On August 3, 2020, Judge Alan Albright of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas granted defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings that plaintiff was barred from asserting infringement by defendants’ smartphone applications.  Lighthouse Consulting Group, LLC v. BB&T Corp., No. 6-19-CV-00594-ADA.
 

On September 28, 2018, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued an opinion reversing a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in which the District Court had sanctioned plaintiff’s counsel with an award of attorneys’ fees pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1927.  Gust, Inc. v. AlphaCap Ventures, LLC, —F.3d— (Fed. Cir. September 28, 2018).  Applying an “exacting” abuse-of-discretion standard, the CAFC ruled that the District Court erred in finding plaintiff’s lawyers to have litigated in bad faith, and therefore reversed the award of attorneys’ fees.

On November 27, 2017, the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota ordered summary judgment of patent eligibility in Soultran, Inc. v. U.S. Bancorp, No. 13-cv-2637.  The claimed invention was directed to a method of check processing comprising (i) receiving check data from a point-of-sale terminal, (ii) crediting the merchant’s account, (iii) receiving the physical check and scanning it, and (iv) comparing the resulting image to the check data.  The Court ruled this invention to be patent-eligible pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 101, as a matter of law.

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