Uniloc USA, Inc. filed the complaint against Rackspace in June 2012 in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint alleged that the processing of floating point numbers by the Linux operating system violated U.S. Patent 5,892,697. Rackspace and Red Hat immediately moved to dismiss the case prior to filing an answer. In dismissing the case, Chief Judge Leonard Davis found that Uniloc’s claim was unpatentable under Supreme Court case law that prohibits the patenting of mathematical algorithms. This is the first reported instance in which the Eastern District of Texas has granted an early motion to dismiss finding a patent invalid because it claimed unpatentable subject matter. In the ruling released today, Judge Davis wrote that the asserted claim “is a mathematical formula that is unpatentable under Section 101.”

via Rackspace, Red Hat Win Decisive Patent Victory (NYSE:RHT).