⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

BT Americas challenges a Patent Office ruling against its network-security patent. BT and British Telecommunications sued Palo Alto Networks in Delaware, alleging infringement of two related patents. The patent at issue describes a probe that filters network data, flags possible security threats, and receives feedback from an analyst. The disputed claim language requires that feedback to change the probe's analysis during operation. Palo Alto challenged the patent at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which found the challenged claims obvious. Obviousness asks whether an ordinarily skilled practitioner would have arrived at the claimed invention from earlier knowledge. BT appealed to the Federal Circuit; this hearing concerns the patent challenge, not whether Palo Alto infringed. Inherency means an unstated feature must necessarily be present in the earlier technology, not merely possible. Jonathan Roberts will argue for BT that editing stored filtering rules does not, by itself, show that a running probe uses those changes. He will also dispute the reason for combining two earlier works, called Duvall and Chu.

BT Americas, Inc. v. Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (No. 25-1572) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, argued October 6, 2026.