Grecia v. The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation
- Valerie Caproni
- 1:19-cv-02810
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Grecia v. Bank of New York Mellon, Judge Caproni denied Grecia’s motions to reconsider dismissals involving his patent claim.
William Grecia and the defendants in the five related cases: Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, Citibank, N.A., Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC, TIAA, FSB doing business as TIAA Bank, and Samsung Electronics America, Inc.
What happened
In Grecia v. Bank of New York Mellon Corporation and four related cases, the court had previously granted the defendants’ materially identical motions to dismiss. William Grecia then asked the court to reconsider those decisions.
Grecia argued that a recent Federal Circuit decision changed the controlling law, that the court made an important claim-construction mistake, and that the court’s analogy involving access to a military base was erroneous. The court rejected each argument, explaining that the Federal Circuit decision concerned natural phenomena rather than the abstract idea at issue in Grecia’s claim, that the claim-construction mistake was immaterial, and that the analogy was illustrative rather than a basis for the decision.
Judge Valerie Caproni denied the motions for reconsideration and directed the Clerk of Court to close all open motions in the related cases. The court stated that it would issue an amended opinion correcting the claim-construction mistake and revising an overbroad statement about the patent claim, but those corrections did not change the ruling.
The detailed version
- Grecia v. The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation · No. 1:19-cv-02810
- Valerie Caproni
- Apr. 24, 2020
Background
The order concerns five related cases brought by William Grecia against Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, Citibank, N.A., Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC, TIAA, FSB doing business as TIAA Bank, and Samsung Electronics America, Inc. The opinion states that, on March 13, 2020, the court granted the defendants’ materially identical motions to dismiss. On March 27, 2020, Grecia filed a motion for reconsideration in each case.
A motion for reconsideration asks the court to revisit an earlier ruling. The court explained that such relief is available only when the moving party identifies an intervening change in controlling law, new evidence, or a clear error requiring correction or the prevention of a serious injustice. The court also described the standard as strict.
Arguments and analysis
Grecia argued that the Federal Circuit’s decision in Illumina, Inc. v. Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. created an intervening change in controlling law. The court disagreed. It said that Illumina was, at most, potentially persuasive authority and did not change controlling law. The court also found the decision not particularly persuasive because Illumina addressed whether patent claims were directed to a natural phenomenon, while Grecia’s claim addressed an abstract idea involving interoperable digital access. The court stated that Grecia’s method did not exploit a natural discovery or transform a natural phenomenon into something new.
Grecia also argued that the court had mistakenly used the construction of “verified web service” when discussing “verified web service account identifier.” The court acknowledged that the substitution appeared in a footnote, but found the error immaterial. The court said the relevant point was that the claim included a web service used to authenticate a user’s or device’s identity. It further stated that the correct definition of “verified web service” had been used elsewhere in the opinion to analyze the claimed method. The court said it would issue an amended opinion correcting the error and revising a statement that Claim 1 covered any means of storing information about access permission and user identity. The court explained that the claim covered only computer-based means of storing that information, but concluded that Grecia’s argument did not show clear error in the decision.
Finally, Grecia challenged the court’s analogy involving an authorized-access process at a military base and submitted evidence concerning a procedure used for soldiers reporting to Fort Bliss. The court held that the analogy was a non-dispositive illustration, not clear error, and said that Grecia had misread it. The court also stated that his remaining arguments merely repeated arguments made in opposition to the original dismissal motions, which the court had found meritless.
Ruling
Judge Valerie Caproni denied Grecia’s motions for reconsideration. The order does not state that the earlier dismissals were vacated or changed. It directs the Clerk of Court to close all open motions in the above-captioned cases. The court also ordered that an amended opinion would correct the identified claim-construction error and revise the overbroad statement about Claim 1.
Disposition
The motions for reconsideration were denied. The order separately directed the Clerk of Court to close all open motions.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.