Too Concrete to Fail: Ceiva’s Guidance on the Use of Sufficiently Concrete Structures to Overcome Section 101 Rejections

The Federal Circuit’s July 23, 2026, non-precedential decision in Ceiva Opco, LLC v. Amazon.com, Inc. provides helpful guidance on elements that render claims abstract or non-abstract.

In Ceiva, the challenged claims concerned an improvement to digital picture frames. Prior art digital picture frames had built-in memory and required user interaction with the physical device to update images or settings. The improved technology provided remote user access to the digital picture frame so that a third party or remote user can upload images and update settings without physical access to the picture frame. The district court invalidated the claims under Section 101 at summary judgment, finding them directed to a “generic user interface performing a generic function”.

In a relatively rare move, the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s Section 101 decision in part, finding under Alice step 1 that the claimed digital picture frame with a physically separable user interface are “sufficiently concrete structures” to limit the claimed functional result of remote user access to the digital picture frame. As the Federal Circuit found, these concrete structures govern “when and how the digital picture frame” receives image data and settings updates, which is a “sufficiently specific technological advancement” to render the claims non-abstract. This is because they recite “a specific type of improved digital picture frame that provides remote user access” instead of merely “the result of automatic, remote image sharing.”

In contrast, the Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment of invalidity for claims that were not limited to a digital picture frame physically separable from a user interface because those claims simply recited software configured to achieve remote access functions without claiming “any specific ways to achieve those results.” Without direction in the claim about how to implement software to achieve the claimed function, the claims were abstract at Alice step 1. And the patent owner could not save the claims at Alice step 2 without indicating the inventiveness of any specific claim limitation.

For patent practitioners, Ceiva provides welcome guidance for how to adapt claims to focus on concrete structures demonstrating how to achieve claimed results, so that claims overcome § 101 at Alice step 1. Meanwhile, the case also provides direction to litigators hoping to separate abstract claims from non-abstract ones.