Please Leave a Message: Judge Hellerstein Finds Claims Directed to Missed-Call Categorization to Be Abstract
Blog NY Patent Decisions Blog

Recently, District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein (S.D.N.Y.) granted Defendant CloudTalk.io, Inc.’s (“CloudTalk”) motion to dismiss Missed Call, LLC’s (“Missed Call”) complaint, finding that the asserted patent was directed to an abstract idea and lacked an inventive concept. Missed Call, LLC v. CloudTalk.io, Inc., No. 25 Civ. 7776 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 12, 2026).

Missed Call is the assignee of U.S. Patent No. 9,531,872 (“the ’872 Patent”), which is directed to a communication device that indicates whether a missed call is urgent or non-urgent based on how the call was terminated. Id. at *1. Specifically, calls terminated by a network are categorized as urgent, and calls terminated by the caller are categorized as non-urgent. Id. Missed Call accused CloudTalk of infringing the ’872 Patent. Shortly thereafter, CloudTalk moved to dismiss the complaint on grounds that the ’872 Patent was invalid as being directed to unpatentable subject matter. Id. The Court evaluated the claims under the two-step Alice framework and agreed that the ’872 Patent was invalid. Id.

Under Alice step one, the Court held that the claims of the ’872 Patent are directed to an abstract idea. Id. at *3. The focus of the claims is to take a pre-existing, standardized network signal that already categorized the reason for call termination and label that missed call as being urgent or non-urgent. Id. The Court found that claimed process to merely gather, analyze, and display information to a user. Id. As such, it held that the claims were abstract. Id.

Under Alice step two, the Court held that the claims lacked an inventive concept and lacked any novel technique for generating or extracting the telephone data as Missed Call argued. Id. at *4. Rather, the claims involve using existing information and presenting it to the user in a new form. Id. Although Missed Call argued that the inventive concept lied in the idea of using “cause values” to determine urgency, the Court found that concept to be the abstract idea identified at step one. Id. Because “[t]he abstract idea itself cannot supply the inventive concept,” the Court held that an inventive concept was not present and granted CloudTalk’s motion to dismiss. Id. (citing Trading Techs. Int’l, Inc. v. IBG LLC, 921 F.3d 1084, 1093 (Fed. Cir. 2019)).

The case is Missed Call, LLC v. CloudTalk.io, Inc., No. 25 Civ. 7776 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 12, 2026).