A Green Patent Complaint Update post reported on the patent infringement suit between Neochloris and Emerson Process Management Power & Water Solutions.  Citgo was also named as a defendant.
In the lawsuit, Neochloris accused Emerson and Citgo of infringing U.S. Patent No. 6,845,336 (‘336 Patent).
The ‘336 Patent is entitled “Water treatment monitoring system†and directed to a monitoring system to receive data from water sensors, analyze water quality conditions inputted by the sensors and predict effluent water quality and process upsets.  The monitoring system includes an artificial neural network module to determine solutions to actual and potential water quality and process upsets.
The defendants jointly moved for summary judgment that the ‘336 Patent is invalid because it covers non-patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.  Section 101 of U.S. patent law delineates the broad categories of subject matter deemed eligible for patent protection.
These comprise “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof…”
Generally excluded from eligibility are laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas.  Patentable subject matter has been in flux for the last several years and recent case law has rendered previously eligible areas such as business methods and software very difficult to patent.
In a recent decision, Judge Edmond E. Chang of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted the summary judgment motion, ruling that the ‘336 Patent protects an unpatentable abstract idea.
The court’s decision began with a summary of the asserted claims of the ‘336 Patent, stating that they describe a method for:
- collecting data at a water treatment plant;
- sending the data over an internet connection to a computer;
- monitoring and analyzing the data with an ordinary computer and software; and
- alerting the facility of any abnormalities.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 Alice v. CLS Bank decision laid out the current analysis for determining patentable subject matter under Section 101.  The first question is whether the claims are “directed to a patent ineligible concept” on their face.  If so, the second question is whether the claims nonetheless contain an “inventive concept” that can make the concept a patent eligible invention.
Judge Chang concluded that the claims of the ‘336 Patent cover an abstract idea:
[A]t bottom, the claims cover the general process of observing, analyzing, monitoring, and alerting that can be done entirely by the human mind and by using pen and paper….the Federal Circuit has determined that collecting and processing data is an abstract idea.
The court went on to find that the claims do not contain any inventive concept. Â Neochloris argued that the claims have three patent-eligible inventive features: Â the use of computers and software, the ability to predict future failure events, and the ability to reduce human error.
However, the court found all of these functions to be conventional and that the claims of the ‘336 Patent merely recite basic computer functions:
[T]he ‘336 patent employs any “monitoring computer” and any “software” to perform basic computer functions. Â The computer and software simply make routine calculations to monitor and analyze water data. Â The claims are not limited to any particular software or hardware, and this generic technology has no special capabilities that “improve the functioning of the computer itself” or “effect an improvement in any other technology or technical field.” Â Because the addition of a computer and software in the ‘336 patent “does no more than require a generic computer to perform generic computer functions,” this generic technology does not save the ‘336 patent.
Similarly, the ability of the patented system to predict future failure events, even if it is better than could be done by a human operator, is not inventive:
There is no inventive concept when a computer just replicates what a person can do, only more quickly and accurately.
Finally, the court found that reducing human error “only describes the generic ability of a computer to work more accurately and does not make the claim inventive.”
With software so integral to so many environmental and other green technologies, this surely is not the last we’ll see of Alice impacting green patents.
