IP Law Daily, PATENT—M.D.N.C.: Individual innovators’ fabric-marking patents succumb to Spoonflower’s invalidity challenges, (Sep 29, 2025)

By Ravindra Kumar Singh, B.L.

Court ruled that patent claims were directed to the abstract idea of marking fabrics and lacked any inventive concept beyond automation with generic machines.

A federal district court in North Carolina granted Spoonflower, Inc. and Shutterfly LLC’s motion to dismiss an infringement lawsuit filed by fabric-marking innovators. The court found that the asserted patents on fabric “procedure maps” claimed ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101, describing nothing more than the abstract idea of marking fabrics to identify characteristics, with no inventive concept to transform the claims into patentable subject matter (Tedesco v. Spoonflower, Inc., No. 1:23-cv-01030-DAF-JEP (M.D.N.C. Sept. 26, 2025)).

Background. Sharon and Marc Tedesco are inventors who sought to improve accuracy in measuring, marking, and cutting fabrics for garments, draperies, linens, and upholstery. Spoonflower is a custom fabric printing company, and its parent, Shutterfly, is an online design retailer.

The Tedescos’ U.S. Patent No. 7,310,885 (the ’885 patent), titled Fabric Having a Procedure Map, and its continuation, U.S. Patent No. 7,409,769 (the ’769 patent), claimed fabrics bearing machine-made “procedure maps” indicating straight-of-grain, nap or lay direction, and repeat patterns. The plaintiffs asserted claim 24 of the ’885 patent and claims 6, 9, 14, and 20 of the ’769 patent, which collectively covered fabrics with such markings applied by machine.

In this lawsuit, the Tedescos alleged that Spoonflower’s printed fabrics infringed the asserted patents. Spoonflower moved to dismiss under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), contending that the patents merely automated longstanding manual fabric marking practices.

Representative claims. The court held that representative claim analysis was appropriate where claims are “substantially similar and linked to the same” ineligible concept, citing Mobile Acuity Ltd. v. Blippar Ltd., 110 F.4th 1280, 1290 (Fed. Cir. 2024) and Berkheimer v. HP Inc., 881 F.3d 1360, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2018). The court found that the complaint itself highlighted claim 24 of the ’885 patent and claims 6, 9, 14, and 20 of the ’769 patent as illustrative, and the plaintiffs failed to articulate non-frivolous distinctions in other claims. It rejected the plaintiffs’ attempt to rely on discovery to identify “hidden processes,” noting that patent complaints must place defendants on notice of the accused infringement (Lifetime Indus., Inc. v. Trim-Lok, Inc., 869 F.3d 1372, 1379 (Fed. Cir. 2017)).

Eligibility analysis. The court undertook its patent eligibility analysis by applying the two-step framework articulated in Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, 573 U.S. 208 (2014). This analysis first required the court to determine whether the claims at issue were directed to an abstract idea. If so, the second step called for examining whether the claims contained an “inventive concept” sufficient to transform the abstract idea into a patent-eligible application.

Abstract idea. At the first step of the Alice framework, the court held that the patents were directed to the abstract idea of marking fabric to identify characteristics. It noted that humans had long performed this process manually, agreeing with defendants that the claimed invention merely automated the traditional practice. The court cited Internet Patents Corp. v. Active Network, Inc., 790 F.3d 1343, 1346 (Fed. Cir. 2015) for the principle that courts must ascertain the “basic character” of claims, and referenced precedents invalidating patents that computerized manual tasks, including Credit Acceptance Corp. v. Westlake Servs., 859 F.3d 1044, 1055 (Fed. Cir. 2017) and In re Brown, 645 F. App’x 1014, 1016–17 (Fed. Cir. 2016).

Inventive concept. At the second step, the court determined that the patents lacked an "inventive concept." Merely applying the abstract idea with a generic machine did not suffice, as outlined in Ultramercial, Inc. v. Hulu, LLC, 772 F.3d 709, 715 (Fed. Cir. 2014). The patents did not specify any unique machinery or process for producing the markings, instead effectively instructing to “apply it” with generic technology. Further, the court noted that improved efficiency alone cannot render claims patentable, citing Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Capital One Bank, 792 F.3d 1363, 1367 (Fed. Cir. 2015). The court warned of preemption risks when claims “abstractly cover results” without teaching how to achieve them, referencing Contour IP Holding LLC v. GoPro, Inc., 113 F.4th 1373, 1379 (Fed. Cir. 2024).

Conclusion. The court observed that patents are frequently invalidated at the motion-to-dismiss stage under § 101, citing Trinity Info Media, LLC v. Covalent, Inc., 72 F.4th 1355, 1360–61 (Fed. Cir. 2023). Patentees must propose specific claim constructions or factual disputes to forestall early dismissal, but the Tedescos offered only a generalized call for discovery. The opinion also referenced statistics showing that between 2014 and 2017, 60% of district court rulings at the pleading stage found patents invalid under § 101 (Wanker v. United States, 146 Fed. Cl. 582, 595 (Fed. Cir. 2020)). Finally, the court dismissed the lawsuit, citing the invalidity of the asserted patents.

The Case is No. 1:23-cv-01030-DAF-JEP.

Judge: Faber, D.

Attorneys: Susan Freya Olive (Olive & Olive, P.A.) for Sharon Tedesco. Michelle Christine Prendergast (Nexsen Pruet, PLLC) for Spoonflower, Inc., and Shutterfly LLC.

Companies: Shutterfly, LLC; Spoonflower, Inc.

Cases: Patent TechnologyInternet NorthCarolinaNews