FourKites wins court victory over competitor MacroPoint

FourKites, a provider of freight tracking technology, won a victory in court recently when a federal judge rejected a patent lawsuit filed by MacroPoint, a competitor of FourKites.

In the lawsuit filed earlier this year, MacroPoint charged FourKites with infringing on several of its patents. FourKites’ position was that it didn’t infringe on any valid claim of patents, and further, the claims of the patents themselves were invalid “because, among other reasons, the subject-matter of the patents was known prior to the filing date of the patents, and the patents were not directed to patent eligible subject-matter.”

A U.S. District Court in Cleveland, Ohio, agreed with this position, stating “Although the patents-in-suit do not entirely foreclose all tracking of freight, the steps in the claimed invention do involve ‘well-understood, routine, conventional activity,’” and dismissed the lawsuit.