A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Wednesday questioned Realtime Tracker Inc’s request to overturn a decision that its software innovations for tracking billable hours were not patentable.
“Can you do the same kind of tracking with pen, paper and stopwatch?” U.S. Circuit Judge Tiffany Cunningham asked a Realtime attorney during oral argument.
Realtime sued Lexis in New York federal court in 2021 over its patent on a system two New York lawyers developed for automatically tracking billable time on a computer. It accused Lexis of infringing the patent with its Juris Suite Timer software.
Reuters News’ parent company, Thomson Reuters, is a competitor of LexisNexis.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer sided with Lexis and dismissed the case last year, ruling that Realtime’s patent was invalid because it covered an abstract idea that was ineligible for patents.
“Whether with a spring or a computer, people have been doing such timekeeping for centuries for the benefit of the client or the customer,” Engelmayer said.
Realtime asked the Federal Circuit to reconsider the ruling, arguing in a court brief that the technology “improved the operation of computers and the data processing system with a new software invention.”
Federal Circuit judges echoed Engelmayer’s skepticism during oral arguments Wednesday.
“Doesn’t the claims essentially advertise the practice of tracking billable hours with a generic computer?” Circuit Judge Alan Lourie said during the argument.
The case is Realtime Tracker Inc v. Relx Inc d/b/a LexisNexis, US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, No. 23-1756.
For real time: Robert Goethals of Leichtman Law
For Lexis: Oleg Khariton of Dinsmore & Shohl
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Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington
Our Standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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