In a recent ruling, a Pennsylvania federal judge sitting in Delaware pronounced that Inmar Brand Solutions Inc.’s patents for its coupon-processing systems are concrete rather than abstract. This implicates that these patents should be maintained and are not subjected to annulment negating the ruling used under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Alice precedent. As reported by Law360, the judge’s decision underlines an interesting borderline application of the Alice precedent in the intellectual property arena.
Sophisticated legal entities will be familiar with Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, a 2014 case that raised the bar for patent eligibility by offering Courts a framework to identify patents that attempt to claim abstract ideas. Since then, many software and business method patents have been invalidated for being too abstract.
The decision in the case of Inmar Brand Solutions Inc. validates the company’s patent rights but also surfaces questions around which types of cases constitute a ‘borderline’ application of the Alice precedent, posing pertinent implications for future intellectual property rights disputes.