Etison LLC (ClickFunnels) v. HighLevel — Federal Circuit Affirms Invalidity of Sales Funnel Website Patents Under Alice

Background

ClickFunnels — the well-known marketing software platform built around the concept of digital “sales funnels” — owns U.S. Patent Nos. 10,846,357 and 11,361,047, both directed to a “Website Creation System for Creating Websites Having At Least One Series of Directional Webpages.” The patents describe a system that allows business owners to choose a funnel type, select a template, and then edit a sequence of webpages designed to guide potential customers step-by-step toward a purchase decision.

ClickFunnels sued rival SaaS marketing platform HighLevel in the District of Delaware in April 2024, alleging infringement of at least one claim from each patent. HighLevel moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), arguing the patents claimed ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The district court agreed, characterizing the claimed invention as directed to the abstract idea of “filtering information based on user preferences to arrive at a final result,” and finding no inventive concept at Alice step two. The court dismissed the complaint, treating claim 1 of the ‘357 patent as representative of all 20 claims across both patents. ClickFunnels appealed.

The Court’s Holding

The Federal Circuit affirmed — but flagged an error in the district court’s procedure before reaching the same result.

Representative-claim error (harmless): Judge Stark, writing for Judges Lourie, Cunningham, and himself, held that the district court erred by accepting HighLevel’s representative-claim designation without proper analysis. ClickFunnels had pointed to dependent claims reciting “one or more triggers” as distinct from representative claim 1, which shifted to ClickFunnels the burden of explaining why that limitation was significant — a burden ClickFunnels failed to meet with any substantive argument. The Federal Circuit nonetheless found the error harmless because its own independent review confirmed that all of the claims fail at Alice step two.

Alice step two — no inventive concept: The court walked through the challenged claims and found that the additional limitations — displaying templates, receiving user selections, launching a website editor, arranging pages sequentially — are all routine and conventional computer-implemented functions. Selecting options from a menu, generating a template-based webpage, and guiding a user through sequential steps are precisely the kinds of generic computer operations the Supreme Court held in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l do not transform an abstract idea into patent-eligible subject matter. The “trigger” limitations in the dependent claims fared no better; they too described conventional automation-tab functionality with no inventive twist.

All claims of both patents are invalid under § 101. The dismissal stands.

Key Takeaways

• Even famous software products with commercially successful “inventions” are vulnerable to § 101 invalidity when the core idea — here, selecting a template and guiding a user through a sequence of webpages — is abstract and the implementation relies on generic computer functions.
• The Federal Circuit reinforced that district courts must properly resolve representativeness disputes before extending an Alice ruling across all patent claims — but also that failing to do so can be harmless error if the appellate court independently examines each claim grouping.
• Patent challengers get no free pass on representative-claim analysis: they must make a prima facie case of substantial similarity before the burden shifts to the patentee.
• The ruling further signals the breadth of the abstract-idea category for web-based software: “filtering information based on user preferences to arrive at a final result” sweeps in even elaborate, commercially differentiated funnel-building systems.

Why It Matters

ClickFunnels is used by hundreds of thousands of businesses to build marketing funnels and sales pages. That commercial success did not insulate its underlying patents from § 101 scrutiny. The Federal Circuit’s nonprecedential affirmance adds another data point to the continuing line of cases holding that web-based workflow tools — however polished the user interface — do not overcome the Alice abstract-idea bar when their core method is fundamentally about directing user choices to reach a goal.

For software companies, the ruling is a reminder that competitive moats built on UX-centric process patents remain fragile. For litigants and practitioners, the court’s clear articulation of the burden-shifting framework for representative-claim analysis under Berkheimer and Mobile Acuity offers practical guidance for structuring § 101 motions to dismiss.