Ollnova v. ecobee: Federal Circuit Reaffirms the Requirements for Patent Jury Instructions and Verdict Forms

Recently in Ollnova Technologies Ltd. v. ecobee Technologies ULC, the Federal Circuit reaffirmed its prior decision in Optis Cellular Tech., LLC v. Apple Inc., 139 F.4th 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2025), requiring that (1) patent verdict forms present the infringement question at least on a patent-by-patent basis; and (2) the jury receive an instruction on the § 101 abstract idea when it is asked to determine whether an inventive concept exists. No. 2025-1045, 2026 WL 1596936, at *8, *11 (Fed. Cir. June 4, 2026).

Like Optis, Ollnova involved a challenge to the sufficiency of the patent verdict form and jury instructions used in the Eastern District of Texas where a single infringement question was presented for multiple patents. Ollnova also examined the propriety of asking the jury to determine whether a § 101 inventive concept exists without an explicit instruction that identifies the abstract idea at issue.

(1) The Federal Circuit held that a patent verdict form must break out infringement questions at least on a patent-by-patent basis. 

Despite the assertion of multiple patents, the verdict form in both Ollnova and Optis asked the jury to answer whether defendant “infringed ANY of the Asserted Claims” without breaking out the question by patent. In Ollnova, the Federal Circuit reiterated that such a combined question on infringement created an unacceptable risk of a non-unanimous general verdict. Even if the jury instructions required assessing infringement on a claim-by-claim basis, the jury could have followed those instructions and still answered “yes” to the infringement question on the verdict form without unanimously agreeing that the defendant infringed the same patent out of the multiple asserted patents. 

The Federal Circuit left open the question of whether the verdict form must be further broken out on a patent claim-by-claim basis, as that issue was not presented in the appeal. Even so, parties should consider whether patent-by-patent or claim-by-claim infringement questions are appropriate on the facts of their case, and to shield against future challenges to the verdict form. 

(2) The Federal Circuit held that if the jury will decide Step Two of the § 101 Alice framework, the court should instruct the jury as to the abstract idea at Step One.

In Ollnova, Judge Gilstrap held that the claims of one of the asserted patents were directed to an abstract idea at Step One of Alice. But because factual disputes remained at Step Two of Alice, the patent survived the motion to dismiss stage. Later at trial, the jury was asked to decide whether the same patent’s claim limitations were “well-understood, routine, and conventional” at the time of the patent. In doing so, the jury never learned what abstract idea the court had identified in its earlier ruling. As a result, the jury could have treated the abstract idea itself as supplying the inventive concept at Step Two, violating Federal Circuit precedent requiring identification of an inventive concept beyond the abstract idea identified at Step One. 

Consistent with its decision in Optis, the Federal Circuit held that the district court must instruct the jury (a) as to what the abstract idea is and (b) that the abstract idea cannot supply the inventive concept. And in a footnote, the Federal Circuit encouraged district courts to determine the abstract idea before trial to avoid the possibility of a post-trial abstract idea resolution that conflicts with the abstract idea in the jury charge, thereby requiring a new trial. Although Ollnova does not require the abstract idea to be articulated on the verdict form, parties should consider whether incorporating the district court’s articulation of the abstract idea into the Alice Step Two question on the verdict form would shield against a subsequent argument that the jury did not take the abstract idea into proper consideration.