Claims To A Spread-Spectrum Method For Sending Data Over A Communications Channel Are Patent Ineligible Under Section 101

• Published date: 24 August 2021
• Subject Matter: Intellectual Property, Patent
• Law Firm: Oblon, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt, L.L.P
• Author: Ms Marina I. Miller

Plaintiff Zyrcuits IP LLC has sued Defendants Acuity Brands, Inc. and Universal Electronics Inc. for infringement of claim 4 of U.S. Patent No. 6,671,307 (the '307 patent). Defendants argued that Zyrcuits's complaints should be dismissed because the '307 patent is invalid under 35 U.S.C. ' 101 for failing to claim patentable subject matter. Applying the two-step framework from Alice, the court found that the '307 patent was invalid under ' 101, as the claims of the '307 patent are directed to the abstract idea of grouping data together with a single code and do not contain any inventive concept.

The '307 patent describes applying signal codes to blocks of interleaved data for spread-spectrum transmission. According to the written description, spread-spectrum transmission was previously accomplished using parallel codes. Zyrcuits alleged that Acuity and Universal Electronics infringe claim 4 of the '307 patent.

Claim 4 recites a spread-spectrum method improvement for sending data over a communications channel, comprising the steps of:
storing, at a transmitter, N bits of interleaved data as stored data, with N a number of bits in a symbol;
selecting, at said transmitter in response to the N bits of stored data, a chip-sequence signal from a plurality of 2^N chip-sequence signals, as an output chip-sequence signal; and
transmitting, at said transmitter, the output chip-sequence signal as a radio wave, at a carrier frequency, over said communications channel, as a spread-spectrum signal.

The court noted that claim 4 described grouping together data that may come from multiple sources, applying a single chip-sequence code to the grouped data, and then transmitting the code by radio wave. Under Alice Step One, whether the claims are drawn to patent ineligible subject matter, the court found that the '307 patent was directed to the abstract idea of grouping spread-spectrum data together with a single code instead of with parallel codes. The court explained that the Federal Circuit had indicated repeatedly that claims directed to the manipulation of data are abstract absent additional features, because 'information as such is an intangible.' Elec. Power Grp., LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350, 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2016).

The court pointed out that representative claim 4 was directed to the manipulation of information: 'It requires 'storing' specified data, 'selecting' a signal based on the stored data, and then 'transmitting' the signal' and that 'Zyrcuits...