Delivery Notification Patent Ineligible Under 35 U.S.C. § 101​

The court denied plaintiff's motion to reconsider an earlier order granting defendant's motion for judgment on the pleadings that plaintiff’s delivery notification system patent encompassed unpatentable subject matter. "[Plaintiff] argues that the Court engaged in impermissible hindsight bias 'by viewing the [patent] in light of the ubiquity of wireless messaging technology today,' instead of determining whether the limitations in the patent were well understood, routine, or conventional in the art in 1996, when the patent was filed. . . . [Plaintiff] misreads and mischaracterizes the Court’s holding that [plaintiff] has 'patented a method of delivery notification that is the equivalent of a method implemented ‘through a computer’ or ‘over the internet.’'. . . . The Court is permitted to take note of 'fundamental economic concepts and technological developments' when making a § 101 determination, observes that sending wireless page messages was well-known in 1996. . . . The patent sets forth steps by which conventional technologies (wireless paging systems) do conventional things (relay data and send messages through, in essence, a communications center) to achieve an abstract aim: notifying a customer if and when their package has been delivered."

Mobile Telecommunications Technologies, LLC v. United Parcel Service, Inc., 1-12-cv-03222 (GAND October 21, 2016, Order) (Totenberg, USDJ)