The case is Inventor Holdings, LLC v. Bed Bath & Beyond, Inc., released this past Friday (opinion by Judge Chen, joined by Judges Wallach and Stoll). In a nonprecedential opinion last year, the Federal Circuit affirmed a judgment that the patent in suit (which "relates to a method of purchasing goods at a local point-of-sale system from a remote seller" (p.2)) was invalid under section 101, and now it affirms the district court's conclusion on remand that the plaintiff should have to pay attorneys' fees, including fees incurred on appeal, stating that "the district court acted within the scope of its discretion in finding this case to be exceptional based on the weakness of IH’s § 101 arguments and the need to deter similarly weak arguments in the future. . . . There were obvious issues with the ’582 patent’s claims that IH should have recognized post-Alice, and these issues persisted throughout the § 101 appeal. The district court was in a position to readily assess these issues as a collective whole and did not abuse its discretion in awarding BBB its appellate attorney fees" (pp. 9, 14).
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