Even After Enfish, Alice Still Casts A Shadow At The PTAB

When it comes to Enfish, the PTAB may have just indicated that it prefers to cut bait. In Informatica Corp. v. Protegrity Corp., CBM2015-0021 (May 31, 2016), the PTAB held that U.S. Patent No 6,321,201 was void under Alice despite the Federal Circuit's recent holding in Enfish v. Microsoft.

Although the Informatica patent, like that at issue in Enfish, pertained to databases¹, the PTAB held that the '201 database patent hewed too closely to "normal functions and ... expected results" and thus was an abstract idea under part one of the Alice test. The patent was held to lack sufficient non-routine subject matter to take it out of the realm of pure abstraction and thus was invalidated under Alice step two. Addressing the '201 patent's subject matter eligibility, the PTAB held that the patent's independent claims were directed to "the abstract idea of determining whether access to data should be granted based on whether one or more rules are satisfied" and that its