Rich Media Club v. MediaNews Group — Court Dismisses All Ad-Tech Patent Claims as Patent-Ineligible Under Section 101

Background

Rich Media Club LLC owns five patents related to online advertising technology — specifically, methods for “ad viewability” (detecting whether an ad space is visible to the user), “lazy loading” (loading ads just before a user scrolls to the content containing the ad space), and “ad refresh” (refreshing an ad space with a different ad based on how long the user has been viewing the area). The patents at issue are U.S. Patent Nos. 9,824,074; 11,004,090; 11,468,453; 11,741,482; and 12,125,051.

Rich Media Club sued MediaNews Group for infringement of all five patents. MediaNews moved to dismiss under Section 101, arguing the claims are directed to abstract ideas and lack any inventive concept. The court grouped the patents into two families: the “Lazy Loading” Patents (‘074, ‘482, and ‘051) and the “Ad Refresh” Patents (‘453 and ‘090).

The Court’s Holding

The court granted MediaNews Group’s motion to dismiss in full, finding all five patents patent-ineligible under the Alice two-step framework.

At Alice Step One, the court found the Lazy Loading Patents are directed to the abstract idea of “determining whether a predefined area is visible on a larger area, and based thereon, sending content to the predefined area.” The court rejected Rich Media Club’s argument that the claims were “rooted in technology” and depended on “browser-window geometry,” citing Federal Circuit precedent that “an abstract idea remains an abstract idea even when narrowed — e.g., by subject matter — to a particular use or environment.” The court noted the claimed method could be performed mentally or with pencil and paper, and the claims used only “result-focused functional language” with generic computing components like “code executed by a computing system” and “a remote computing device.”

The Ad Refresh Patents fared no better. The court found they added only the step of “determining how long the user’s viewport has been in a location, allowing the ad to be visible and then switching the ad at a certain predefined time” — which the court deemed equally abstract.

At Alice Step Two, the court found no inventive concept. Rich Media Club argued the claims recited an “ordered interaction of components,” but the court compared this to Ultramercial v. Hulu and found the sequence “recites an abstraction — an idea, having no particular concrete or tangible form.” The court also declined to follow a prior Arizona district court ruling (Rich Media Club v. Duration Media) that had found a related patent contained an inventive concept, finding that reasoning unpersuasive. The case was dismissed with prejudice.

Key Takeaways

• Patents claiming methods for detecting whether a webpage area is visible and delivering content based on that detection are likely abstract under Alice Step One, especially when they use only generic computing components.
• Grounding an abstract concept in “browser-window geometry” or internet-specific terminology does not rescue it from ineligibility — narrowing an abstract idea to the internet is insufficient.
• The court explicitly disagreed with a prior district court decision that found a related Rich Media Club patent had an inventive concept, creating a split among district courts on this specific technology.
• Claims that describe a result (delivering ads based on viewability) without specifying how the result is achieved are especially vulnerable to Section 101 challenges.

Why It Matters

This decision is another significant blow to ad-tech patent portfolios. Online advertising companies have amassed patents covering viewability detection, ad refresh timing, and lazy loading — technologies that power much of the modern web advertising ecosystem. This ruling signals that patents claiming these functions at a high level of abstraction, without specifying a particular technical implementation, remain highly vulnerable to early-stage dismissal under Alice. The court’s explicit rejection of a prior ruling finding similar claims eligible adds to the uncertainty for patent holders in this space, while giving accused infringers a strong precedent for Section 101 motions to dismiss.