RDPA, LLC v. Geopath, Inc.

Background

RDPA alleged that it owned five related patents concerning the use of satellite-positioning and other location-tracking data to measure people’s exposure to public or outdoor advertising. The patents described collecting information about respondents’ paths of travel, matching that information with advertising-display locations, and analyzing the data to determine exposure, reach, frequency, effectiveness, and, in some claims, demographic information.

RDPA alleged that Geopath made, used, sold, offered for sale, or imported the Geopath Insights Suite. According to the complaint, the platform used mobile-location data, connected-car data, and global-positioning-system sources to analyze movement and activity patterns and to measure audiences for outdoor advertising. RDPA alleged that the platform infringed claims in all five patents.

Geopath moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which permits dismissal when a complaint does not state a legally sufficient claim. Geopath argued that the asserted patent claims were not eligible for patent protection under Section 101 of the Patent Act because they claimed an abstract idea. Geopath alternatively argued that RDPA had not adequately alleged direct infringement.

Patent-Eligibility Analysis

The court applied the two-step framework from Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank for deciding whether claims directed to an abstract idea nevertheless contain a patentable application. At the first step, the court asks what the claims are directed to. At the second step, it asks whether the claims include an “inventive concept”—features that add significantly more than the abstract idea itself.

The court concluded that the five patents were substantially similar enough that one analysis could apply to all of them. At the first step, it held that the claims were directed to the abstract idea of collecting and analyzing data to evaluate the effectiveness of outdoor advertising. The court recognized that the patents used GPS technology and addressed a specific advertising-measurement problem, but it concluded that the claims did not improve GPS, location tracking, or computer technology. Instead, they applied existing technologies to a new use for the collected data.

At the second step, the court held that the claims did not contain an inventive concept. The patents did not describe new techniques for storing, generating, downloading, or analyzing data, or improvements to existing technologies. The use of GPS to determine location, and the use of computers to download, compare, and analyze data, were routine functions of those technologies. The court also rejected RDPA’s arguments that the combination of claim limitations, the use of a particular machine, or the use of GPS was enough to make the claims patentable.

The court declined to require additional factual development about whether the claimed activities were well understood, routine, and conventional. It concluded that the claims were ineligible because they were directed to an abstract idea and lacked an inventive concept, so further factual development was unnecessary.

Direct Infringement

Because it dismissed the case based on patent-ineligibility under Section 101, the court did not decide whether RDPA adequately alleged that Geopath directly infringed the asserted patents.

Disposition

Judge Lewis J. Liman granted Geopath’s motion to dismiss. The order directed the Clerk of Court to close the motion, two other docket entries, and the case. The opinion did not state that the dismissal was with or without prejudice.