“Although Longitude contended that the use of new data… represented a patent-eligible improvement, the Federal Circuit found that the claim rather ‘describe[d] a mere concept without disclosing how to implement’ it.”
Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Longitude Licensing Ltd. v. Google LLC affirming yet another ruling invalidating patent claims via judicial exceptions to patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The Federal Circuit agreed with the Northern District of California that Longitude’s patent claims to digital image correction technologies are directed to abstract ideas claimed in functional terms without any explanation of how the claimed improvement is achieved.
Claims Directed to Abstract Idea of Improving Image Quality Based on Main Object
Longitude filed its infringement suit against Google in June 2023 asserting claims from four patents including U.S. Patent No. 7668365, Determination of Main Object on Image and Improvement of Image Quality According to Main Object. Google moved to dismiss the case, arguing that the claims of the ‘365 patent were directed to the abstract idea that merely uses computers as a tool, and the district court granted the motion that October. In the ruling by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, the court found that claim 32 of the ‘365 patent, representative of all four asserted patents, used functional, ends-oriented language, and that Longitude’s allegations that the claims improve prior computing processes were conclusory as a result.
Representative claim 32 of the ‘365 patent claims:
“An image processing method comprising:
determining the main object image data corresponding to the main object characterizing the image;
acquiring the properties of the determined main object image data;
acquiring correction conditions corresponding to the properties that have been acquired;
and adjusting the picture quality of the main object image data using the acquired correction conditions;
wherein each of the operations of the image processing method is executed by an integrated circuit.”
After reciting the legal framework for the Alice/Mayo Section 101 patent-eligibility inquiry, the Federal Circuit began its ruling by agreeing with the district court that Longitude’s patent claims are directed to the abstract idea of improving image quality by adjusting various image aspects based on features of the image’s main object. Noting that the ‘365 patent’s specification recognizes that human users can already retouch images using software and experience, the appellate court found the representative claim merely directed to the use of computers to adjust image parameters without explaining how that result is achieved.
Analogizing to Hawk Technology Systems v. Castle Retail (2023), which involved claims to methods of displaying video according to sets of temporal and spatial parameters, the Federal Circuit found that Longitude’s patent claims did not contain a sufficient recitation of how the purported invention improves the functionality of image correction methods. The Federal Circuit also drew in reasoning from its recent Section 101 precedential ruling in Recentive Analytics v. Fox Corp., in which the appellate court affirmed the invalidation of claims directed to applications of machine learning in determining event schedules and generating broadcast maps. Although Longitude contended that the use of new data, here the correspondence between main object data and correction conditions, represented a patent-eligible improvement, the Federal Circuit found that the claim rather “describe[d] a mere concept without disclosing how to implement” it.
Unlike McRo, Longitude’s Claims Not Limited to Rules with Specific Characteristics
Longitude also challenged the district court’s inability to consider claim 32 in light of the ‘365 patent’s specification under the Federal Circuit’s standard from McRo v. Bandai Namco Games of America (2016). However, while the claims in McRo were “limited to rules with specific characteristics,” Longitude’s patent claims were framed in entirely functional, results-oriented terms with no explanation of how the claimed improvement is achieved, the Federal Circuit ruled.
For similar reasons, the Federal Circuit rejected Longitude’s argument that the district court failed to consider distinct improvements in digital image processing techniques, namely the accurate identification of the main object by analyzing image and position data. The appellate court found that the claim limitation “acquiring the properties of the determined main object image data” did nothing to explain how that process was achieved more efficiently. As to Longitude’s argument that the district court should have addressed each claim individually, the Federal Circuit found no issue with the treatment of claim 32 as representative because the remaining 66 claims were substantially similar and linked by the same abstract idea, only differing insofar that they recite additional limitations regarding the “main object” and “correction conditions.”
The Federal Circuit also dismissed Longitude’s challenge to the district court’s analysis at Step 2 of Alice/Mayo. While Longitude contended that the district court conducted a factual inquiry without evidence or analysis, the Federal Circuit said that the lower court’s ruling met the summary judgment standard under Berkheimer v. HP (2018) as the claims recite no inventive concept and Longitude didn’t raise a factual dispute. Finally, claimed steps addressing “properties” of main object image data and “correction conditions corresponding to [those] properties” did not transform the abstract idea into something significantly more. Finding Longitude’s remaining arguments unpersuasive, the Federal Circuit affirmed.
