Patent Eligibility of Online Application Software after Internet Patents Corp. v. Active Network, Inc

This article analyzes a Federal Circuit decision from 2015, Internet Patents Corp. v. Active Network, Inc., 790 F.3d 1343 (Fed. Cir. 2015), holding that the claims for a method, computer system, or computer-readable storage medium, for providing an intelligent user interface to an online application were patent-ineligible. Internet Patents may indicate that the possibility of patenting online application software or programming is closed. Reciting a computer or software mechanism in a claim may not be helpful because the computer or mechanism elements may merely implement general functions of a computer, which cannot add any inventive concept into the claim