 (Fed. Cir. 2019) (claims held not abstract because they were “di- rected to using a specific technique . . . to solve a technolog- ical problem arising in computer networks”); BSG Tech LLC v. BuySeasons, Inc., 899 F.3d 1281, 1288 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (claims held abstract because “the focus of BSG Tech’s claims is unrelated to how databases function. . . . The claims do not recite any improvement to the way in which such databases store or organize information”); id. at 1289 (patent in suit “says nothing about how to construct a database that is not modified by the addition of new pa- rameters”); Affinity Labs of Texas, LLC v. DirecTV, LLC, 838 F.3d 1253, 1258 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (claim held abstract because “the claimed invention is entirely functional in na- ture. . . . There is nothing in [the claim] that is directed to how to implement out-of-region broadcasting on a cellular telephone”). This court has repeatedly found claims similar to claim 1 of the ’747 patent to be patent eligible. See Ancora Techs., Inc. v. HTC Am., Inc., 908 F.3d 1343, 1348 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (claimed method, which “specifically identifies how [im- proving security against a computer’s unauthorized use of a program] is effectuated in an assertedly unexpected way,” is not directed to an abstract idea); Data Engine Techs. LLC v. Google LLC, 906 F.3d 999, 1007–08 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (“[C]laim 12 of the ’259 patent is not directed to an abstract idea. Rather, the claim is directed to a specific method for navigating through three dimensional elec- tronic spreadsheets. The method provides a specific solu- tion to then-existing technological problems in computers”); McRO, Inc. v. Bandai Namco Games Am. Inc., 837 F.3d 1299, 1314 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (“Claim 1 of the ’576 patent is focused on a specific asserted improvement in computer animation, i.e., the automatic use of rules of a particular type.”); see also Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 822 F.3d 1327, 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (“[W]e are not faced 4 BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
with a situation where general-purpose computer compo- nents are added post-hoc to a fundamental economic prac- tice or mathematical equation. Rather, the claims are directed to a specific implementation of a solution to a prob- lem in the software arts.”). Data Engine is particularly instructive. The court in that case grappled with the patent eligibility of a group of patents that claimed “a method of implementing a note- book-tabbed interface, which allows users to easily navi- gate through three-dimensional electronic spreadsheets.” Data Engine, 906 F.3d at 1003. The court found that rep- resentative claim 12 of one of the patents was not directed to an abstract idea, but instead was “directed to a specific method for navigating through electronic spreadsheets.” Id. at 1007–08. The court distinguished between that claim, which “recites specific steps detailing the method of navigating through spreadsheet pages within a three-di- mensional spreadsheet environment using notebook tabs,” and the claims at issue in cases such as Affinity Labs of Texas; Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Capital One Financial Corp., 850 F.3d 1332 (Fed. Cir. 2017); and Intellectual Ven- tures I LLC v. Erie Indemnity Co., 850 F.3d 1315 (Fed. Cir. 2017), all of which were “entirely functional in nature” and therefore abstract. See Data Engine, 906 F.3d at 1010. In contrast to representative claim 12, the Data Engine court found claim 1 of another of the patents before it to be directed to patent-ineligible subject matter. The court ex- plained that, unlike representative claim 12, the latter claim was “directed at something a bit more general.” Id. at 1012. It found that claim 1’s more general recitation was “not limited to the specific technical solution and improve- ment in electronic spreadsheet functionality,” but instead was directed to “any means for identifying electronic spreadsheet pages.” Id. The same type of comparison can be made between the ’747 and ’314 patents here. Compared to the ’747 patent, BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC. 5
which recites a specific technique (i.e., the “how”) for inter- cepting, tagging, and forwarding network traffic, the ’314 patent is merely directed to the underlying functional ob- jectives (i.e., the “what”). That difference between the ’747 patent, on the one hand, and the ’314 and ’594 patents, on the other, illus- trates the problem with the majority’s reliance on Secured Mail Solutions LLC v. Universal Wilde, Inc., 873 F.3d 905 (Fed. Cir. 2017), to find claim 1 of the ’747 abstract. Ac- cording to the majority, the claims of all three patents par- allel the claims of the three sets of patents that the court found to be directed to abstract ideas in Secured Mail. In Secured Mail, however, the court’s finding of abstractness centered on the functional claiming in the patents in suit. The court explained that, for the Intelligent Mail Barcode patents, “[t]here is no description of how the unique iden- tifier is generated or how a unique identifier is different from a personal name, or return address.” Id. at 910. And for the QR Code patents, the court stated that the “method whereby a barcode is generated, affixed to a mail object, and sent through the mail system . . . is not limited to any particular technology of generating, printing, or scanning a barcode, of sending a mail object, or of sending the recip- ient-specific information over a network.” Id. at 910–11. The court concluded that “[t]he claims of the three sets of patents are not limited by rules or steps that establish how the focus of the methods is achieved.” Id. at 911. While the functional characterization of the Secured Mail patents is applicable to the ’314 and ’594 patents, it is not applicable to the ’747 patent. Instead, as noted above, the ’747 patent discusses how the unique identifier is gen- erated—“by combining and encrypting . . . the local user identifier, instance information, and geographic location and demographic information in an alphanumeric string”—and how the identifier is to be added to the data packet—by “embedding the alphanumeric string in an ex- tensible field . . . wherein the extensible field comprises a 6 BRIDGE AND POST, INC. v. VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
portion of an HTTP header field of the packet that is nor- mally unused or essentially left blank.” ’747 patent, claim 1. Contrary to the majority’s suggestion, patent eligibility under section 101 does not depend on whether the patentee “invented new networking hardware or software.” That de- termination is one of novelty, not abstractness. While the majority may well be correct about the absence of novel fea- tures in the claims of the ’747 patent, see Cellco Partner- ship d/b/a Verizon Wireless v. Bridge & Post, Inc., No. IPR2018-00054 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 15, 2019) (’747 patent claims held unpatentable as obvious), the question “whether a particular invention is novel is ‘wholly apart from whether the invention falls into a category of statutory subject mat- ter.’” Diehr, 450 U.S. at 190 (quoting In re Bergy, 596 F.2d 952, 961 (C.C.P.A. 1979)). Finally, the majority states that “even a highly specific method for implementing an abstract idea is, at step 1 of the Alice test, still directed to that abstract idea.” While it is true that an abstract idea does not become concrete simply because it is limited to a specific field of use, the critical distinction is between claiming a function—even one directed to a specific use—as opposed to reciting a claim that is “directed to a specific implementation of a so- lution to a problem in the software arts,” Enfish, 822 F.3d at 1339. The former is patent ineligible, while the latter is not. Because I would hold that the claims of the ’747 patent are patent eligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101, I respectfully dis- sent with respect to that portion of the court’s judgment.