On July 8, 2014, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York issued an opinion in DietGoal Innovations LLC v. Bravo Media LLC, granting Bravo Media's (Bravo) motion for summary judgment finding that DietGoal's patent claiming computerized methods and systems for diet-related meal planning was patent-ineligible and invalid under Section 101 of the Patent Act, 35 U.S.C. § 101 (No. 13 Civ. 8391 (PAE) (S.D.N.Y July 8, 2014)).

DietGoal Innovations LLC (DietGoal) is a non-practicing entity and the exclusive licensee of US Patent No. 6,585,516 (the '516 patent), which claims methods and systems for computerized visual behavior analysis, training and planning for the purpose of modifying diet behavior. Specifically, the '516 patent claims a method that features a user interface, meal database, food database, picture menus and a meal builder where users can create customized meal plans to assist in meeting dieting goals. When DietGoal filed this patent infringement action against Bravo in 2012, Bravo's website included a section where users could create a computerized meal plan using recipes also available on Bravo's website. After the suit was transferred to the SDNY from the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the SDNY permitted Bravo to file two separate summary judgment motions on the following grounds:

Because the court agreed the '516 patent was invalid under Section 101, it did not reach Bravo's motion for summary judgment of non-infringement.

After reviewing the history of the Supreme Court's Section 101 jurisprudence, the court applied the two-step analysis set forth in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. (Mayo) and Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International (CLS Bank) to determine whether DietGoal's patent covered a patent-ineligible concept or a patent-eligible application of the concept (132 S. Ct. 1289 (2012) and No. 13-298, (S. Ct. June 19, 2014)).

First, the court determined that the claims of the '516 patent were directed to an impermissible abstract idea or mental concept. The court reasoned that a process for computerized meal planning that allows a user to create meals from a database of food objects, change those meals by adding or subtracting food objects, and view the dietary impact of changes to those meals on a visual display was nothing more than the abstract concept of selecting meals for the day according to one's dietary goals and food preferences. Although the '516 patent claims a computerized method of selecting meals that align with the user's preferences or dietary goals, a person can perform these tasks without the aid of any particular method or technology. Furthermore, the court noted that because a human could perform the claimed meal planning method using a pen and paper, it is an abstract idea that is not patent-eligible under Section 101.

Second, the court considered whether the claims contained an inventive concept that transformed the abstract idea into a patent-eligible application of the idea. Although DietGoal argued that the computer-implemented steps of the '516 patent rendered its claims patentable, the court noted that CLS Bank foreclosed this argument. In particular, the court noted that CLS Bank plainly rejects DietGoal's claims that the '516 patent's methods are patent-eligible simply because each step requires computer implementation (see at *11). Instead, the court looked to Mayo, which required that there be some additional feature that provides practical assurance that the process is more than an effort designed to monopolize the abstract idea itself.

In considering the steps of the '516 patent, the court concluded that:

The court also found that the system claims of the '516 patent were functionally identical to the method claims and must be treated as equivalent for the Section 101 analysis. In particular, the court noted that the system claims added nothing of substance to the underlying abstract idea of meal planning, but instead merely described generic computer components that can be found on any general-purpose computer. Accordingly, the system claims are also patent-ineligible under Section 101.

Lastly, the court rejected DietGoal's claim that the court needed to perform claim construction before it could decide the patent-eligible subject matter question. Although claim construction may be helpful in resolving a Section 101 motion, the court noted that it is not required in every case and that claim construction was unnecessary here because the patent claims were straightforward and claim construction was not needed to understand their content.

This decision may provide useful guidance for an accused infringer attempting to invalidate a patent directed to a computer-implemented abstract idea on summary judgment under 35 U.S.C. § 101 in view of Mayo and CLS Bank.