District Court Granted Judgment On The Pleadings Because The Patents Recited Patent-Ineligible Mathematical Techniques Executed In An Aircraft Flight Control System

• Published date: 03 May 2022
• Subject Matter: Intellectual Property, Patent
• Law Firm: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
• Author: Mr C. Brandon Rash and Brooks J. Kenyon

Judge Orrick in the Northern District of California recently granted a motion for judgment on the pleadings that the asserted claims are invalid for claiming patent-ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. ' 101. The patents-at-issue are directed to flight control systems for aircraft. The court found the claims unpatentable because they recite abstract mathematical techniques carried out by generic components performing their conventional functions.

Plaintiff Wisk Aero sued Archer Aviation for infringing U.S. Patent Nos. 10,370,099 and 11,034,441. The patents are directed to an 'online optimization-based flight control system.' Claim 1 of the '099 patent recites a method of controlling flight of an aircraft by receiving inputs associated with a set of 'forces and moments' (movements the aircraft can make), and computing an 'optimal mix of actuators' and associated parameters by 'minimizing a weighted set of costs,' including costs from errors if a rotor fails. Claim 1 of the '441 patent recites an aircraft in which a flight controller and sensors perform a calculation to determine the 'solution space' of all possible solutions to the algorithm and then selects the best from among them after excluding solutions that do not factor in that an error has occurred.

The court analyzed eligibility using the Supreme Court's two-step Alice framework. In step one, a court determines whether the claims are 'directed to a patent-ineligible concept,' such as an abstract idea. Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int'l, 573 U.S. 208, 217 (2014). If they are, the court proceeds to step two and considers '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.

The '099 Patent

Addressing Alice step one for the '099 patent, the court found that the focus of the claimed advance over the prior art is the minimization of the weighted set of costs, including costs of errors. The claimed method receives inputs and computes an 'optimal mix' of actuators and parameters. According to the court, this advance is simply a mathematical technique that could be performed in the human mind or, in Wisk's framing, an improvement to such a technique. The court noted that the Supreme Court and Federal Circuit have repeatedly held that mathematical techniques are not patentable.

The court found that the claims were similar to claims invalidated in In re...