Oanda Loses Patent Claim

A long-running stoush in the retail FX world has come to an end with a US judge funding that StoneX had not violated patents claimed by rival Oanda, because the patented technology was not “sufficiently inventive”.

US District Judge John Tharp found that Oanda’s claim, that its patents were infringed, was unfounded because the three patents in question, relating to data and analytics, were granted at a time when technology in the FX market was still nascent and that US patent law precluded the patenting of technology that relies upon the laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas. “Since all inventions at some level embody, use, reflect, rest upon, or apply a natural law or abstract idea, [the patent law] can only confer patent eligibility upon an invention only if such a patent in practice amounts to significantly more than a monopoly over the natural law, natural phenomenon, or abstract idea itself,” the judge writes in his Decision, citing a US Supreme Court ruling. “Put most simply, it is insufficient for a patent to ‘simply state the law of nature while adding the words ‘apply it.’ The rationale is that tying up these basic tools of scientific and technological work, would inhibit future innovation premised upon them to an unacceptable degree.”

Judge Tharp also observes, “Oanda’s argument is not persuasive. The claims are not rendered sufficiently concrete by virtue of their implementation in computerised currency trading systems. To be sure, Oanda uses computers to carry out the tasks comprised by the patents-and may in fact need to use computers to incorporate the constant influx of new data efficiently/usefully-and the outputs of the innovations are used to facilitate currency transactions that take place on a digital trading platform. But to say that the patents enable online currency transactions or offer technical improvements to the computerised system is to give them too much credit.”

The judge also refused Oanda’s request to obtain Leave to Amend, bringing the case, which has been going for more than three years, to an end.