Fresh From the Bench: Latest Precedential Patent Case

CASE OF THE WEEK

Netflix, Inc. v. DivX, LLC, Appeal Nos. 2022-1203, -1204 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 25, 2023)

In its only precedential patent opinion this week, the Federal Circuit issued a cautionary note to petitioners in inter partes reviews.  Specifically, the Court affirmed a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board that ruled a patent not invalid based on arguments as the Board understood them.  Netflix asserted the Board had misunderstood the arguments.  The Federal Circuit, however, found that the Board made no errors in understanding the Petition as framed, and thus found against Netflix.

The patents in this case concerned methods for adaptive bitrate streaming of content on playback devices (mobile phones or computers).  The details of the patents are beyond what is necessary to understand the import of the Board’s decision.  For present purposes, one of the claims at issue recited a “filtering” step, which involves filtering a list of assets (media streams), followed by a “generating” step, wherein a top-level index file is generated.  Netflix argued in its petition that the “filtering” limitation was satisfied by a piece of prior art’s (“Pyle’s”) reference to a pre-existing manifest, and that the “generating” step was satisfied by Pyle’s reference to a new manifest.

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Editors:

Nika Aldrich, IP Litigation Group Leader, Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt, P.C.

Jason A. Wrubleski, Shareholder