On November 16, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) reversed a decision in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington that found a patent related to computer software license verification and owned by HTC America, Inc. ineligible for patent protection under Title 35 of the U.S Code.
The patent infringement dispute between plaintiff Ancora Technologies, Inc. and defendant HTC America, Inc. began in December 2016. On appeal, CAFC considered the claim according to the standard set forth by the Alice/Mayo framework and found that the claim was directed to a non-abstract “improvement in computer functionality.”