Federal Circuit Affirms Hulu Noninfringement Win in Streaming Patent Dispute

On January 29, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment of noninfringement in favor of Hulu in a dispute involving streaming-media technology. In practical terms, the court concluded that no trial was needed because the record showed no genuine dispute of material fact on infringement.

Background

Sound View Innovations is a patent licensing company. It asserted U.S. Patent No. 6,708,213, titled Method for Streaming Multimedia Information over Public Networks, against Hulu. The patent, which has now expired, addresses ways to reduce network delay and improve streaming quality by using intermediary helper servers to cache and deliver content.

Sound View sued Hulu in 2017 and originally asserted six patents. By the time of this appeal, only claim 16 of the ’213 patent remained at issue. This was the second time the case reached the Federal Circuit.

In the earlier appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed certain claim constructions and remanded for further analysis of the term “buffer.” On remand, the district court again granted summary judgment to Hulu, and Sound View appealed a second time.

What the Court Decided

The Federal Circuit agreed with part of the district court’s reasoning and disagreed with part of it. Even so, the outcome did not change: Hulu prevailed.

Affirmed. The court agreed that claim 16 requires the first two method steps to occur in a particular order.

Reversed. The court rejected the district court’s narrower reading of “buffer” as a specialized buffer associated only with the requested streaming-media object.

Even so, the Federal Circuit affirmed the noninfringement judgment because the required sequence of steps was an independent basis for summary judgment. The parties agreed that Hulu’s accused products did not perform the first two claim steps in that order.

Court’s Reasoning

The court’s analysis turned on two issues: implied step order in a method claim and the meaning of the term “buffer.”

1. Method claims can require an implied order of steps. As a general rule, method claims do not require steps to be performed in the written order unless the claim language, grammar, logic, or specification makes that order necessary.

Here, the first step recites “receiving a request for an SM object.” The second step recites “allocating a buffer … to cache … said requested SM object.” The court held that “both the grammar and logic of claim 16 require the first limitation to be performed before the second.”

In practical terms, an object cannot be a “requested” object until a request has first been received. Because of that dependency, the second step could not logically occur before the first.

2. “Buffer” should not have been narrowed beyond its ordinary meaning. The district court had construed “buffer” as “short term storage associated with said requested SM object.” The Federal Circuit rejected that narrower reading.

According to the court, nothing in the claim language required a specialized buffer tied to only one streaming-media object. As the opinion states, “Nothing in the claim language describes the buffer as a specialized buffer that must be associated with only one SM object.”

The court also found no clear basis in the specification or prosecution history to depart from the ordinary meaning of “buffer” as temporary storage for data being sent or received.

Practical Implications / What Companies Should Do Now

This decision is a useful reminder that infringement analysis for method claims does not end with the meaning of individual claim terms. The sequence in which claimed steps are performed can be dispositive, even where the claim does not expressly use words such as “first,” “next,” or “then.”

Businesses that design, operate, or license software and networked systems should assess whether their products perform claimed steps in the same sequence required by the patent. That issue can materially affect both freedom-to-operate analysis and litigation strategy.

The case also shows the limits of aggressive narrowing during claim construction. Courts may reject efforts to read specialized features into common technical terms unless the patent clearly redefines the term or the prosecution history requires a narrower construction.

For patent owners, the decision underscores the value of precise drafting and disciplined prosecution statements. For accused infringers, it highlights the importance of developing multiple noninfringement theories rather than relying on a single claim-construction argument.

At the early case-assessment stage, companies should focus on three questions: whether a claimed process carries an implied order, whether system operation actually follows that order, and whether key technical terms should be given their ordinary meaning or a narrower construction.