Internet Based Affiliate Pooling Patent Invalid Under Alice

The court granted defendants' motion for judgment on the pleadings that plaintiff's Internet based affiliate pooling patent was invalid for lack of patentable subject matter and found the patent lacked an inventive concept. "[T]he [patent-in-suit's] claims, viewed individually and as an ordered combination, only instruct the practitioner to implement the abstract idea with routine, conventional activity on a generic computer. . . . The assigning of unique identification codes, providing access to URLs, and generating URLs describe routine, conventional activity of how computers communicate with each other via the Internet. Although more elaborate, this is akin to issuing customers at a butcher shop unique numbers which are then called, or tallied, to service the customer uniquely and independently of other customers."

Essociate, Inc. v. Clickbooth.com, LLC, 8-13-cv-01886 (CACD February 11, 2015, Order) (Selna, J.)