Fed Circ finds another CardioNet patent-ineligible under Alice
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled that yet another CardioNet heart monitor patent is invalid for not citing an inventive concept under the Alice test.
In an opinion handed down on Friday, 29 October, the circuit overruled a lower Massachusetts court decision finding that the patent was eligible because it was “tied to a machine”.
This marks the third decision on the dispute by the Federal Circuit and the fourth heart monitor patent in the case to be found ineligible by the appellate court.
The circuit ruled that CardioNet’s US Patent 7,099,715 (‘715) was linked to patent-ineligible subject matter, vacating the Massachusetts court decision granting summary judgment of non-infringement and ruled that the court should have granted defendant InfoBionic’s prior motion for judgment regarding nonpatentability.
Alice test
The Alice test describes a two-step process for determining whether a claim contains an “inventive concept” under the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Section 101 requirements for invention.
For step one of the Alice test, the circuit agreed with InfoBionic that the claim language is directed to an abstract idea of filtering data of patient heartbeat
In the second step, the circuit found that the Massachusetts district court erred in its finding that claim 20 of the ‘715 patent was linked to an inventive concept because it was “tied to a machine”, which it argued satisfied the “machine-or-transformation test” for patent eligibility.
Case background
CardioNet claimed that competitor InforBionic had infringed on its heart monitor patents through the sale of its MoMe Kardia remote heart monitoring platform in a complaint filed in May 2015.
The US District Court for the District of Massachusetts found that the ‘715 patent was eligible under Section 101, which led CardioNet to litigate the infringement claim.
InfoBionic moved for a summary judgment of non-infringement, which was then granted. This time, the court found that CardioNet failed to supplement its infringement contentions in a timely manner, precluding it from relying on several of its infringement theories.
After excluding evidence, the court concluded that there was no genuine dispute regarding non-infringement and that InfoBionic was entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
This led CardioNet to appeal the district court’s decision granting a judgment to the Federal Circuit, while InfoBionic cross-appealed the court’s decision that claims of ‘715 were not ineligible under Section 101.
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