Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC

Background

Wildseed Mobile LLC asserted five patent-infringement claims against Google LLC and YouTube LLC. The defendants moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c), which allows judgment based on the pleadings when the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law, seeking judgment on Claims II, III, and IV. The motion concerned U.S. Patent Nos. 9,141,960, 10,251,021, and 10,959,040.

The patents concerned using information available on a user’s portable media device, including media genres and the user’s location, to recommend nearby venues or events. The court treated Claim 1 of the ’960 patent as representative because the claims were substantially similar and linked to the same alleged abstract idea. The parties agreed that claim construction was not needed to decide the motion.

Patent-eligibility analysis

The court applied the two-step framework from Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. At the first step, it identified the claims’ focus as providing tailored event and venue recommendations based on information about the user’s media preferences and location. The court held that this was an abstract idea, comparing it to the longstanding practice of tailoring advertisements or other information based on a person’s location or context.

The court rejected Wildseed’s argument that the patents were directed to a functional improvement in portable media players. It found that the mobile devices served as computers performing a task that people had previously performed without computers. The court also distinguished cases involving specific technological improvements, concluding that Wildseed’s patents did not claim a comparable improvement to computer functionality.

At the second step, the court considered whether the claims contained an inventive concept—an element or combination that transformed the abstract idea into a patent-eligible application. It found that the claims covered every technical way of tailoring recommendations based on the user’s location and preferences. The examples in the patent specifications did not narrow the claims sufficiently. The court also found that the claimed sequence—collecting information, analyzing it, and communicating the result—used a conventional order of steps and conventional technology.

Disposition

The court held that the ’960, ’021, and ’040 patents were invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because they were directed to an abstract idea and lacked an inventive concept sufficient to make them patentable. Judge William H. Orrick granted defendants’ motion for partial judgment on the pleadings and dismissed Claims II, III, and IV of the First Amended Complaint with prejudice. The opinion does not state the disposition of Wildseed’s other two patent-infringement claims.