Patent for Securing a Server by Filtering Unauthorized Communications Not Ineligible at Pleading Stage ​

The court denied defendant's motion to dismiss on the ground that plaintiff’s patent for securing a server by filtering unauthorized communications encompassed unpatentable subject matter because defendant did not establish that the asserted claims lacked an inventive concept. "[T]he [patent’s] claims describe 'how its particular arrangement of elements is a technical improvement over prior art ways of filtering such content.'. . . Despite the protection that firewalls and routers provide against low level protocols, service provider networks remain susceptible to unauthorized communications from specific application protocols. To remedy this, the [patent] implements a filter between the client and server that identifies and eliminates unauthorized requests. The [patent] tracks authorized or unauthorized requests by maintaining a protocol database 'which may be continuously updated on an ongoing, real-time basis and which more accurately reflects the set of allowable actions.'. . . When combining Claims 1, 15, 25, and 26, along with the related dependent claims, and construing these in favor of [plaintiff] as required at this stage in the litigation, the Court finds that the [patent] 'recite[s] a specific, discrete implementation of the abstract idea of filtering content.'"

F5 Networks, Inc. v. Radware, Inc., 2-16-cv-00480 (WAWD November 14, 2016, Order) (Jones, USDJ)