The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has overturned a $2.5 million jury verdict against Netflix, ruling that three GoTV Streaming LLC patents tied to wireless video delivery are invalid under the Supreme Court’s Alice standard for patent eligibility.
In a precedential opinion issued Monday, the court said the patents cover abstract ideas rather than a concrete technical solution, clearing Netflix of infringement liability and ending the dispute in the company’s favor.
The case stems from a lawsuit GoTV filed in 2022 in the Central District of California. GoTV, created to license patents originally issued to software company Phunware Inc., accused Netflix of infringing technology aimed at tailoring video content to match a device’s specifications. A jury later found Netflix infringed one patent and awarded $2.5 million, far below the $35 million GoTV sought.
On appeal, Netflix argued that the patents fail under Alice v. CLS Bank, which bars patents directed only to abstract concepts without an inventive technological step. The Federal Circuit agreed.
The panel said the patents “describe nothing more than the concept of providing a set of specifications that can be modified to produce videos that fit the constraints of a user’s device.”
Judges added that “there is no specificity, in particular no specificity as to how tailoring is done, that might go beyond result-focused functional language,” concluding that “Netflix is entitled to judgment of invalidity.”
GoTV had argued the claims represented a concrete improvement in streaming technology by adapting video to screen size and hardware limits. The court rejected that position, finding the claims lacked technical detail and relied on broad functional language.
Addressing the concept behind the patents, the panel wrote that tailoring media content to a device is abstract since it “is familiar from, say, a pattern specifying many but not all details for a dress or trousers … or a kitchen-cabinet blueprint.”
The appeals court also dismissed terms GoTV cited as technical advances, stating that they “notwithstanding any first-blush appearance of technical specificity, have broad meanings that, individually and taken together, cannot support a conclusion that the claim is directed to a concrete computer/network advance.”
The ruling wiped out the damages award and rendered other disputes largely moot. Still, the panel vacated parts of the lower court’s decisions after finding GoTV’s objections carried weight. These included questions about induced infringement and whether Netflix presented improper damages evidence. The court declined to resolve those issues directly but said the arguments were “sufficiently substantial” to justify vacatur.
The Federal Circuit did side with GoTV on one point, reversing the district court’s earlier finding that one patent claim was indefinite. The panel said “there is ample basis in the specification for a relevant artisan to arrive at reasonable certainty about the claim phrase’s meaning.” That determination did not change the final outcome, since all three patents were deemed ineligible.
A Netflix representative declined comment. Counsel for GoTV did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The case is GoTV Streaming LLC v. Netflix Inc., No. 24-1669, before the Federal Circuit. The patents at issue are U.S. Patent Nos. 8,478,245; 8,989,715; and 8,103,865, each related to rendering content on wireless devices.
