Federal Circuit IP
Sound View Innovations, LLC v. Hulu, LLC
Sound View Innovations, LLC v. Hulu, LLC
No. 2024-1092 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 29, 2026)
(Prost, Wallach, and Chen) Precedential Utility Patent Case
Issues: Whether Hulu’s accused streaming systems infringe method claim 16 of U.S. Patent No. 6,708,213, where the District Court required the first two method steps to be performed in the order written.
Holding: Affirmed. Claim 16 requires the first two steps to be performed in the written order, and the parties did not dispute that Hulu’s systems do not operate in that sequence. Although the District Court erred by narrowing “buffer” to a specialized buffer, the step ordering ruling independently supported noninfringement.
Background:
- Sound View sued Hulu (six patents; only claim 16 of the ’213 patent remains), alleging Hulu’s edge servers act as “helper servers” that buffer part of a requested video, stream it to the client, and concurrently prefetch more.
- The District Court granted summary judgment of noninfringement because the edge servers do not download and retrieve subsequent portions of the same SM object in the same buffer.
- Prior appeal: The Federal Circuit affirmed the “same buffer” limitation but remanded for an affirmative “buffer” construction comparable to the accused “caches” noting “buffer” appeared to carry its ordinary meaning (“temporary storage for data being sent or received”).
- The District Court held claim 16 requires a specialized buffer. Also, the “receive request” step must occur before “allocate buffer” step. Entered summary judgment of noninfringement.
- Sound View appealed.
Federal Circuit’s Analysis:
Method steps are not ordered unless the claim language/logic/grammar requires it.
- Claim 16 implicitly requires the first two steps to be performed in order.
- Ordering was required because “requested SM object” in the second step depends on the prior “receiving a request” step: “requested” functions as a status indicator reflecting a completed action, and the first limitation provides antecedent basis for the second.
- The Federal Circuit rejected Sound View’s arguments that (1) other claims’ explicit sequencing showed claim 16 lacked ordering, (2) ordering requires “inoperability” absent the sequence.
- The Federal Circuit emphasized implicit ordering exists where later steps reference something “logically indicating” the prior step occurred.
Takeaways
- Draft to avoid antecedent basis links when you want flexibility.
- Scrutinize antecedent basis and participles/adjectives for built-in sequencing hooks that support early summary judgment.