Patent Litigation Update: Adnexus Inc. v. Meta Platforms, Inc.

The Federal Circuit recently issued a precedential decision in Adnexus Inc. v. Meta Platforms, Inc., 2024-1551, vacating a district court’s order granting Meta’s motion to dismiss Adnexus’ complaint for failure to state a claim for patent infringement.[1] As summarized below, the Court’s decision to vacate the dismissal order focused on the requirement that Adnexus’ complaint needed only to state a “plausible” claim for relief to survive the motion and held the Adnexus’ infringement claim remained plausible absent an unfavorable claim construction.

Below we summarize the background of the case and the Federal Circuit’s analysis and vacatur, which emphasizes the Court’s general reluctance to resolve infringement disputes at the pleading stage when doing so requires claim construction.

Adnexus’ Complaint

            Adnexus sued Meta for infringement of claim 1 of the ’101 patent.[2] The ’101 patent is directed a method of online advertising and purports to enable internet advertising companies “to promote products and services to potential customers” without “the risk of pushing numerous advertisements to potential customers that are not relevant or desired by the recipient.”[3]

Adnexus’s complaint accused Meta’s “Lead Ads” product of infringing.[4] The basis for Meta’s motion to dismiss was claim 1’s recitation of  “retrieving a user profile associated with the recipient from a visitor information database using at least a portion of the identifier [containing unique identifying information about the recipient], wherein the user profile comprises at least delivery method preferences and demographic information.”[5] In support of its infringement claims, Adnexus attached claim charts and preliminary infringement contentions that mapped the claim 1 limitations to Meta’s Lead Ads product.[6] Adnexus’ charts and contentions mapped the “delivery method preferences” limitation to the Facebook user’s preferred contact information and, in particular, the user’s email address.[7]

The District Court’s Dismissal

Meta disputed that a preferred email address could constitute delivery method preferences and therefore moved to dismiss the complaint on the basis that Meta could not plausibly infringe under Adnexus’ theory.[8] The district court agreed with Meta, granted the motion, and dismissed the case—concluding that “contact information is sufficiently distinct from delivery method preferences such that contact information cannot be a delivery method preference.”[9]Adnexus then appealed to the Federal Circuit.[10]

The Federal Circuit’s Analysis and Vacature

The Federal Circuit’s analysis began by recognizing that to survive the motion to dismiss, Adnexus’ complaint needed only to state a claim for relief that is plausible.[11] The Court noted that the plausibility standard does not equate to a probability requirement: “it is enough that a complaint places the alleged infringer on notice of what activity is being accused of infringement.”[12]

The Court thus reasoned that the only way Meta’s motion to dismiss could succeed would be if Meta obtained a claim construction that made Adnexus’ mapping of the “delivery method preferences” limitation to “contact information” implausible.

The district court did implicitly construe “delivery method preferences” in favor of Meta to exclude contact information in granting Meta’s motion. But according to the Court, it was error for the district court to construe the claims against Adnexus at the pleading stage without first giving Adnexus notice and an opportunity to be heard on the issue.[13]While the Court acknowledged that both Meta and Adnexus pointed to portions of the ’101 patent’s specification that supported their competing interpretations of the “delivery method preferences” limitation, the Federal Circuit elected to remand the case to the district court to resolve the claim construction dispute—either in connection with the motion to dismiss or later in the case.[14]

[1] Adnexus Inc. v. Meta Platforms, Inc., 160 F.4th 1216  (Fed. Cir. 2025).

[2] Id. at 1218.

[3] Id. (quoting ’101 patent at 1:13-36) (cleaned up and internal quotations omitted).

[4] Id.

[5] Id. at 1218–19.

[6] Id. at 1219.

[7] Id. at 1219, 1223.

[8] Id. at 1219.

[9] Id. at 1219–20.

[10] Id. at 1220.

[11] Id.

[12] Id. at 1221 (citing Bot M8 LLC v. Sony Corp. of Am., 4 F.4th 1342, 1352 (Fed. Cir. 2021); Disc Disease Sols. Inc. v. VGH Sols., Inc., 888 F.3d 1256, 1260 (Fed. Cir. 2018)).

[13] Id. at 1223.

[14] Id. at 1222, 1224.