Tell me, O Muse, of the man who sought to water his vines by sensor and signal, who wandered far through the federal courts after setting forth from the vineyards of California. (Sorry.)
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California recently granted summary judgment under Section 101 in Vineyard Investigations v. E. & J. Gallo Winery (E.D. Cal., July 2, 2026). Let's get into it.
The Background
Vineyard Investigations is a wine industry consulting company and owns three patents covering automated vineyard irrigation systems. The asserted patents cover systems that combine local sensor data with external data (weather, evapotranspiration coefficients) to control when water and chemicals get dispensed to grapevines. The defendant is E. & J. Gallo Winery.
