Law360, New York ( December 9, 2014, 9:03 PM EST) -- The post-Alice patent world has been filled with uncertainty and understandable fears regarding the patent-eligibility of software patent claims. The Alice[1] and Ultramercial[2] decisions stand for the premise that claims are patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 if they are directed to an abstract idea and do not contain an inventive concept — a test that many argue has far reach and dooms software patents. The newly issued decision in DDR Holdings LLC. v. Hotels.com[3] gives some hope that e-commerce software claims can indeed be patent-eligible if the "claimed solution is necessarily rooted in computer technology in order to overcome a problem specifically arising in the realm of computer networks."  What does this mean? We will first look at the case itself, and then discuss possible implications....