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Here’s What Happened:
Beteiro LLC owns four patents that share a common specification and title “Apparatus and Method for Facilitating Gaming Activity and/or Gambling Activity.” Each of the patents facilitated remote gambling activity. The patent examiner determined that the software had the needed specific machine or processor, namely a GPS system, to be patented.
Beteiro filed six lawsuits against the defendants, Draftkings, Inc., PointsBet USA, Inc., BetMGM, LLC, Hillside New Jersey LLC, BetFair Interactive US LLC, and Kindred Group plc (“DraftKing Defendants”). The Draftkings Defendants brought motions to dismiss arguing that Beteiro’s claims were unpatentable. The trial court granted the motions.
Beteiro appealed to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.
On appeal, the Court held that each of the claims in the patent were well settled indicators of abstractness:
First, the claims broadly recite generic steps that courts have held are abstract, namely, they detect information and message the information for processing.
Second, the claims were drafted using largely result-focused function language.
Third, as the Court has held many times before, methods of providing particularized information to individuals based on their locations is an abstract idea that isn’t patentable.
Fourth, the methods described in the claims have been existing fundamentals to practices.
Then the Court turned to whether there was an inventive concept to the claims. The answer was no. The machine or processor that the patent examiner identified was, in reality, a routine and conventional GPS system that tracked the location of the user. There was no additional machine component to make Beteiro’s invention work.
The Court affirmed the dismissal of all six complaints against the DraftKing Defendants.
WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS: Software patents have to be more than how something is done. There has to be an inventive component to it which often means some sort of hardware technology that is new, useful and wasn’t obvious. If the software doesn’t have that extra element, it isn’t patentable.
Cited Authority: Beteiro, LLC v. DraftKings Inc., 104 F.4th 1350, 1354 (Fed. Cir. 2024)