Intellectual Property: Federal Circuit Upholds Itc Finding Of Invalidity Of Patent As 'Abstract Idea' Under Alice Corp. PTV. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int'l, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014)

Last month, in Creative Technology Ltd. v. International Trade Commission, 2016-2715 (Fed. Cir.), the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the International Trade Commission's (ITC) determination regarding patent invalidity under the Supreme Court's 2014 decision in Alice Corp. Ptv. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int'l, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014). The patent at issue, U.S. Patent No. 6,928,433, disclosed a user interface for portable media players. The claimed interface utilized an "organizational hierarchy" that organized musical tracks in a series of lists organized by category, subcategory, and item.

The patent owner, Creative Technology Ltd., filed a complaint with the ITC in March 2016, requesting that various electronic device manufacturers be prevented from continuing to import smartphones that it believed incorporated software that infringed the '433 patent.

The ITC denied the complaint on the ground that the '433 patent was invalid. At issue was whether the '433 patent claimed an unpatentable "abstract idea." In evaluating patents that claim an abstract idea, courts consider whether the patent "transforms" the abstract idea into a patent-eligible application by adding an...