Patent claims relating to a virus-protection software to filter e-mail and electronic files are merely generic computer functions and not covered by a patent-eligible concept, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled. In affirming a decision of the federal district court in Seattle, Washington to dismiss the patent infringement case brought by Glasswall Solutions Limited against Clearswift Ltd., the Federal Circuit held that the patent claims are an abstract idea and merely require the conventional manipulation of information by a computer. Additionally, the appeals court held that the claims merely recite steps that do not amount to anything more than an instruction to apply the abstract idea of filtering nonconforming data and regenerating a file without it (Glasswall Solutions Ltd. v. Clearswift Ltd., December 20, 2018, Linn, R.).
Case date: 20 December 2018
Case number: No. 2018-1407
Court: United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit
A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
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