IP Law Daily, PATENT—Fed. Cir.: PTAB ruling on patentability of online learning technology overturned by Federal Circuit, (Jun 1, 2026)

By Steven Melendez

The court reversed a Board ruling that an IPR petitioner hadn’t proven an e-learning patent’s claims unpatentable based on obviousness.

The Federal Circuit court, in a nonprecedential decision, reversed a ruling by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) on OpenSesame, Inc’s patent claiming an “Open and Interactive E-Learning System and Method,” where the Board had found inter partes review (IPR) petitioner Go1 Pty, Ltd. failed to prove by preponderance of the evidence that the challenged claims were unpatentable. The matter was remanded to the PTAB for further proceedings (Go1 Pty, Ltd. v. OpenSesame, Inc., No. 24-1762 (Fed. Cir. May 28, 2026)).

Background. OpenSesame is the owner of U.S. Patent No. 8,784,113, which “relates to on-line learning systems in which content is readily publishable by a teacher and is readily accessible by a student via platform-independent means relates to on-line learning systems in which content is readily publishable by a teacher and is readily accessible by a student via platform-independent means.”

The patent describes a system for corporate learning where content from various authors is centrally stored and where training managers can pay specific authors and subscribe to their content, which licensed users would then get the ability to access. The specification includes a “licensing/reporting server 14 [that] provides authorization and licensing services,” comparing user and license information to data in a “license store” and providing a “location designator” such as a “uniform resource locator (URL)” to allow the user to play the content if licensed to do so.

Parties agreed that Claim 1 of the patent is representative, and it describes steps where the system first verifies a license’s validity, then “configures coded instructions ‘to cause the licensing/reporting server to provide to the proxy a location designator for accessing the content player,’” according to the ruling.

Go1 had filed an IPR petition challenging claims 1 through 16 of the patent, relying on the combination of two pieces of prior art: U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0111180 A1 (“Sperle”) and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0015703 A1 (“Madison”). Sperle deals with “delivery methods for remote learning system courses” including reporting functionality to let managers keep track of learners’ use. Madison is entitled “System and Method for Controlling Access to Digital Content, Including Streaming Media.” Madison provides a series of steps where a “redirector file” is sent to a user’s media player before access verification, the media player requests digital content, and a server then determines whether to grant access.

Go1 argued a skilled artisan would have “integrated Madison’s web server with authorization software and media server with similar authorization software into the reporting module [214] of Sperle, obtaining a licensing/reporting server as” in claim 1 of the patent at issue.

Arguments on obviousness. In a Patent Owner Response, OpenSesame argued the combination would not match the patent limitation “upon verifying the validity of the license” because in the combination, verification happens after generating the redirector file, not before, as in Madison. But Go1, citing its expert Dr. Kevin Almeroth, argued a skilled artisan would not need Madison to provide that detail and would see the variation as “insubstantially different, if different at all” and that the swapping of the steps was a design choice that would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art.

The PTAB found that Go1 did not meet its burden since Madison did not “disclose the proper sequence” of the steps, calling Almeroth’s testimony “unsupported” and “conclusory,” saying he didn’t “persuasively show” why a skilled artisan would have done the steps differently. On appeal, Go1 challenged that finding.

The Federal Circuit panel found that Almeroth did testify that there was “no clear significance” to the order of the steps, and that OpenSesame presented nothing in the record to challenge that view. The “absence of a separate reference expressly teaching the claimed sequencing does not, by itself, render the testimony conclusory,” the court found, noting that “Dr. Almeroth’s testimony is not conclusory as it relied on the judgment and creativity of the skilled artisan, on which he is qualified to opine.”

The court found the PTAB finding that the testimony was conclusory to be “unsupported by substantial evidence,” vacating and remanding the Board’s decision.

The Case is No. 24-1762.

Judge: Stoll, K.

Attorneys: Robert Manhas (Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP) for Go1 Pty, Ltd. Willmore F. Holbrow, III (Buchalter LLP) for OpenSesame, Inc.

Companies: Go1 Pty, Ltd.; OpenSesame, Inc.

Cases: Patent FedCirNews