Netflix Wins Revival of Challenge to DivX Streaming Video Patent

Netflix Inc. convinced an appellate court to send the streaming giant’s challenge of a DivX LLC decryption patent back to an administrative tribunal.

A US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit panel Thursday ruled that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board wrongly rejected Netflix’s argument that two pieces of prior art, read in combination, render the challenged claims in US Patent No. 9,184,920 unpatentable as obvious.

The board had agreed with DivX that the patent’s focus on decrypting frames of video, rather than “a transport stream,” was novel, upholding the patent over Netflix’s contentions that the prior art taught ...