Case: 19-1957 Document: 35 Page: 1 Filed: 04/08/2020
NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
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IN RE: C. DOUGLASS THOMAS,
Appellant
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2019-1957
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Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark
Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 11/960,449.
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Decided: April 8, 2020
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C. DOUGLASS THOMAS, TI Law Group, PC, San Jose,
CA, pro se.
BRIAN RACILLA, Office of the Solicitor, United States
Patent and Trademark Office, Alexandria, VA, for appellee
Andrei Iancu. Also represented by THOMAS W. KRAUSE,
AMY J. NELSON, FARHEENA YASMEEN RASHEED.
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Before DYK, SCHALL, and O’MALLEY, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
C. Douglass Thomas appeals a decision of the Patent
Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) affirming the examiner’s
rejection of all pending claims in U.S. Patent Application
No. 11/960,449 (“’449 application”) under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Case: 19-1957 Document: 35 Page: 2 Filed: 04/08/2020
2 IN RE: THOMAS
The ’449 application is titled “Method and User Interface
for Requesting and Reviewing Notifications Pertaining to
Publications.” J.A. 36. Independent claim 1 is representa-
tive of the subject matter at issue on appeal:
A computer-implemented method for notifying us-
ers having patents of subsequent publications that
reference the patents of the users, said computer-
implemented method comprising:
identifying a user patent associated with a
user;
determining whether one or more subsequent
publications reference the user patent;
producing a notification message for the user to
inform the user of the one or more subsequent
publications; and
sending the notification message to the user,
wherein said identifying, said determining,
said producing and said sending are performed
by one or more computing devices,
wherein said sending comprises transmitting
the notification message to the user as an elec-
tronic mail message,
wherein the notification message comprises an
active link to a world wide web page containing
the descriptive information about the one or
more subsequent publications, and
wherein the method further comprises:
determining whether the one or more sub-
sequent patents are associated with at
least one notifiee that is one of a plurality
of previously identified notifiees; and
Case: 19-1957 Document: 35 Page: 3 Filed: 04/08/2020
IN RE: THOMAS 3
determining a predetermined authoriza-
tion type for publication notifications for
the at least one notifiee; and
wherein said producing of the notification mes-
sage includes an indication of the authorization
type for the at least one notifiee.
J.A. 27.
Applying the two-step framework set forth in Alice
Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208 (2014), the Board
found that the claims are directed to the abstract idea of
“alerting by notification message notice of a new publica-
tion indicated as relevant to the notifiee.” J.A. 4–9. The
Board also found that the claims do not contain an in-
ventive concept beyond the abstract idea. J.A. 23–24. We
agree with the Board on both points. We therefore adopt
the Board’s reasoning in its decision and its decision deny-
ing rehearing. See J.A. 1–25.
We have considered Thomas’s arguments on the patent
eligibility of the claims but find them unpersuasive. The
decision of the Board is affirmed.
AFFIRMED
COSTS
The parties shall bear their own costs.