Federal Circuit: Machine Learning Patents Fail Section 101 Patent Eligibility Challenge

The Federal Circuit's recent decision in Recentive Analytics, Inc. v. Fox Corp. (April 18, 2025) has garnered a lot of attention. This is not surprising: It hits on hot topics such as machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and patent eligibility, and the court itself called this a "matter of first impression."

But the decision should not be surprising to those who follow patent eligibility jurisprudence.

The Core Issue: Generic Machine Learning Applications vs. Technological Improvements

The Federal Circuit affirmed a lower court's dismissal of the patent infringement claims, concluding that patents merely applying generic machine learning techniques to new data environments – without meaningful technological improvements to the machine learning models themselves – are ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101.