In a significant decision for telecommunications patent law, a panel of the Federal Circuit issued a mixed ruling in Constellation Designs, LLC v. LG Electronics Inc, vacating a summary judgment of patent eligibility for certain claims while affirming eligibility for others, and affirming the jury’s findings of infringement and damages. The April 28, 2026, opinion provides important guidance on how courts should apply the Alice/Mayo framework to distinguish between impermissibly abstract, result-oriented claims and patent-eligible claims directed to specific technological implementations.
The Claimed Technology
Constellation’s patents (U.S. Patent No. 8,842,761 (the ’761 patent); U.S. Patent No. 10,693,700 (the ’700 patent); U.S. Patent No. 11,019,509 (the ’509 patent); and U.S. Patent No. 11,018,922 (the ’922 patent)) relate to digital communication systems that use non-uniform “constellations” — visual representations of the relationship between digital bits and broadcast signals — to improve transmission capacity. Traditional/uniform constellations were designed with evenly spaced points to maximize the minimum distance between constellation points (dmin), on the theory that greater spacing would improve capacity at high SNRs.
The inventors of the asserted patents took a different approach. Rather than optimizing based on dmin, the inventors developed an iterative process to construct non-uniform constellations optimized for “parallel decode (PD) capacity” — a measure comparing the information entering the mapper on one side of the channel with what exits the demapper on the other. According to the written description of the asserted patents, these capacity-optimized constellations “can achieve significantly higher performance gains” as compared to conventional constellations (achieving efficiency gains of more than 25%).
The Procedural Background
Constellation Designs sued LG Electronics for patent infringement in the Eastern District of Texas, alleging that LG willfully infringed various claims in the four asserted patents through sales of its televisions compatible with the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 3.0 over-the-air broadcast television standard. The district court granted Constellation’s motion for summary judgment of patent eligibility, holding all asserted claims patent eligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as being directed to a technical solution to a technical problem — specifically, overcoming data loss in over-the-air transmission through PD-capacity-optimized constellations.
Following a jury trial, the jury found all asserted claims valid and that LG’s accused televisions infringed at least one claim of each asserted patent. The jury awarded Constellation $1,684,469 in past damages (based on a per-television royalty of $6.75) and found LG’s infringement willful. LG appealed the district court’s eligibility ruling, denial of judgment as a matter of law on non-infringement, and denial of judgment as a matter of law on no damages.
The Federal Circuit’s Analysis
The Federal Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Kara Stoll joined by Judge Alan Lourie and District Judge Paul Oetken sitting by designation, divided the asserted claims into two groups: (1) “optimization claims” from the ’761 and ’700 patents, which recite non-uniform constellations “optimized” for PD capacity; and (2) “constellation claims” from the ’509 and ’922 patents, which recite specific non-uniform constellations with defined characteristics. The panel reached meaningfully different conclusions for the two claim groups after applying the two-step Alice/Mayo framework.
The Optimization Claims: Ineligible as Result-Oriented
At Alice step one, the Federal Circuit panel found the optimization claims directed to the abstract idea of “optimizing” a constellation for PD capacity. The panel drew on the Supreme Court’s reasoning in O’Reilly v. Morse and its own precedent in ChargePoint, Inc. v. SemaConnect, Inc. to conclude that claim 17 of the ’761 patent — representative of the optimization claims — was “an abstract, result-oriented claim directed to all ways of achieving a recited result.”
The court emphasized that the key distinguishing element of claim 17 — the “wherein” clause reciting a constellation “optimized for capacity using parallel decode capacity” — was drafted in a “result-oriented way” that covers every possible method of achieving a constellation “optimized for capacity using parallel decode capacity” without reciting how that optimization is to be achieved. While the specification described an iterative process for constructing a geometrically shaped constellation, including steps for selecting constellation size, checking feasibility, iterating to convergence, and outputting the optimized result, the § 101 inquiry focuses on the claim language itself, and the claims themselves did not incorporate those details. As the court noted, “the specification cannot be used to import details from the specification if those details are not claimed.”
At Alice step two, Constellation had argued that the claims recited an inventive concept based on the efficiency gains achieved and the inventors’ recognition that optimizing for PD capacity yields counterintuitive, improved results. The court rejected this argument, holding that Constellation’s alleged inventive concept “is the abstract idea itself,” which cannot transform claims into a patent-eligible application. The court found no additional elements — individually or as an ordered combination — that transformed the claims’ nature. As a result, the Federal Circuit vacated the lower court’s summary judgment of patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 of the optimization claims.
The Constellation Claims: Eligible as Specific Implementations
The constellation claims fared differently. Unlike the optimization claims, the asserted claims of the ’509 and ’922 patents were directed to “specific constellations” that the inventors developed using the techniques described in the specification — including constellations with overlapping point locations and hundreds of specific non-uniform constellations identified by their precise coordinates.
Claim 21 of the ’509 patent was deemed representative of the constellation claims and “directed to solving a particular technological problem — overcoming capacity constraints to improve coding gains — using a particular technological solution — specific, non-uniform constellations with overlapping constellation point locations.” More specifically, claim 29 of the ’509 patent requires that a symbol constellation’s point locations be unequally spaced, that each constellation point carry a different label, and that at least two constellation points share the same location — a counterintuitive structural feature flowing directly from the PD-capacity optimization approach. The court held that these concrete structural limitations provide sufficient specificity to satisfy Alice step one without need to reach step two.
Other Holdings
The Federal Circuit also affirmed the district court’s denial of LG’s motions for judgment as a matter of law on non-infringement and no damages. On infringement, the court held that a patent owner may prove infringement of individual claim limitations using standards-related evidence for some claim elements while using product-specific evidence for other elements of the same claim — an approach the court found consistent with its earlier decision in Fujitsu Ltd. v. Netgear Inc. The court found substantial evidence supporting the jury’s infringement verdict, including expert testimony, source code analysis, internal LG testing documents, and the accused televisions’ compliance with the FCC-mandatory A/322 protocol of ATSC 3.0.
On damages, LG had challenged Constellation’s damages expert’s reliance on Zenith patent licenses as comparables for a built-in apportionment theory, arguing that the Zenith licenses covered different patents, technologies, and product types. The court rejected LG’s challenge and agreed with the district court that this was a Daubert admissibility challenge — not a sufficiency-of-evidence argument suitable for JMOL — and found sufficient evidentiary support for comparability based on technical and economic similarities established through multiple witnesses to support the jury’s damages verdict.
Key Takeaways
This decision reinforces several important principles for patent eligibility:
- Result-Oriented Claiming Creates Eligibility Risk – Claims that define an invention solely by the result achieved — without reciting the specific method or structure through which that result is obtained — risk being characterized as directed to an abstract idea under Alice step one. Even where a specification describes the inventive process in concrete detail, those details must be reflected in the claims themselves to survive § 101 scrutiny.
- Written Disclosure Cannot Save Broad Claims – Technical details in the specification will not cure eligibility defects if those details are not incorporated into the claim language itself.
- Specificity Matters – Claims that recite specific implementations — such as particular constellation configurations — are more likely to survive eligibility challenges than claims that broadly cover all ways of achieving a result.
- Standard-Based Infringement Proof Extends Limitation-by-Limitation – The court’s extension of Fujitsu confirms that patent owners may prove infringement of individual claim limitations through compliance with an industry standard — without being required to show that the entire claim is satisfied by the standard. This provides meaningful flexibility for patentees whose technology is incorporated into mandatory or widely adopted standards.
Moreover, novelty does not always equal eligibility. Indeed, the court rejected Constellation’s argument that evidence of novelty and non-obviousness — including unsuccessful IPR challenges — demonstrated an inventive concept, reaffirming that the eligibility inquiry is separate from the novelty and obviousness inquiries.
The case now returns to the Eastern District of Texas for further proceedings on the optimization claims.
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