Executable Software Decompiler Patent Not Invalid Under 35 U.S.C. § 101

The court denied defendant's post-trial motion for judgment on partial findings that plaintiff's executable software decompiler patent was invalid for lack of patentable subject matter and found that the claims contained an inventive concept. "The translation of binary code and storing of an intermediate representation that can be used to analyze the underlying executable software code – in other words, decompilation – is . . . sufficiently well-established that there must be some meaningful innovative concept to render it patent-eligible. [Defendant] - seizing on [the inventor's] testimony that the claimed method could be performed manually - argues that the patent does not indicate any mechanism by which the computer-implemented method improves this longstanding process rather than simply automating it. To the contrary, however, the claimed method’s focus on the generation of an optimized, exhaustive model, as these descriptors have been defined in the claim construction process, renders the claimed invention more complex than what could be done by humans and transforms the claimed invention from an abstract idea simply automated by a computer into an inventive concept. . . . If the invention merely improved the speed and accuracy of a particular task through computer implementation, that would not be enough to generate a patent-eligible concept. But the claimed method exceeds mere automation of a well-known process by harnessing and improving upon the unique properties and complex capacities of computer technology."

Veracode, Inc., et al v. Appthority, Inc., 1-12-cv-10487 (MAD September 30, 2015, Order) (Woodlock, J.)