Uber Secures Dismissal with Prejudice in Patent Litigation

Palo Alto – June 18, 2024 – Cooley won a motion to dismiss with prejudice on behalf of client Uber Technologies (Uber) in Enovsys LLC v. Uber Technologies, Inc. before the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The Cooley team representing Uber was led by Heidi Keefe, Reuben Chen, Adam Pivovar and Alexandra Leeper, with support from Liz Stameshkin, Angela Madrigal, HanByul Chang and Linda Vu.

In September 2023, Enovsys, which previously won cases against other large companies, filed suit against Uber in the Northern District of California, alleging infringement of three geolocation patents.

In a detailed order issued this week, US District Judge Edward J. Davila granted Uber’s motion to dismiss under Section 101 of the patent statute. Uber argued that the patents, while claiming physical computing elements, were essentially directed to something as abstract as collecting location information, analyzing it and presenting results. The technology could be analogized to “(1) a detective tracking a witness and suspect, (2) an emergency-dispatcher tracking emergency vehicles in a specific location, and (3) the children’s ‘Marco Polo’ game.”

The court agreed that the claims were directed to an abstract idea and did not claim an improvement in technology, acknowledging that, “Even children playing Marco Polo efficiently manage location information within a specified geographic zone.” The court granted Uber’s motion without leave for the plaintiff to amend.

Read the opinion

The case is Enovsys LLC v. Uber Technologies, Inc. (case no.: 5:23-cv-04549-EJD).

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