The Federal Circuit has partially upheld a ruling that four location history patents asserted by inventor Sholem Weisner against Alphabet (Google) are invalid under Alice. On October 13, a majority of the court issued a precedential decision essentially affirming the Southern District of New York’s holding that two of the patents are unpatentably directed to the abstract idea of “creating a digital travel log”. However, the majority reversed the lower court’s invalidation of the other two patents, concluding that those two detail, via the specifications and the claims, taken together with plausible factual allegations in an amended complaint, an improved search ranking method with enough specificity to save the claims. That reversal prompted a dissent from Circuit Judge Todd M. Hughes, who argued that the latter two patents should have also been invalidated.