In a recent decision addressing patent eligibility, infringement proof, and damages, the Federal Circuit vacated in part, and affirmed in part, a jury verdict and post-trial rulings in Constellation Designs v. LG Electronics.[i] The decision draws a sharp distinction between result-oriented claims, which the Court held patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101, and claims to specific constellation structures, which survived the eligibility challenge. The decision also explicitly affirms that a Fujitsu analysis of infringement based on an industry standard can be applied on a limitation-by-limitation basis.
Practical Takeaways
- Avoid result-oriented claims: Claims that merely recite an outcome without specifying how it is achieved remain vulnerable under § 101.
- Claim concrete implementations: Where possible, claims directed to specific structures, parameter sets or geometries may provide stronger eligibility footing than claims to an optimization process.
- Standards-based infringement analysis remains flexible: Patent owners may apply the logic of Fujitsu on a limitation-by-limitation basis, proving infringement of a claim through a combination of industry standards and product evidence.
- Standards compliance alone may not foreclose infringement risk: Even where a standard permits non‑infringing implementations, courts may look to product‑specific evidence to establish infringement.
Patent Eligibility: Optimization as a Result vs. Concrete Signal Structures
Overview
The claimed technology relates to modulation of digital information into an analog signal for transmission using a constellation. The Court reviewed Claim 17 of Patent No. 8,842,761 and Claim 21 of Patent No. 11,019,509 as representative claims using the § 101 eligibility framework of Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l.[ii]
Claim 17 of ‘761 Patent is Ineligible Due to Result-Oriented Claiming
Claim 17 (referred to by the Court as the “optimization” claim) recites a Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) symbol constellation that is “optimized for capacity using parallel decode (PD) capacity.” The Court found that Claim 17 was directed to optimization by using a constellation that achieved improved capacity at reduced signal-to-noise ratio compared to a QAM signal constellation that maximizes dmin.[iii] However, the Court further found that Claim 17 did not recite how that optimization was accomplished. Therefore, in step one of the Alice inquiry (in which “[w]e must first determine whether the claims at issue are directed to a patent-ineligible concept,”) the Court concluded that the claim was directed to the abstract idea of “optimizing” a constellation for PD capacity.[iv] In doing so, the Court emphasized that the optimization language of Claim 17 was result-oriented and amounted to encompassing the principle in the abstract no matter how implemented.[v]
Step two of the Alice inquiry is often characterized as the search for an inventive concept. “[W]e consider the elements of each claim both individually and ‘as an ordered combination’ to determine whether the additional elements ‘transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.”[vi] Here, the Court found no inventive concept. Instead, it concluded that the claimed advance—optimizing a constellation for PD capacity—was the abstract idea itself.[vii] Thus, the Court found the claim patent-ineligible under § 101.
Claim 17 of ‘761 Patent is Ineligible Due to Result-Oriented Claiming
The Court found that, in contrast to Claim 17’s result-oriented formulation, Claim 21 (referred to by the Court as the “constellation” claim) is directed to specific non-uniform constellation designs that were developed using optimization techniques described in the specification. For example, Claim 21 recites specific parameters of specific constellations, such as “unequally spaced constellation points,” “unique labeling,” and “overlapping point locations.”[viii] The Court emphasized that “this distinction between the result-oriented optimization claims and constellation claims makes all the difference,” concluding that Claim 21 recites a technological solution (specific, non‑uniform constellations with overlapping point locations) to a technological problem (overcoming capacity constraints to improve coding gains)[ix]. Accordingly, the Court held that Claim 21 is not directed to an abstract idea.
Infringement and Remedy: Mixed Reliance on Industry Standards and Product Evidence
The Federal Circuit next turned to the district court’s denial of judgment as a matter of law of non-infringement. A patent owner can seek to prove infringement with respect to a product through (1) evidence that the product has features of the claimed invention, or (2) evidence that the product conforms to an industry standard that has features of the claimed invention. Fujitsu Ltd. v. Netgear Inc.[x] provides the framework for proving infringement of a claim using an industry standard. Under Fujitsu, if a product implements an industry standard, and the industry standard is sufficiently specific to show that implementing the industry standard would always result in infringing the claim, then the product is shown to infringe the claim. In the present case, LG argued at the district court for judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) of non‑infringement based on Fujitsu. LG contended that, under Fujitsu, a patent owner may rely on an industry standard to prove infringement only where practicing the standard itself necessarily satisfies every limitation of the asserted claim. The district court denied the JMOL, concluding that the reasoning of Fujitsu can apply on a limitation-by-limitation basis.[xi]
The Court affirmed the district court’s denial of JMOL. In doing so, the Court clarified that an industry standard can be used to prove infringement of one or more limitations on a limitation‑by‑limitation basis. Under this approach, a patent owner may rely on standards‑based evidence to establish infringement of some claim elements, while using product‑specific evidence to prove infringement of other elements of the same claim.[xii] Accordingly, the Court held there was substantial evidence to support infringement when claim elements were compared to the ATSC 3.0 standard, and rejected LG’s JMOL challenges to both infringement and the sufficiency of the evidence.
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[i] Constellation Designs v. LG Electronics, No. 2024‑1822 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 28, 2026).
[ii] Id.; Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208 (2014).
[iii] Op. at 17.
[iv] Id.
[v] Id.
[vi] Op. at 21.
[vii] Id.
[viii] Op. at 23.
[ix] Id.
[x] Fujitsu Ltd. v. Netgear Inc, 620 F.3d 1321 (Fed. Cir. 2010).
[xi] Op. at 26.
[xii] See Op. at 26-27.