Under 35 U.S.C. § 101, an invention may be deemed unpatentable if it is directed an abstract idea without “significantly more.” In January 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“CAFC”) issued a notable decision in US Patent No. 7,679,637 LLC v. Google LLC, No. 2024-1520 (Fed. Cir. 2026)(“Google”). The CAFC reiterated that, for software-related inventions, patent eligibility turns on whether the claims are directed to a specific technological improvement in computer functionality or instead recite an abstract idea implemented using generic computer components.[1]
The patent at issue, U.S. Patent No. 7,679,637 (the “’637 Patent”), is directed to web conferencing systems offering time‑shifting functionality, which allows users to view sessions in real time, on delay or after completion. One of the independent claims recites a web conferencing system that includes multiple client applications coupled with various functions, including, inter alia, “a first client application allowing at least one presenting participant to share computer screen video,” a second client application being “arranged to allow said observing participant to selectively sense a previously presented and recorded part of said computer screen video and said data stream,” and the “web conferencing system is able to simultaneously record said computer screen video and said data stream.”
The specification identifies the technical problem as inefficiencies in conventional web conferencing systems because participants may have to wait for others to join or may miss portions of a presentation. The claims address this issue by enabling asynchronous review of presentation content.
In reaching its ruling, the CAFC first examined the claim language and found that the claimed “client applications” were described only in generic terms and were paired with purely result-oriented functional language—such as “allowing,” “arranged to allow,” and “is able to”—without explaining how the client applications technically achieve the recited manipulation of data streams that enables asynchronous review.[2] The CAFC found that claimed client applications described what the system did and the results it intended to achieve, not how the system accomplished those results.[3]
The CAFC then turned to the specification and determined that it likewise failed to disclose any improvement to the underlying computer technology.[4] Instead, the CAFC characterized the claims as merely “applying known time-shifting functions[5] to web-conferencing systems to solve ‘great inefficiencies’ resulting from participants waiting for others to join.”[6]
Considering the claims and specification as a whole, the CAFC concluded that, under Alice Step One, the claims were directed at an abstract idea of allowing asynchronous review of web-conferencing presentations. The CAFC also concluded that, under Alice Step Two, the claims lack inventive step and, taken as a whole, does not show significantly more than the abstract idea, because the underlying technical solution of the claims were known open source tools construed to be “conventional, well-known components, operating according to their ordinary functions to manipulate conventional data stream.”[7] The CAFC therefore concludes that the claims did not satisfy § 101.
Notably, the CAFC contrasted the ’637 Patent with the patent at issue in Contour IP Holding LLC v. GoPro, Inc., 113 F.4th 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2024) (“GoPro”).[8] In GoPro, the court found the asserted claims patent‑eligible because the claims recited, and the specification clearly disclosed, a concrete technological improvement and explained how that improvement operated.[9] Although the claims in GoPro arguably did not recite implementation details of “how” the dual‑streaming functionality was achieved, the CAFC recognized the disclosed architecture as a technological improvement to camera functionality and thus was not considered abstract under Alice Step one. Unlike the claimed dual‑streaming approach in GoPro, which was not an ordinary usage to existing hands-free point of view (POV) camera systems, the ’637 Patent merely applied known techniques to achieve a desired result, and thus was deemed to not provide a technical improvement.
The CAFC found Google is more like Hawk Tech. Sys., LLC v. Castle Retail, LLC, 60 F.4th 1349, 1357 (Fed. Cir. 2023)(“Hawk”), where the claimed method of viewing multiple simultaneously displayed and stored video images on a remote viewing device of a video surveillance system was found to merely involve the manipulation of multiple data streams but “fail[ed] to re-cite a specific solution to make the alleged improvement . . . and were “recited at such a level of result-oriented generality that those claims amount[ed] to a mere implementation of an abstract idea.”[10]
The decisions of Google, GoPro, and Hawk reinforce a growing body of § 101 jurisprudence which may be summarized by the following key takeaways:
- Avoid purely functional, result‑oriented claim language in software inventions. Terms such as “allow,” “configured to,” or “able to” may invite characterization of the claims as directed to an abstract idea when they are not tied to specific implementation details. When functional language is used, it should be supported by recitations of concrete components, structures, or interactions between these components and structures, rather than generic computer elements, to demonstrate how the claimed function is achieved.
- Draft the specification to clearly articulate a technological improvement in computer functionality that supports the claims. The description should establish a clear nexus between the claimed features and a specific technical problem that is addressed in a non‑conventional manner. In particular, the improvement should not merely rely on an expected advantage of existing technology but should explain how the claims achieve a technical solution through a specific architectural or operational innovation.
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[1] Id. at 7
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] Id., at 8-9.
[5] a function delays or advances data or a signal in time, allowing it to be viewed or analyzed at a different point.
[6] Google, at 8-9.
[7] Google, at 10-11.
[8] Google, at 9
[9] GoPro at 10.
[10] Hawk at 1358.