Benjamin Wang of Russ August & Kabat Benjamin Wang of Russ August & Kabat

Patents on user interfaces have been a frequent casualty of the U.S. Supreme Court's Alice patent eligibility ruling. But on Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found one it liked.

A three-judge panel ruled that Core Wireless S.a.r.l.'s application summary window was sufficiently specific and limited to pass muster. LG Electronics had argued that Core Wireless was claiming the abstract idea of an index, but Judge Kimberly Moore shot that down. ”These limitations disclose a specific manner of displaying a limited set of information to the user, rather than using conventional user interface methods to display a generic index on a computer,” Moore wrote in Core Wireless v. LG Electronics.

The court also backed Judge Rodney Gilstrap's claim construction and jury findings of infringement and validity. The case now returns to the Eastern District of Texas for a damages trial.

Russ August & Kabat partner Benjamin Wang argued the appeal for Core Wireless, which is a subsidiary of Canadian IP holding company Conversant Intellectual Property Management. Sidley Austin partner Carter Phillips argued for LG.


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The idea behind the 8,713,476 patent was originally developed in 2000 for Symbian Ltd., a joint project of Nokia, Ericsson and other big wireless players. The patented UI lets users access “a snapshot” of their applications' key data and functionality at the top level of the device, without having to click through a series of drop-down menus, according to Core Wireless. LG's infringing product is the notification panel that users can pull down from the phone's status bar to directly access voicemails, texts, sound levels and the like.

In Alice v. CLS Bank, the Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that using generic computer technology to implement fundamental economic concepts or organizing principles does not make them patentable. That's taken a toll on a broad range of software, including user interfaces. In Intellectual Ventures v. Capital One, for example, the Federal Circuit invalidated a patent on an “interactive interface,” saying that customizing information and presenting it to users based on particular characteristics is an unpatentable abstract idea.

Core Wireless is the second Section 101 decision this month in which the Federal Circuit has sided with patent owners. It seems to build on the small handful of other decisions over the last two years that have upheld patent eligibility for computer-implemented technology. “Like the improved systems claimed in Enfish, Thales, Visual Memory, and Finjan, these claims recite a specific improvement over prior systems, resulting in an improved user interface for electronic devices,” Moore wrote.

Judges Kathleen O'Malley and Evan Wallach concurred. Wallach wrote separately to take issue with one of the claim constructions.

Kayvan Noroozi of Noroozi PC, who helped brief Core Wireless' appeal, said the '476 patent is a computer-specific solution to a computer-specific problem—accessing apps without having to scroll down through never-ending drop-down menus.

Noroozi said he was pleased the Federal Circuit declined LG's invitation to define the invention at a high level of abstraction. “Increasingly we're seeing the Federal Circuit criticize that approach,” he said.