As I was reading through Judge Andrews' opinion in Election Systems & Software, LLC v. Smartmatic USA Corporation, C.A. No. 18-1259-RGA (D. Del. Feb. 28 , 2025)—a fairly standard opinion denying a motion for attorney's fees—I noticed an interesting callout:
It is within my discretion to find a case exceptional on the grounds of a plaintiff's meritless section 101 argument so as to "deter similarly weak arguments in the future."On the rare (and I believe only) occasion that I have done so, however, the patent asserted was obviously unpatentable. See Finnavations LLC v. Payoneer, Inc., 2019 WL 1236358, at *l (D. Del. Mar. 18, 2019) ("I have rarely been more confident in the patent ineligibility of a set of claims or more confident in the unreasonableness of a Plaintiffs decision to sue on a patent."). The issue was raised on a motion to dismiss, and my memory is that the first time I looked at the patent, within a matter of minutes I was sure that it was unpatentable.
Id. at 6-7 (internal citations mostly omitted).
This intrigued me enough to find the relevant claims that were so patently (Ha!) unpatentable, which I now present for your reading pleasure:
In finding this claim ineligible pursuant to 101, Judge Andrews noted that it could be reduced to:
- Making a purchase;
- Using an assistant to search data;
- The assistant analyzing whether the data relates to a transaction; and
- The assistant collecting transaction data from searched data and storing it in a different location along with other data.
Finnavations LLC v. Payoneer, Inc., C.A. No. 18-444-RGA, D.I. 22 (D. Del. Nov. 26, 2018).
So there you go, in a storied career spanning I can't imagine how many patents, this may have been the worst.
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