United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________

RECENTIVE ANALYTICS, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

FOX CORP., FOX BROADCASTING COMPANY, LLC, FOX SPORTS PRODUCTIONS, LLC, Defendants-Appellees ______________________

2023-2437 ______________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware in No. 1:22-cv-01545-GBW, Judge Gregory Brian Williams. ______________________

Decided: April 18, 2025 ______________________

ROBERT FREDERICKSON, III, Goodwin Procter LLP, Boston, MA, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also repre- sented by JESSE LEMPEL; ALEXANDRA D. VALENTI, New York, NY.

RANJINI ACHARYA, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, Palo Alto, CA, argued for defendants-appellees. Also represented by MICHAEL ZELIGER; EVAN FINKEL, MICHAEL SHIGEYORI HORIKAWA, Los Angeles, CA. ______________________ Case: 23-2437 Document: 51 Page: 2 Filed: 04/18/2025

2 RECENTIVE ANALYTICS, INC. v. FOX CORP.

Before DYK, and PROST, Circuit Judges, and GOLDBERG, Chief District Judge. 1 DYK, Circuit Judge. This case presents the question of patent eligibility of four patents directed to the use of machine learning. The patents claim the use of machine learning for the genera- tion of network maps and schedules for television broad- casts and live events. Appellant Recentive Analytics, Inc. (“Recentive”), the owner of the patents, sued appellees Fox Corp., Fox Broadcasting Company, LLC, and Fox Sports Produc- tions, LLC (collectively, “Fox”) for infringement. The district court dismissed, concluding that the patents were directed to ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. We affirm because the patents are directed to the abstract idea of using a generic machine learning tech- nique in a particular environment, with no inventive concept. BACKGROUND I Recentive is the owner of U.S. Patent Nos. 10,911,811 (“’811 patent”), 10,958,957 (“’957 patent”), 11,386,367 (“’367 patent”), and 11,537,960 (“’960 patent”). The pa- tents purport to solve problems confronting the enter- tainment industry and television broadcasters: how to optimize the scheduling of live events and how to optimize “network maps,” which determine the programs or con- tent displayed by a broadcaster’s channels within certain geographic markets at particular times. The patents fall

1 Honorable Mitchell S. Goldberg, Chief District Judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, sitting by designation. Case: 23-2437 Document: 51 Page: 3 Filed: 04/18/2025

RECENTIVE ANALYTICS, INC. v. FOX CORP. 3

into two groups that the parties refer to as the “Machine Learning Training” patents and the “Network Map” patents. A. The Machine Learning Training Patents The ’367 and ’960 patents are the “Machine Learning Training” patents. Both are titled “Systems and Methods for Determining Event Schedules.” They share a specifi- cation and concern the scheduling of live events. Claim 1 of the ’367 patent is representative of the Machine Learn- ing Training patents and recites a method containing: (i) a collecting step (receiving event parameters and target features); (ii) an iterative training step for the machine learning model (identifying relationships within the data); (iii) an output step (generating an optimized schedule); and (iv) an updating step (detecting changes to the data inputs and iteratively generating new, further optimized schedules). 2

2 Claim 1 of the ’367 patent recites: A computer-implemented method of dynamically generat-