GOTV STREAMING, LLC v. NETFLIX, INC.
Authored by: Jeremy J. Gustrowsky
The Federal Circuit handed Netflix a complete victory in a patent dispute involving technology for delivering video content to mobile devices. GoTV Streaming owned three related patents describing methods where a server receives a content request from a wireless device, figures out what kind of screen and capabilities that device has, and then sends back content specifications tailored to fit. The idea was to solve the problem of software developers having to build separate applications “from the ground up” for each type of phone or tablet on the market.
The district court had originally sided with GoTV, finding that the patents described a specific technical improvement rather than an abstract idea. A jury even awarded GoTV $2.5 million after finding Netflix infringed one of the patents. But the Federal Circuit disagreed with the lower court’s patent eligibility analysis and reversed. The appeals court concluded that the claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 8,478,245, 8,989,715, and 8,103,865 were directed to nothing more than the abstract concept of using a template that can be adjusted to fit a user’s specific constraints.
The court drew an analogy to familiar practices outside the digital world: a dress pattern that specifies most details but leaves room to adjust for a particular person’s measurements, or a kitchen cabinet blueprint that can be tailored to actual wall dimensions. The judges noted that customizing information based on what is known about a user has long been recognized as an abstract concept. Simply performing that same abstract task faster using ordinary computer functions does not make it patent-eligible.
GoTV tried to argue that its claims required specific “data structures” and a particular “architecture,” but the court found these terms unpersuasive. Phrases like “wireless device generic template,” “custom configuration,” and “page description” all simply describe packages of information with particular content—they do not specify any improvement to how computers actually process, store, or transmit data. The court emphasized that technical-sounding language does not automatically mean a claim covers something concrete rather than abstract.
Because the claims failed at both steps of the Alice eligibility test, the Federal Circuit ordered judgment entered for Netflix, wiping out GoTV’s jury verdict entirely. The court did note that GoTV raised substantial arguments on other issues—including whether Netflix could be liable for inducing others to infringe and whether certain damages evidence was improperly admitted—but those questions became irrelevant once the patents were found invalid.