The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed a victory for social media site Twitter.In a decision handed down on May 12, the court affirmed a ruling that five messaging patents owned by New York-based EasyWeb Innovations were invalid.EasyWeb had sued Twitter back in 2011, alleging infringement of US patent numbers 7,032,030; 7,596,606; 7,685,247; 7,689,658; and 7,698,372. At the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Twitter moved for summary judgment of non-infringement and ineligibility under 35 USC, section 101. The court granted the motion, finding that the patents were directed towards ineligible subject matter, or in the alternative that Twitter did not infringe any of them. EasyWeb appealed. Applying the Alice v CLS Bank test, the appeals court found that claim 1 of the patent was directed to an abstract idea and that the claim doesn’t contain an inventive concept sufficient to transform the nature of the claim into a patent-eligible application. The Federal Circuit affirmed the lower court’s decision.

Source: WIPR