Patent claims directed to securing various aspects of digital content on a user’s television were held patent-ineligible in OpenTV, Inc. v. Apple, Inc., No. 5:15-cv-02008-EJD (N.D. Cal., Jan. 28, 2016). Ruling on Apple’s motion to dismiss under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), the court used the familiar Alice / Mayo two-step framework to invalidate claims of asserted U.S. Patent Nos. 6,148,081 and U.S. Patent No. 7,644,429. The ‘081 patent focuses on expediting program-to-program accessibility for programs that require credentials for access. Accordingly, the 081 patent discloses storing additional permissions in an interactive TV application that can access other applications. An example embodiment included an application for processing a credit card transaction used in the context of a shopping application. The ‘429 patent is directed to a secure method of automatically renewing pay-per-view programming. In particular, the ‘429 patent tried to…
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