P2I Ltd. v. Favored Tech USA Corporation

Background

P2I Ltd. brought a patent-infringement dispute involving United States Patent Nos. 8,389,070 (the “’070 patent”) and 11,041,087 (the “’087 patent”). The defendants named in the order were Favored Tech USA Corporation, Jiangsu Favored Nanotechnology Co., Ltd., and GN Audio USA, Inc. The ’070 patent concerns plasma deposition, a process for coating a material with a polymer layer. The patent describes using a large chamber and various process conditions for commercial-scale production.

The defendants moved for judgment on the pleadings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c), arguing that the ’070 patent was not eligible for patent protection under Section 101 of the Patent Act because it claimed an abstract idea. P2I also moved for leave to file a third amended complaint. The proposed complaint would have removed the infringement claim involving the ’087 patent and retained claims involving the ’070 patent and trade-secret misappropriation.

Patent-eligibility analysis

The court applied the two-step framework from Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International. First, it asks whether the claims are directed to a patent-ineligible concept such as an abstract idea. If so, it asks whether the claim includes an “inventive concept”—an element or combination that transforms the abstract idea into a patent-eligible application.

The court focused on Claim 1 of the ’070 patent because the remaining claims depended on it. Reading the claim in light of the patent specification, the court concluded that the claimed advance over the prior art was conducting plasma deposition at a large scale or “en masse.” The court characterized this as applying the known plasma-deposition technique to mass production using a larger chamber.

At the first Alice step, the court held that plasma deposition at the scale of mass production was an abstract idea. It noted that the patent itself distinguished the prior art primarily by chamber size and that the requirement that the plasma zone have a volume of at least 0.5 cubic meters was the only specification the court identified as distinguishing the patent from the cited small-scale implementations. The court found that the other limitations were routine and conventional in comparison with the prior art.

At the second Alice step, the court found no inventive concept. It determined that the claimed steps—such as introducing monomeric material into a plasma chamber, igniting a glow discharge, and applying low-power pulsed plasma—were described in the prior art or were inherent in plasma deposition. It also found that the claimed chamber-size requirement did not provide an inventive concept and that the claimed power-density range was broad and included densities described in the prior art.

The court rejected P2I’s arguments that the claim described a specific inventive process, that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board had previously declined to invalidate the claims under other patent-law provisions, and that factual disputes prevented resolution at the pleading stage. The court explained that novelty and nonobviousness under Sections 102 and 103 are different inquiries from subject-matter eligibility under Section 101. It also found that P2I had not identified particular claim limitations or evidence in the patent creating a factual dispute that prevented a Section 101 ruling on a Rule 12(c) motion.

Rulings

The court concluded that Claim 1 and the dependent claims of the ’070 patent were ineligible under Section 101. It therefore granted the defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings as to Count Two of P2I’s operative Second Amended Complaint, including allegations relying on the ’070 patent.

The court terminated P2I’s motion for leave to file a further amended complaint subject to resubmission consistent with the order. It did not rule on the defendants’ other arguments concerning the proposed amendments. Instead, it directed the parties to meet and confer and required P2I’s counsel to submit a declaration describing those efforts before any renewed motion to amend. The court also granted the defendants’ administrative motion to seal portions of their brief and supporting materials, vacated remaining claim-construction deadlines and hearings, and left the defendants’ motions for attorney’s fees and costs and for sanctions set for hearing on August 28, 2025.