Relying on a computer to perform otherwise routine tasks more quickly or more accurately is insufficient to render a claim patent eligible even when speed and accuracy is advantageous. Here, for example, a method of dynamic price optimization in an e-commerce environment was found to be patent ineligible because it merely represented an automation of conventional demand-curve calculations, even though this made price setting more efficient. “These processes are well-understood, routine, conventional data-gathering activities that do not make the claims patent eligible.” It may therefore be best to avoid claiming only well-understood, routine, and conventional manipulations of abstract and particularly economic ideas.
Background / Facts: The patent being asserted here is directed to a method of price optimization in an e-commerce environment. The claims recite “sending a first set of electronic messages over a network to devices,” the devices being “programmed to communicate,” storing test results in a “machine-readable medium,” and “using a computerized system … to automatically determine” an estimated outcome and set a price.
Issue(s): Whether the claimed computer-implemented price optimization is patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Holding(s): No. “At best, the claims describe the automation of the fundamental economic concept of offer-based price optimization through the use of generic-computer functions. Both the prosecution history and the specification emphasize that the key distinguishing feature of the claims is the ability to automate or otherwise make more efficient traditional price-optimization methods. … [T]he claims’ recitation of ‘present[ing] [offers] to potential customers’ and ‘gathering … statistics generated during said testing about how the potential customers responded to the offers’ [do not] provide a meaningful limitation on the abstract idea. These processes are well-understood, routine, conventional data-gathering activities that do not make the claims patent eligible. [] Like the claims in Mayo, which added only the routine steps of administering medication and measuring metabolite levels for the purposes of determining optimal dosage, here the addition of steps to test prices and collect data based on customer reactions does not add any meaningful limitations to the abstract idea.”