This case involved a family of patents that went through USPTO without 101 issues.  The Examiner was experienced and had comparable allowance rates to the Examiner’s art unit.

The technology regarded using GPS in smartphones to confirm whether a user’s current location is within or not some area where sports gambling is legal, and if so, then allowing the user to make sports bets over the network.

However, the patents were invalidated as the claim features were considered equivalent to what could be done in the human mind – the human mind can review data about location to tell if the location is within some area.  And any involved technology was seen as just used in its generic, expected way. 

That is, GPS was not considered improved.  And the smartphone was not considered improved.  Nothing about the GPS was considered new.  And nothing about the smartphone was considered new.  Both were considered to have been used in their generic sense as tools – but not either as improved tools.

And even if the combination of the GPS and the smartphone together was understood as an improvement to sports gambling, using a GPS to tell where a smartphone is as a proxy of where the user is would not found to have been an unexpected use of or improvement to either technology.  And so, the patents were invalidated as not patent eligible under the abstract idea judicial exceptions to 35 USC 101.

Further, this case concluded on an appeal of the patents invalidation, as a 12(b)(6) motion for failure to state a claim as the patents, even after USPTO examination, were not found indicative of 35 USC 101 patent eligibility.

So, if trying to find a technological hook (e.g., a new use of GPS), then the courts may look to how the spec describes that use. (e.g., just getting a phone's GPS, like any other app might, may not be enough).