10tales, Inc. v. Tiktok Inc., Tiktok Pte. Ltd., Bytedance Ltd., Bytedance Inc.

N OTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
10TALES, INC.,
Plaintiff-Appellant
v.
TIKTOK INC., TIKTOK PTE. LTD., BYTEDANCE
LTD., BYTEDANCE INC.,
Defendants-Appellees
______________________
2024-1792
______________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of California in No. 5:21-cv-03868-VKD,
Judge Virginia Kay DeMarchi.
______________________
Decided: March 31, 2026
______________________
T HOMAS F ISHER, Cozen O'Connor, Washington, DC, ar-
gued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by BARRY P.
G OLOB.
STEPHEN S. K ORNICZKY , Sheppard Mullin Richter &
Hampton LLP, San Diego, CA, argued for defendants-ap-
pellees. Also represented by MICHAEL J AMES HOPKINS ,
J AMES YOUNG H URT , ERICKA SCHULZ; T ODD E. L UNDELL ,
Costa Mesa, CA; BLAINE H. EVANSON, J AMES REX L EE ,
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10TALES, INC. v. TIKTOK INC. 2
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Irvine, CA; ALEXANDER N.
HARRIS , Los Angeles, CA.
______________________
Before D YK, P ROST , and REYNA, Circuit Judges.
REYNA, Circuit Judge.
10Tales, Inc. appeals the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California’s grant of TikTok
Inc.’s motion for judgment on the pleadings of invalidity
under 35 U.S.C. § 101. We affirm.
BACKGROUND
10Tales, Inc. (“10Tales”) owns U.S. Patent
No. 8,856,030 (the “’030 patent”), entitled “Method, System
and Software for Associating Attributes Within Digital Me-
dia Presentations.” J.A. 23. The ’030 patent issued in 2014
and claims priority to a provisional application filed on
April 7, 2003, a period before the launch of social network-
ing platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Id.
The ’030 patent concerns a system for customizing or
personalizing content based on user social network infor-
mation. See J.A. 50, 2:65–3:7. As the specification notes,
the patent sought to “attract individuals to content that is
personally more relevant and impactful for them . . . as op-
posed to [the user] skipping over all or a portion of the mes-
sage.” J.A. 50, 2:3–7. Claim 1 of the ’030 patent, the only
claim at issue, recites:
1. A system for associating user attributes with dig-
ital media asset attributes and creating a user spe-
cific composite digital media display, the system
comprising:
a) a server;
b) a computer-readable storage medium operably
connected;
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10TALES, INC. v. TIKTOK INC. 3
c) wherein the computer-readable storage medium
contains one or more programming instructions for
performing a method of associating user attributes
with digital media asset attributes and creating a
user specific composite digital media display, the
method comprising:
identifying a first set of digital media assets stored
on the computer-readable storage medium,
creating, from the first set of digital media assets,
a first composite digital media display,
presenting to the user via a display server, the first
composite digital media display;
retrieving user social network information from at
least one source external to the presented first com-
posite digital media display, wherein the user so-
cial network information contains one or more user
attributes;
selecting, based on the user attributes in the social
network information, a second set of digital media
assets, wherein the second set of digital media as-
sets is associated with one or more user attributes
found in the user social network information;
monitoring the first composite digital media dis-
play for the presence of a trigger, wherein the trig-
ger indicates a personalization opportunity in the
first set of digital media assets;
performing a rule based substitution of one or more
of the digital media assets from the first set of dig-
ital media assets with one or more of the digital
media assets from the second set of digital media
assets to create a user specific set of digital media
assets;
creating, from the user specific digital media as-
sets, a user specific composite digital display; and
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10TALES, INC. v. TIKTOK INC. 4
presenting to the user via the display server, the
second composite digital media display.
J.A. 59–60, 20:62–22:15.
10Tales sued TikTok, Inc., TikTok Pte. Ltd.,
ByteDance Ltd., and ByteDance, Inc. (collectively “Tik-
Tok”), in the United States District Court for the Western
District of Texas, alleging infringement of claim 1 of the
’030 patent. The case was then transferred to the United
States District Court for the Northern District of Califor-
nia.
TikTok filed a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss 10Tales’s
complaint on the ground that claim 1 was directed to pa-
tent ineligible subject matter. J.A. 3. The district court
denied the motion without prejudice, noting that claim con-
struction was required to properly determine whether
claim 1 claimed ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C.
§ 101. Id.
Following the district court’s claim construction order,
J.A. 2907–2931, TikTok moved pursuant to Rule 12(c) for
judgment on the pleadings, arguing that the asserted claim
was invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The district court
granted TikTok’s motion. At step one of the eligibility in-
quiry, the district court rejected TikTok’s arguments that
claim 1 was directed to the abstract idea of targeted adver-
tising, noting that the claim is “more generally directed to
a system for presenting personalized digital media content
to a user based on the user attributes from user social net-
work information.” J.A. 7. Nevertheless, the district court
concluded that “claim 1 is limited to an abstract idea: pre-
senting personalized content to a user based on infor-
mation about the user.” Id. The district court explained
that the patent is not directed to any improvement in com-
puter technology or network functionality, but “instead
claims a long-standing and fundamental practice of person-
alizing content based on user attributes that spans many
domains.” Id.
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10TALES, INC. v. TIKTOK INC. 5
At step two, the district court determined that each of
the elements of claim 1 recites conventional steps and com-
puter components, in general functional terms, that are in-
sufficient to transform the abstract idea under claim 1 into
patent eligible subject matter. J.A. 18. The district court
also determined that there was nothing inventive about the
ordered combination of those elements. J.A. 19. Thus, the
district court concluded that claim 1 was ineligible under
35 U.S.C. § 101. The district court also denied 10Tales’s
motion for leave to amend its complaint in the event the
district court determined that the ’030 patent was ineligi-
ble under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
10Tales timely appeals. We have jurisdiction pursuant
to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).
D ISCUSSION
This court reviews a district court’s judgment on the
pleadings under regional circuit law, here the Ninth Cir-
cuit. Smart Sys. Innovations, LLC v. Chi. Transit Auth.,
873 F.3d 1364, 1367 (Fed. Cir. 2017). The Ninth Circuit
reviews de novo an order granting a Rule 12(c) motion for
judgment on the pleadings. Fleming v. Pickard, 581 F.3d
922, 925 (9th Cir. 2009). The court must accept all factual
allegations in the complaint as true and construe them in
the light most favorable to the non-moving party. Id.
Judgment on the pleadings is properly granted when there
is no issue of material fact in dispute, and the moving party
is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Id.
Patent eligibility under § 101 is ultimately a question
of law that may involve underlying factual findings. Con-
tour IP Holding LLC v. GoPro, Inc., 113 F.4th 1373, 1378
(Fed. Cir. 2024). To determine whether patent claims are
directed to patent ineligible subject matter, the Supreme
Court has developed a two-step test commonly known as
the “Alice” test. Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208,
217–18 (2014). Under Alice step one, we consider whether
the claims at issue are directed to, in this case, an abstract
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10TALES, INC. v. TIKTOK INC. 6
idea. Id. If the claims are not directed to an abstract idea,
the Alice inquiry ends. Id. If we conclude that the claims
are directed to an abstract idea, the inquiry continues to
Alice step two, where we ask whether the claims recite “sig-
nificantly more” than the abstract idea itself. Id. Specifi-
cally, the court must determine “whether the claim
elements, individually and as an ordered combination, con-
tain an inventive concept, which is more than merely im-
plementing an abstract idea using well-understood,
routine, and conventional activities previously known to
the industry.” Chewy, Inc. v. Int’l Bus. Machs. Corp., 94
F.4th 1354, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2024) (citation modified).
A.
10Tales argues claim 1 is directed to the non-abstract
idea of a system for “modifying a stream of content pro-
vided to a user based on social network information about
the user that has been retrieved by the system from an ex-
ternal source.” Appellant Br. 38. But even accepting that
idea, claim 1’s system is directed to an abstract idea. As
“reflected repeatedly in our cases,” claims can be “abstract”
under step one when they lack the “specificity required to
transform a claim from one claiming only a result to one
claiming a way of achieving it.” SAP Am., Inc. v. InvestPic,
LLC, 898 F.3d 1161, 1167–68 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (collecting
cases). The claim itself “must identify ‘how’ that functional
result is achieved by limiting the claim scope to structures
specified at some level of concreteness, in the case of a prod-
uct claim, or to concrete action, in the case of a method
claim.” Am. Axle & Mfg., Inc. v. Neapco Holdings LLC, 967
F.3d 1285, 1302 (Fed. Cir. 2020).
Claim 1 recites that the system performs the following
functions by executing “one or more programming instruc-
tions”: (1) presenting an initial set of digital media assets
to a user, (2) retrieving user social network information
and attributes, (3) selecting a second set of assets based on
such information and attributes, and (4) substituting one
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10TALES, INC. v. TIKTOK INC. 7
or more of the initial set of assets for the second set once
some kind of “personalization opportunity” arises.
J.A. 59–60, 20:62–22:15. There is nothing in claim 1 di-
rected to how to implement these steps for modifying digi-
tal media content based on a user’s social network
information. Claim 1 is instead written to claim “only a
result” as opposed to a “way of achieving it.” See SAP Am.,
898 F.3d at 1167–68. Accordingly, the claim is drawn to
the underlying idea itself, i.e., presenting personalized con-
tent to a user based on information about the user. Per-
sonalizing, or customizing, information based on
information from the user is an abstract idea. Intellectual
Ventures I LLC v. Cap. One Bank (USA), 792 F.3d 1363,
1369 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (noting that “customizing information
based on . . . information known about the user” is an ab-
stract idea); see also Affinity Labs of Tex., LLC v. Ama-
zon.com Inc., 838 F.3d 1266, 1271 (Fed. Cir. 2016). For the
reasons discussed above, claim 1 is directed to an abstract
idea.
B.
Because claim 1 is directed to an abstract idea, we pro-
ceed to step two of Alice. At step two, “a claimed invention’s
use of the ineligible concept to which it is directed cannot
supply the inventive concept that renders the invention
‘significantly more’ than that ineligible concept.” BSG
Tech LLC v. BuySeasons, Inc., 899 F.3d 1281, 1290 (Fed.
Cir. 2018) (quoting Alice, 573 U.S. at 215, 218). Here, nei-
ther the claim’s components nor its functions do anything
more than implement the abstract idea of presenting per-
sonalized content to a user based on information about the
user. See J.A. 59, 20:65–67 (reciting only generic compo-
nents, such as a “server” and a “computer-readable storage
medium”). We conclude that there is nothing in the claim
sufficient to transform it into eligible subject matter.
10Tales argues that the “retrieving user social network
information from at least one source external to the
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10TALES, INC. v. TIKTOK INC. 8
presented first composite digital media display” limitation
is an inventive concept. 10Tales largely focuses on the nov-
elty of the claim, noting that the ’030 patent survived sev-
eral validity challenges because of the inclusion of this
limitation. See Appellant Br. 42–59. Specifically, 10Tales
notes that this limitation distinguished it over prior art
systems, which had not envisioned resort to user social net-
work information to improve digital media content. Appel-
lant Br. 43. But the law is clear. “[A] claim for a new
abstract idea is still an abstract idea. The search for a
§ 101 inventive concept is thus distinct from demonstrating
§ 102 novelty.” Synopsys, Inc. v. Mentor Graphics Corp.,
839 F.3d 1138, 1151 (Fed. Cir. 2016). Thus, while the in-
ventor of the ’030 patent may have had the foresight of re-
trieving user information from social networks as a means
for personalizing digital media content, that idea, without
more specificity reflected in the claim, is still an abstract
idea, and thus, cannot provide the inventive concept at step
two.
10Tales also argues that the claim’s limitation concern-
ing a “rule based substitution of one or more of the digital
media assets” also makes the specific combination of limi-
tations inventive. Appellant Br. 50. 10Tales’s argument is
unpersuasive. At claim construction, which followed the
district court’s denial of TikTok’s initial Rule 12(b)(6) mo-
tion, 10Tales did not argue for a specific construction of the
“rule based” limitation. J.A. 2930–31. As a result, the dis-
trict court instead observed that “rule based” simply refers
to “a substitution that happens by application of a rule, ra-
ther than on the basis of some discretionary or subjective
determination.” Id. (emphasis added). Thus, this nonspe-
cific “rule based” limitation, which does not limit the
claimed invention to a particular type of modification or
substitution, does not provide an inventive concept at step
two. See Secured Mail Sols. LLC v. Universal Wilde, Inc.,
873 F.3d 905, 912 (Fed. Cir. 2017).
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CONCLUSION
We have considered 10Tales’s remaining arguments
and find them unpersuasive. For the reasons provided, we
affirm.
AFFIRMED
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