Lawyers at Foley & Lardner secured a victory for Kickstarter Inc. on Tuesday, convincing a Manhattan federal judge that a rival company’s crowd-funding patent covered an abstract idea that’s not eligible for protection under Section 101 of the Patent Act.

Ruling against ArtistShare Inc. and subsidiary Fan Funded LLC, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla invalidated ArtistShare’s patent on a method for financing and marketing creative projects. The judge granted summary judgment in favor of Kickstarter, the popular online crowd-funding platform that’s helped raise $1.8 billion for a wide variety of user projects since its 2009 launch.

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