No More Bites At The Apple To Satisfy Section 101

Ginegar LLC sued Slack Technologies, Inc. for infringing its patents involving instant messaging systems. Judge William H. Orrick previously dismissed Ginegar's claims for failure to satisfy Section 101 with leave to amend. Despite Ginegar's second bite at the complaint-drafting apple, Judge Orrick held that the claim at issue still fails to satisfy 35 U.S.C. §101 under the Mayo/Alice test. Judge Orrick thus dismissed Ginegar's infringement claim under Rule 12(b)(6) without leave to amend and entered judgment against Ginegar.

Abstract Idea. The claim at issue is directed to a system that allows participants in an instant messaging session to exchange both audio and text messages, and then logs a unified transcript of those messages. The court found that the claim recites an abstract idea of "combining different message types in a single transcript." Although Ginegar identified a purported improvement to instant messaging technology, i.e., "automatically creating a