Two-Way Media Ltd. v. Comcast Cable Communications, LLC, Case No. 2016-2531, 2016-2532 (Fed Cir. November 1, 2017):

In Two-Way Media Ltd. v. Comcast Cable Communications, the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court determination that Two-Way Media's patents were directed to patent ineligible abstract ideas under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

The patents-in-suit, U.S. Patent Nos. 5,778,187, 5,983,005, 5,434,622, and 7,266,686, relate to an IP multicasting system for streaming audio/visual data over the internet (e.g., internet-based conferencing service, radio-like broadcasts, etc.).  The patents describe the invention as an improved scalable architecture for delivering real-time information.

The claims at issue include, inter alia, "converting" a plurality of streams of audio and/or visual information into a plurality of streams of addressed digital packets, "routing" such stream to one or more users, "controlling" the routing of the stream of packets in response to selection signals, and "monitoring" the reception of packets by the users and "accumulating" records that indicate which streams of packets were received by which users.

Under the Alice step one analysis, Two-Way Media asserted that the claims are directed to computer architecture that solves the technical problems of load, bottlenecking, and inadequate records.

The Federal Circuit held that the claims are directed to abstract ideas because the claims require the functional results of "converting," "routing," "controlling," "monitoring," and "accumulating records, without sufficiently describing how to achieve these results in a non-abstract way.

Under the Alice step two analysis, Two-Way Media argued that the claims solve various technical problems, including excessive loads on a source server, network congestion, unwelcome variations in delivery times, scalability of networks, and lack of precise recordkeeping.

The Federal Circuit noted that the specification may describe an innovative "scalable architecture," but the architecture was not claimed.  The Federal Circuit held that there was no inventive concept in the claims that because the claims only use generic functional language to achieve the solutions asserted by Two-Way Media, and also because the claims use a conventional ordering of steps – first processing the data, then routing it, controlling it, and monitoring its reception – with conventional technology to achieve its desired result.