IP Law Daily, PATENT—Fed. Cir.: Twenty-four VideoLabs claims are unpatentable, (Aug 12, 2026)

By Sherri M. Schroeder, J.D.

After Netflix filed for inter partes review of some claims in a VideoLabs’ patent application, both the PTAB and the federal court of appeals found the claims to be unpatentable in view of the Huston patent.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld the decision of the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that claims 1 – 24 of VL Collective IP, LLC’s (VideoLabs’) Patent No. 7,440,559 (the ‘559 patent) are unpatentable. The ‘559 patent is generally directed to controlling the flow of content between a content provider’s server and a user’s device. Netflix, Inc. filed a petition for inter partes review of claims 1 – 24 of the ‘559 patent. VideoLabs attempted to argue that the PTAB’s determination that U.S. Patent No. 7,243,136 (Huston) rendered the claims obvious rested on error because Huston’s response was “triggered by” the availability of new content, not content status solely provided by a terminal, as in the ‘559 patent. The court, however, found no error in the PTAB’s construction of the ‘559 patent’s terminology (VL Collective IP, LLC v. Netflix, Inc., No. 25-1132 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 10, 2026)).

Claim 1 of the ‘559 patent is representative of all 24 claims in question. The language at issue in the patent is as follows: “... wherein the processor is configured to send, to the terminal, a response to the content status that instructs the terminal to perform one or more actions to thereby control the flow of content to the terminal based upon the terminal status information at the server status information,....” In its final decision the PTAB determined that Netflix had proven each of three grounds rendered the claims unpatentable: that certain claims were anticipated by U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003,0023427 (Cassin), that claims 1 – 24 were obvious in view of a combination of Cassin and Huston, and that claims 1 – 24 were obvious in view of Huston alone.

The appeals court first dealt with VideoLab’s argument that the claimed “response to the content status” sent by the processor must be “triggered by” the terminal’s sending of “content status” information. VideoLabs argued that the PTAB’s determination that Huston rendered the claims obvious rested on error because Huston’s response was “triggered by” the availability of new content, not content status solely provided by a terminal. The court, however, did not read the claims to require that the terminal’s sending of a “content status” was the prompt or trigger that directly caused the “response.” This is because some of the claims require that the processor receive “server status information” in addition to “content status including terminal status information” and require that the processor send the “response” to the terminal “based upon” both the “terminal status information” and the “server status information.” For the court, this cut “against an understanding of ‘response to the content status’ that requires that the ‘content status’ is necessarily the ‘trigger’ that leads to the sending of a ‘response’ by the processor.”

The court also did not read the phrase “based upon” in the claims to require that the “response” be “triggered” by the content status provided by the terminal in order for the term “response” not to be rendered meaningless, as argued by VideoLab. For the court, nothing in the claims necessitated that “response” meant “more than merely a communication sent after the terminal sends content status.”

The court also found that the ‘559 patent’s specification likewise did not support limiting “response” to mean “triggered by” the content status provided by the terminal. Per the court, the specification made clear that the content flow manager can receive content status from a terminal “periodically” and can make a determination and respond to the terminal “[a]fter the content flow manager 53 has been provided with the terminal status information and the server status information.” The court also found this understanding to be consistent with the dictionary definitions VideoLab provided to the court.

Because VideoLab’s other arguments depended on its unsuccessful claim construction argument, the court did not address them. Therefore, the court affirmed the PTAB’s determination that a preponderance of the evidence established that claims 1 – 24 of the ‘559 patent were unpatentable in view of Huston.

The Case is No. 25-1132.

Judge: Schall, A.

Attorneys: Christine E. Lehman (Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg LLP) for VL Collective IP, LLC. Aliza George Carrano (Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP) for Netflix, Inc.

Companies: VL Collective IP, LLC; Netflix, Inc.

Cases: Patent FedCirNews