Federal Circuit Cuts the Connection on Web Conferencing Patent Claims at the Motion to Dismiss Stage

On January 22, 2026, the Federal Circuit issued a precedential opinion authored by Chief Judge Moore in US Pat. No. 7,679,637 LLC v. Google LLC, No. 24-1520, 2026 LEXIS 92121 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 22, 2026) affirming the District Court’s dismissal of patent infringement claims on the ground that the patent at issue was directed to an abstract idea and therefore patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101.¹ While case law continues to evolve on § 101 patent eligibility, the Court’s message here was plain: patentees should explain how the claimed result of their invention is achieved, not merely state the outcome.²

At issue in this case is U.S. Patent No. 7,679,637 (the “’637 patent”) entitled “Time-Shifted Web Conferencing,” which relates to web conferencing system that enables participants to view presentations asynchronously—meaning participants can go back and view parts of a presentation while another aspect of the presentation is proceeding live.³ More than ten years after the ’637 patent was issued, the owner of the ’637 patent alleged that Google’s YouTube Service directly infringed several claims of the ’637 patent.⁴ In response, Google moved to dismiss the infringement claims under Rule 12(b)(6) arguing that the ‘637 claims are not directed to patent-eligible subject matter required by 35 U.S.C. § 101.⁵ The District Court agreed, granting Google’s motion with prejudice, meaning plaintiff was unable to further amend its complaint to try and demonstrate eligibility.⁶

The Court acknowledged that patent eligibility is a question of law that may involve underlying factual issues and therefore can be a threshold issue in infringement cases.⁷ To assess patent eligibility, the Court applied the two-part test articulated by the Supreme Court in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l.⁸ This two-step test involves (i) determining “whether the claims are directed to a patent-ineligible concept” and then if so, (ii) considering the claims both individually and as a combination to see if they “transforms the nature of the claim into a patent eligible-application.”⁹ Applying this two-step test, the Federal Circuit agreed with the District Court that the claims simply described the concept of allowing users to view presentations asynchronously without stating how that result is achieved.¹⁰ Indeed, the Court reasoned that the client applications, data streams, and audio-quality components asserted by the patent owner were generically described, relied on conventional technology, and merely applied known time-shifting functions to web-conferencing systems, and further held that the patent owner’s repetitive arguments and result-oriented claim language prevented a finding of patent eligibility when combining the claims under step-two.¹¹

Moreover, the Court rejected the patent owner’s contention that dismissal was premature and that the court should permit amendment of the complaint or conduct claim construction.¹² The Court concluded that dismissal was proper because the claims of the patent itself were directed to abstract ideas that could not be cured through amendment and the patent owner failed to explain how claim construction would affect the patent-eligibility analysis, thus leaving no factual disputes.¹³

This decision serves as a reminder that early dismissal of patent infringement claims is possible if the underlying patent claims do no more than describe a desired result. Software and technology inventors, in particular, should carefully articulate how their inventions achieve the claimed result in a novel way through specific technical improvement. Including relevant technical details specific to the innovation can help demonstrate that the patent is subject-matter eligible and that infringement claims can survive. On the other hand, accused infringers should be mindful of the opportunity presented by a § 101 patent challenge to win at the earliest stages of litigation.