Patent for Providing and Using Feedback Based on Data Gathered From Subjects Invalid Under 35 U.S.C. § 101​

The court granted defendant's motion for judgment on the pleadings because the asserted claims of plaintiff’s patent for providing and using feedback based on data gathered from subjects encompassed unpatentable subject matter and found that the claims were directed to an abstract idea. "[T]he Asserted Claims recite the abstract idea of providing and using feedback based on data gathered from subjects. . . . [H]umans have received and assessed information and thereafter provided feedback to one or more people from time immemorial. The aggregation of information and the use of information to provide advice to people is a practice that has long existed. . . . Information gathering from particular sources through the use of sensors, absent uniqueness of a sensor, does not change the nature of the information gathering. . . . [T]he [patent] does not disclose any unique sensor or require any special hardware or programming. . . . [T]he Asserted Claims are directed to the abstract idea of providing and using feedback based upon data gathered from subjects. Controlling precedent establishes that the idea of collecting and analyzing information or data, even when particularly limited, is an abstract idea under Section 101."

Icon Health & Fitness v. Polar Electro Oy, 1-11-cv-00167 (UTD March 10, 2017, Order) (Jenkins, SJ)