Aviation Capital Partners, LLC, Dba Specialized Tax Recovery v. Sh Advisors, LLC, Dba Situs Hawk

N OTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
AVIATION CAPITAL PARTNERS, LLC, DBA
SPECIALIZED TAX RECOVERY,
Plaintiff-Appellant
v.
SH ADVISORS, LLC, DBA SITUS HAWK,
Defendant-Appellee
______________________
2024-1099
______________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
District of Delaware in No. 1:22-cv-01556-RGA, Judge
Richard G. Andrews.
______________________
Decided: May 6, 2025
______________________
JOSHUA FRIEDMAN, Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP,
Cleveland, OH, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also repre-
sented by TODD ROBERTS TUCKER.
JAKE M. G IPSON, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP,
Birmingham, AL, argued for defendant-appellee. Also rep-
resented by PAUL M. SYKES, BENN WILSON.
______________________
Case: 24-1099 Document: 44 Page: 1 Filed: 05/06/2025

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AVIATION CAPITAL PARTNERS, LLC v. SH ADVISORS, LLC 2
Before M OORE, Chief Judge, PROST and HUGHES, Circuit
Judges.
P ROST, Circuit Judge.
Aviation Capital Partners, doing business as Special-
ized Tax Recovery (“STR”), sued SH Advisors, doing busi-
ness as Situs Hawk, in the U.S. District Court for the
District of Delaware for infringement of U.S. Patent
No. 10,956,988 (“the ’988 patent”). The district court held
the asserted claims of the ’988 patent invalid under
35 U.S.C. § 101 and, as a result, granted Situs Hawk’s Fed-
eral Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss.
Aviation Cap. Partners, LLC v. SH Advisors, LLC, No. 22-
1556, 2023 WL 5333187 (D. Del. Aug. 18, 2023) (“Opin-
ion”). STR appeals. We affirm.
BACKGROUND
I
The ’988 patent is titled “System and Method for De-
termining a Taxability Status for a Vehicular Asset.” ’988
patent Title. The parties agree that claim 1 of the ’988 pa-
tent is representative for purposes of the § 101 eligibility
analysis in this case. See Appellant’s Br. 8–9; Appellee’s
Br. 6–7. Claim 1 recites:
A computer-implemented method, comprising:
obtaining traffic control system information for an
aircraft from a first database, the traffic control
system information indicative of departures and
arrivals of the aircraft at a plurality of airports;
detecting a gap in the traffic control system infor-
mation for the aircraft, the gap being indicative of
a time for which a location of the aircraft is inde-
terminate based upon the traffic control system in-
formation, wherein the gap is detected based on a
mismatch in the traffic control system information
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AVIATION CAPITAL PARTNERS, LLC v. SH ADVISORS, LLC 3
between a departure location of the aircraft and a
previous arrival location of the aircraft;
receiving transponder data from a transponder
that is mounted on board the aircraft by way of a
transceiver positioned in proximity to an airport,
the transponder data indicative of at least one of an
altitude or a speed of the aircraft;
determining, based upon the at least one of the al-
titude or the speed of the aircraft indicated in the
transponder data, that the aircraft landed at the
airport during the time for which the location of the
aircraft was indeterminate; and
computing, by a computer, a taxability status of the
aircraft based upon the aircraft being present at
the airport during the time for which the location
of the aircraft was indeterminate.
’988 patent claim 1.
II
In November 2022, STR sued Situs Hawk in the U.S.
District Court for the District of Delaware for patent in-
fringement, asserting claims 1, 13, and 15 of the ’988 pa-
tent. Situs Hawk moved to dismiss STR’s complaint under
Rule 12(b)(6), arguing that the asserted claims are invalid
under § 101. STR opposed, and the district court held oral
argument on the motion. The district court indicated dur-
ing oral argument that the asserted claims are directed to
an abstract idea. Opinion, 2023 WL 5333187, at *4. In its
written opinion, the district court evaluated the eligibility
of the asserted claims under the two-step framework set
forth in Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Interna-
tional, 573 U.S. 208 (2014) and held the asserted claims
invalid under § 101. Opinion, 2023 WL 5333187, at *3–5.
At Alice step one, the district court concluded that the
asserted claims of the ’988 patent are directed to an
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AVIATION CAPITAL PARTNERS, LLC v. SH ADVISORS, LLC 4
abstract idea of “collecting aircraft-related data from mul-
tiple sources and using an algorithm to improve . . . what
can be gleaned from the data, and then referring to yet an-
other database about taxation to determine the taxability
status.” Id. at *4. The court determined that the abstract
idea is akin to that in Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom
S.A., 830 F.3d 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2016). Opinion, 2023 WL
5333187, at *4. The court determined that even if the as-
serted claims are directed to determining taxability status
as STR argued, that is also an abstract idea. Id. The court
noted that determining a taxability status “is simply a mat-
ter of referring to various tax codes, and using a computer
to make this easier does not make it less abstract.” Id.
At Alice step two, the district court considered whether
the asserted claims of the ’988 patent contain an inventive
concept sufficient to transform the claimed abstract idea
into a patent-eligible application. Id. at *5. The court
found no such inventive concept. Rather, the court deter-
mined that the asserted claims “do not ‘require anything
other than off-the-shelf conventional . . . technology.’” Id.
(quoting Elec. Power Grp., 830 F.3d at 1355). The court
noted that the specific step that STR pointed to of “deter-
mining that an aircraft landed at an airport based on speed
or altitude data during a time when the location of the air-
craft is indeterminate” does not constitute an inventive
concept and “is simply an application of common sense and
physics.” Id. The court determined that the asserted
claims “offer no new insights or improvements for imple-
menting their abstract idea,” and instead, seem merely to
state the abstract idea “while adding the words ‘apply it.’”
Id. (quoting Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus
Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66, 72 (2012)).
The district court thus concluded that the asserted
claims of the ’988 patent are invalid under § 101. It accord-
ingly granted Situs Hawk’s Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss
for failure to state a claim. Id.
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AVIATION CAPITAL PARTNERS, LLC v. SH ADVISORS, LLC 5
STR timely appealed. We have jurisdiction under
28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).
D ISCUSSION
We review a district court’s grant of a Rule 12(b)(6) mo-
tion to dismiss for failure to state a claim under the re-
gional circuit’s law. E.g., Endo Pharms. Inc. v. Teva
Pharms. USA, Inc., 919 F.3d 1347, 1352 (Fed. Cir. 2019).
The Third Circuit reviews such decisions de novo. See, e.g.,
Ballentine v. United States, 486 F.3d 806, 808 (3d Cir.
2007). To survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, a complaint must
allege “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausi-
ble on its face.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544,
570 (2007).
Patent eligibility under § 101 is a question of law that
may involve underlying questions of fact. Interval Licens-
ing LLC v. AOL, Inc., 896 F.3d 1335, 1342 (Fed. Cir. 2018).
“We review the district court’s ultimate conclusion on pa-
tent eligibility de novo.” Id.
To evaluate patent eligibility under § 101, we apply the
familiar Alice two-step framework. At step one, we deter-
mine whether the claim at issue is “directed to” an abstract
idea. See Alice, 573 U.S. at 218. Under this directed-to
inquiry, “we ask what the patent asserts to be the focus of
the claimed advance over the prior art to determine
whether the claim’s character as a whole is directed to in-
eligible subject matter.” Simio, LLC v. FlexSim Software
Prods., Inc., 983 F.3d 1353, 1359 (Fed. Cir. 2020) (cleaned
up). If the claim is directed to an abstract idea at step one,
we move to step two, “where we examine the elements of
the claim to determine whether it contains an inventive
concept sufficient to transform the claimed abstract idea
into a patent-eligible application.” Id. (cleaned up). If the
claim does not contain such an inventive concept at step
two, it is ineligible for patenting.
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AVIATION CAPITAL PARTNERS, LLC v. SH ADVISORS, LLC 6
STR argues that the asserted claims are patent-eligible
under § 101. Appellant’s Br. 25. We disagree. We see no
error in the district court’s conclusion that the asserted
claims of the ’988 patent are invalid under § 101.
Regarding step one, the district court’s reasoning that
the claims are directed to an abstract idea accords with our
precedent. The asserted claims’ focus of collecting and an-
alyzing information, as illustrated by representative claim
1, is similar to claims that we have held are directed to an
abstract idea. See, e.g., In re Killian, 45 F.4th 1373, 1379
(Fed. Cir. 2022) (“[C]laims must fail Alice/Mayo step one
as they are directed to collection of information, compre-
hending the meaning of that collected information, and in-
dication of the results, all on a generic computer network
operating in its normal, expected manner.”); Elec. Power
Grp., 830 F.3d at 1355 (“[M]erely selecting information, by
content or source, for collection, analysis, and display does
nothing significant to differentiate a process from ordinary
mental processes, whose implicit exclusion from § 101 un-
dergirds the information-based category of abstract
ideas.”). We thus agree with the district court’s step-one
conclusion that the asserted claims are directed to an ab-
stract idea.
Regarding step two, we agree with the district court
that the asserted claims “offer no new insights or improve-
ments for implementing their abstract idea.” Opinion,
2023 WL 5333187, at *5. As the district court noted, “‘de-
termining that an aircraft landed at an airport based on
speed or altitude data during a time when the location of
the aircraft is indeterminate’ . . . does not constitute an in-
ventive concept.” Id. The asserted claims merely “auto-
mate or otherwise make efficient traditional . . . methods.”
PersonalWeb Techs. LLC v. Google LLC, 8 F.4th 1310, 1319
(Fed. Cir. 2021) (quoting OIP Techs., Inc. v. Amazon.com,
Inc., 788 F.3d 1359, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2015)). That fails step
two. See, e.g., id.; OIP Techs., Inc., 788 F.3d at 1363
(“[R]elying on a computer to perform routine tasks more
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AVIATION CAPITAL PARTNERS, LLC v. SH ADVISORS, LLC 7
quickly or more accurately is insufficient to render a claim
patent eligible.”).
STR’s arguments that the asserted claims are eligible
under § 101 lack merit. Specifically, STR argues that the
asserted claims are not directed to an abstract idea because
they are narrow and specific, and “create no risk of preemp-
tion of any abstract idea.” Appellant’s Br. 25. STR con-
tends that the asserted claims provide a specific way of
finding and filling data gaps in aircraft control data “by us-
ing aircraft transponder speed and altitude to determine
aircraft landing locations during a gap.” Id. at 29. We dis-
agree with STR. “[W]hile preemption may signal patent
ineligible subject matter, the absence of complete preemp-
tion does not demonstrate patent eligibility.” FairWarning
IP, LLC v. Iatric Sys., Inc., 839 F.3d 1089, 1098 (Fed. Cir.
2016) (quoting Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. v. Sequenom, Inc.,
788 F.3d 1371, 1379 (Fed. Cir. 2015)).
Accordingly, we agree with the district court that the
asserted claims of the ’988 are invalid under § 101.
STR additionally argues that, in deciding the motion to
dismiss, the district court was required to assume as true
the Patent Office’s “factual finding that the claims were in-
tegrated into a practical application and contained signifi-
cantly more than an abstract idea.” Appellant’s Br. 23–25.
We disagree. “[F]or the purposes of a motion to dismiss we
must take all of the factual allegations in the complaint as
true . . . .” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (em-
phasis added). Here, the complaint included no factual
findings made by the Patent Office. J.A. 16–32; Oral Arg.
at 4:38–5:45 (complaint alleged the Patent Office made two
legal determinations but alleged no factual findings).1 Ac-
cordingly, the district court did not err by declining to
1 Available at https://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/
default.aspx?fl=24-1099_04092025.mp3.
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AVIATION CAPITAL PARTNERS, LLC v. SH ADVISORS, LLC 8
accept as true any unalleged factual findings that the Pa-
tent Office may have made in its § 101 eligibility analysis.
CONCLUSION
We have considered STR’s remaining arguments and
find them unpersuasive. For the foregoing reasons, we af-
firm.
AFFIRMED
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