Two Recent Cases

Please join us Monday, June 22, 2026 at noon online or in Westlake Village when we will discuss two recent cases. In a patent case at the Federal Circuit, GoTV Streaming, LLC v. Netflix, Inc., No. 2024-1669 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 9, 2026)(Opinion by Judge Tarantino reversing Judge Klausner of the Central Dist of Cal.) , the court addressed Sec. 101 patentability in view of the often cited Alice case, holding claims of 3 patents invalid while reversing a jury verdict of patent infringement.  Important in this case is the analysis of claim terms that carry a “first-blush appearance of technical specificity” that upon review have broad meanings that “cannot support a conclusion that the claim is directed to a concrete computer/network advance.” (at 23)  Terms like “wireless device generic template,” “custom configuration,” “page description,” “rendering commands,” and “discrete low level rendering command” asserted to be specific data structures amounting to a concrete technical advance were found to be “packages of information of a particular content” that “do not escape the abstract-idea category” of Alice, rendering the patent claims invalid. (at 22)

In a trademark case at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB), In re Zhenhai Petrochemical Jianan Engineering Co., Ltd., Serial No. 79381020 (February 5, 2026) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge David K. Heasley), the Court confronted the argument used by a trademark examiner in rejecting a same mark used on different goods as being confusingly similar because the two different goods are sold by big box retailers, reversing the refusal.  Key was the determination that the products, even though sold at the same stores online and in the same traditional brick-and-mortar stores, appeared in different categories online and different aisles in stores.

Mark Goldstein, a partner at SoCal IP Law Group LLP, will lead the discussion.