Background
Columbia University sued Gen Digital — the company behind Norton antivirus software (formerly Symantec/NortonLifeLock) — for infringing two patents (U.S. Patent Nos. 8,601,322 and 8,074,115) covering methods for detecting anomalous program executions. The patents describe a system that runs software in an emulator, compares the program’s behavior against a model of expected function calls, and flags deviations as potentially malicious. A key feature of the claims is that the behavioral model is a “combined model” built from data gathered across multiple computers.
In the Eastern District of Virginia, Chief Judge Lauck denied Norton’s motion arguing the claims were patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and struck the defense before trial. A jury found willful infringement and awarded $185 million in damages — a figure that included foreign sales. The district court later enhanced the damages and awarded attorneys’ fees, partly based on a contempt finding against Norton’s former counsel, Quinn Emanuel. The total judgment approached $600 million.
The Court’s Holding
The Federal Circuit vacated the entire judgment. Writing for the panel, Judge Dyk held that Columbia’s claims are directed to an abstract idea at Alice Step 1. The court observed that “virus screening is well-known and constitutes an abstract idea” and that the claims, at their core, recite the abstract concept of identifying deviations in data based on a comparison. The claimed use of multiple computers to build a combined behavioral model was, in the court’s view, nothing more than the abstract “divide-and-conquer” approach of distributing a computing task across multiple machines.
Columbia attempted to save its claims by pointing to various technical improvements described in the specification — selective emulation, non-standard diversified models, and distributed sensor networks. But the court found none of these features were actually required by the claim language. “It cannot be said that the claims are directed to a technological improvement when nothing in the claims requires the steps necessary to make the improvement,” the court stated, distinguishing its earlier decision in Finjan v. Blue Coat Systems.
Rather than invalidating the patents outright, the court remanded for Alice Step 2 analysis — whether the claims contain an “inventive concept” sufficient to transform the abstract idea into patent-eligible subject matter. The court also reversed the district court’s denial of judgment as a matter of law on foreign sales damages, holding there was insufficient evidence that Norton’s foreign sales were domestically “rooted.” In a companion case (No. 2024-1244), the court reversed the contempt order against Quinn Emanuel, which in turn requires reconsideration of the enhanced damages and attorneys’ fees that were partly predicated on that finding. On May 14, 2026, the Federal Circuit denied Columbia’s petition for rehearing en banc.
Key Takeaways
- Specification improvements don’t save abstract claims. Even when a patent specification describes genuine technical advances, the claims themselves must require those features. Unclaimed improvements in the specification cannot rescue otherwise abstract claim language from a § 101 challenge.
- Distributed computing is abstract. Simply claiming that multiple computers collaborate on a task — even in the security context — does not, by itself, render a claim non-abstract. The court viewed this as the well-known “divide-and-conquer” approach.
- Foreign sales damages face a high bar. Damages based on foreign product sales require concrete evidence that the infringing conduct was rooted in domestic activity. General assertions of domestic coordination are insufficient.
- Step 2 lives on. By remanding rather than invalidating, the court leaves open the possibility that the claims could survive at Alice Step 2 — potentially through the “function calls” argument that was forfeited at Step 1.
Why It Matters
This decision eliminates one of the largest patent damage awards in recent memory and signals that the Federal Circuit continues to apply Alice aggressively to software patents — even in the cybersecurity space, where courts have sometimes been more willing to find technological improvements. The $600 million vacatur will reverberate through the patent licensing ecosystem, particularly for universities and research institutions that rely on broad functional claims to monetize foundational computer science research. The en banc denial on May 14 makes the panel’s holding the law of the circuit, potentially inviting a certiorari petition to the Supreme Court. For patent drafters, the case underscores the critical importance of claiming specific technical implementations, not just functional results, to survive § 101 scrutiny.