The magistrate judge recommended granting defendant's motion to dismiss plaintiffs' infringement claims for failure to state a claim because their genotype screening patent-in-suit contained unpatentable subject matter. "Plaintiffs claims are directed to the discovery of a natural law -- that is, that individuals with a particular genetic variation are better sprinters than those without it. . . . [T]he link between a particular genetic variation and the potential for elite athletic performance embodied in Claim 1 is 'a natural process, an eternal truth that 'exists in principle apart from any human action.'' The correlation is the handiwork of nature-man did not do anything to bring about this relationship. . . . [T]he 'analyzing' step is insufficient to make the claim patent eligible. It merely tells the users of the method to analyze a sample obtained from a person for the presence of genetic variations in the ACTN3 gene, without further specification as to how the sample should be analyzed. The claim clearly does not recite a new, innovative method for such analyzation, which could be one way to effect a different outcome here."
Genetic Technologies Limited v. Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings et al, 1-12-cv-01736 (DED September 3, 2014, Order) (Burke, M.J.)
The court granted defendant's motion to dismiss plaintiff's infringement claim for failure to state a claim because the upselling method patent-in-suit lacked patentable subject matter. "[I]t is clear that the [patent-in-suit] is drawn to unpatentable subject matter. It claims the fundamental concept of upselling -- a marketing technique as old as the field itself. While the additional limitations of the claim do narrow its scope, they are insufficient to save it from invalidity. . . . Shrewd sales representatives have long made their living off of this basic practice. . . . A human being can generate an upsell recommendation 'during the course of the user initiated communication,' although perhaps not with the efficiency or speed of a computer. The computer performs nothing more than purely conventional steps that are well-understood, routine, and previously known to the industry."
Tuxis Technologies LLC v. Amazon.com Inc., 1-13-cv-01771 (DED September 3, 2014, Order) (Andrews, J.)
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