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Federal Circuit Again Addresses Patent-Eligibility Of Internet-Centric Claims

BY Clyde Shuman
December 31, 2014

On Dec. 5, 2014, a divided Federal Circuit panel held that claims directed to systems and methods of generating a composite Web page combining certain visual elements of a “host” website with content of a third-party merchant were “necessarily rooted in computer technology in order to overcome a problem specifically arising in the realm of computer networks,” and, therefore, were patent-eligible under 35 U.S.C. '101. DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P., Docket No. 13-1505. However, the court cautioned that not all claims addressing Internet-centric challenges are patent-eligible. Further, Judge Mayer, dissenting, argued that the claims “simply describe an abstract concept ' that an online merchant's sales can be increased if two web pages have the same 'look and feel' ' and apply that concept using a generic computer.” Accordingly, the patent-eligibility of Internet-centric claims remains unsettled.

Technology At Issue

Prior art systems allow third-party merchants to “lure the [host website's] visitor traffic away” from the host website because visitors would be taken to the third-party website when they clicked on an advertisement on the host site. The patents-in-suit provided the following solution: On activating a hyperlink on a host website ' e.g. , an advertisement for a third-party merchant ' instead of taking the visitor to the merchant's website, the system generates and directs the visitor to a composite Web page displaying product information from the merchant, but retaining the host website's “look and feel.” This allows the host website to display a third-party's products, but retains its visitor traffic by displaying this product information from within a generated Web page that “gives the viewer of the page the impression that she is viewing pages served by the host” website.

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