Fresh From the Bench: Latest Federal Circuit Court Cases

CASE OF THE WEEK

SRI Int’l, Inc. v. Cisco Sys., Inc., Appeal No. 2017-2223 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 20, 2019)

In a decision following trial, the Federal Circuit addressed the issue of the eligibility of patent claims directed to technology meant to improve computer security. The Court decided matters concerning willfulness and the exceptional case doctrine.

The patents relate to techniques for identifying security threats on computer networks. Many security systems track the number of attempted logins to the network from a computer. But such a technique provides little protection where a hacker or malware tries to attack multiple computers on the same network. The number of login attempts for each computer may be below the threshold to trigger an alert, making it difficult to detect such an attack by looking at only a single monitor location in the network. The patents-in-suit claim a network surveillance system to address such threats.