Multimedia Network System Patent Invalid Under 35 U.S.C. § 101​

The court granted defendant's motion to dismiss because the asserted claims of plaintiff’s multimedia network system patent encompassed unpatentable subject matter and found that the claims lacked an inventive concept. "Considered individually, each step in the [patent] is well-understood, routine, and conventional. For instance, it is nothing new for servers and clients to send requests to each other. Similarly, it is not inventive to require authentications to access content. Nor is it any more inventive to incorporate asymmetric/public-key encryption into an authentication system. . . . The only possible 'non-conventional and non-generic arrangement' in the [patent] is the combination of asymmetric encryption with content licenses. But combining those two concepts is not new. Indeed, the [patent] references two earlier patents that both consider combining asymmetric encryption with licenses to enforce usage restrictions."

Digital Media Technologies, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 4-16-cv-00244 (FLND July 3, 2017, Order) (Walker, USDJ)