Federal Circuit supports DraftKings, FanDuel, and others in GPS patent lawsuit case
Three-person judging panel agreed that Beteiro’s patent claim amounted to no more than an “abstract idea”, finding no wrongdoing on the operators’ part
The Federal Circuit judging panel has supported a ruling which saw several operators attain victory in a patent infringement lawsuit against Beteiro.
The likes of DraftKings, PointsBet, BetMGM, FanDuel, and Kindred Group were originally involved in a patent dispute with Beteiro regarding the use of GPS technology in sports betting.
Hillside New Jersey, better known as bet365, and fellow FanDuel arm TSG Interactive were also named as part of the lawsuit.
Beteiro argued that its GPS tech, first patented in 2002, had been used by the operators in question to build their respective sportsbook platforms.
Across 2021 and 2022, Beterio filed at least six cases in the District of New Jersey that maintained patent infringements on behalf of the operators.
US district judge Christine P O’Hearn ruled in favor of the operators, claiming that the technology in question only covers the abstract idea of “exchanging information concerning a bet and allowing or disallowing the bet based on where the user is located.”
The three-judge Federal Circuit panel agreed with O’Hearn’s ruling, citing Section 101 of the Patent Act 1952 which states that an abstract idea can only be patented if there is an extra inventive concept included.
A statement from the Federal Circuit panel read: “In the end, Beteiro’s claims amount to nothing more than the practice of an abstract idea using conventional (even as of 2002) computer equipment, including GPS on a mobile phone.
“Such claims are not eligible for patent undercurrent Section 101 jurisprudence.”
The panel argued that the patent filed only mentions the use of GPS for conventional means and that there is no suggestion the technology could be used for other equipment.
The panel’s opinion continued: “The claims before us today exhibit several features that are well-settled indicators of abstractness.
“First, the claims broadly recite generic steps of a kind we have frequently held are abstract: detecting information, generating and transmitting a notification based on the information, receiving a message (bet request), determining (whether the bet is allowed based on location data), and processing information (allowing or disallowing the bet).”
Beterio does hold four separate patents relating to the “apparatus and method for facilitating gaming activity and/or gambling activity.”
The panel concluded: “Beteiro’s complaint attempts to raise a factual dispute as to whether use of GPS in connection with gaming was anything other than conventional, routine, and well-understood at the priority date of the patent, but it fails to do so.
“Beteiro focuses our attention on, for instance, the complaint’s allegations that, as of the 2002 priority date, ‘the use of geolocation and global positioning as an integral data point in the processing of mobile wagers was still many years away;’ the ‘sufficient[ly] sensitiv[e]’ GL20000 GPS Chip – as well as the iPhone and App Store – had not yet been introduced; and ‘the current industry leader in the space – GeoComply – did not even exist until 2011.’”