The Federal Circuit has reversed a Delaware judge’s invalidation of a memory patent asserted by IP Valuation Partners LLC affiliate Visual Memory LLC against NVIDIA. In May 2016, District Judge Richard G. Andrews granted the defendant’s Rule 12 motion to dismiss, accepting its argument that the patent-in-suit is invalid under Alice as directed to the abstract idea of “categorical data storage” without the addition of an inventive concept (1:15-cv-00789). However, in an opinion issued on August 15, the Federal Circuit overturned that decision, holding that the patent is directed to “an improvement to computer memory systems” and not to an abstract idea (2016-2254).

Visual Memory LLC launched a campaign with four suits, against Broadcom, Freescale Semiconductor, Marvell Semiconductor, and STMicroelectronics. One patent related to digital random access memory (DRAM) devices is asserted in each suit (5,654,932), and a second patent related to flash memory is asserted only against Marvell and STMicro (6,026,027). Microprocessor and flash memory products made and sold by the defendants are accused of infringing the patents-in-suit.