In 2014, TLI Communications, LLC, filed a lawsuit against a multitude of companies such as Apple, DropBox, Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Yahoo!. The lawsuit alleged the defendants had violated U.S. Patent No. 6,038,295 by selling or making products and services that enable uploading digital images from mobile devices.

The patent in question “relates generally to an apparatus for recording of a digital image, communicating the digital image from the recording device to a storage device, and to administering the digital image in the storage device.” In essence, TLI allegedly invented the idea of labeling photos in such a way that, once they were uploaded to a database, photos could easily be found based on the labels.

Defendants in this case argued that the patent protected “patent-ineligible subject matter.”

Because the Supreme Court has long held that Laws of Nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are unpatentable. The trial court agreed with the defendants that the TLI had patented an abstract idea, and therefore the patent should not have been granted. Do you think the court of appeals affirmed or reversed the trial court’s decision? Why?