Email Monitoring and Tracking Patents Not Invalid Under 35 U.S.C. § 101 at Pleading Stage​

The court denied defendant's motion to dismiss on the ground that plaintiff’s email monitoring and tracking patents encompassed unpatentable subject matter because the asserted claims were not directed toward an abstract idea. "[Defendant's] abstract idea challenge is without merit as there is no credible argument that a patent on a system and methods for 'monitoring website activity' claims a longstanding commercial practice. The functionalities claimed in the patents were not imaginable before the Internet. Even after email came into use, the functionality claimed in the patents did not exist until plaintiff’s invention solved the technical problems associated with how email normally worked. . . . [T]he patents-in-suit overcame the problem of finding out whether a user opened an email or clicked on a link within the email. Those are problems confined to the Internet, and the patents provide Internet-based solutions."

InsideSales.com v. SalesLoft, 2-16-cv-00859 (UTD June 13, 2017, Order) (Kimball, SJ)