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ARTICLE · 21 MARCH 2016

Abstract Idea Where There Is No "Concrete" Or "Tangible" Application

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The seminal State Street Bank case held a claim to be patent eligible where it yielded a "useful, concrete, and tangible result."

United StatesIntellectual Property
Patrick Muffo
Patrick Muffo
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The seminal State Street Bank case held a claim to be patent eligible where it yielded a "useful, concrete, and tangible result." State Street Bank was explicitly overruled by the Supreme Court's Bilski opinion, but the general guidance appears to be alive and well. For example, the District of Delaware recently borrowed from several post- Alice Federal Circuit cases and found an invention was directed to an abstract idea where the invention "lacks a concrete or tangible form."

The invention in Kaavo, Inc. v. Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., Inc., 14-1192-LPS-CJB (D. Del. Feb. 5, 2016) relates to a cloud computing system with multiple tiers. The tiers can include, for example, a load balancer or a server cluster. The specific claims recite a method of managing this cloud computing system.

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