When Data Becomes the Diamond: What MLB Media and the USPTO’s Desjardins Decision Reveal About the Future of Patent Eligibility

Two seemingly unrelated events mark a pivotal shift in how innovation is defined and protected.

• MLB Advanced Media (MLB AM) built a multi-billion-dollar valuation by patenting the digital architecture behind baseball: geo-fenced streaming, pitch-tracking analytics, and content rights enforcement.
• The USPTO’s precedential decision in Ex parte Desjardins (September 2025) re-anchors U.S. patent eligibility in the same principle: architectural transformation of information flow equals invention.

Director John Squires’s remark, “Eligibility follows architecture,” is more than guidance to examiners. It is a blueprint for startups. Innovation no longer resides in code or components. It resides in the data structures and system architectures that reorganize information itself.

1. Risk Mitigation: Protect the Architecture Before It Becomes Invisible

MLB AM’s geo-fencing and content-distribution patents insulated the league from digital rights piracy.

In Desjardins, the USPTO clarified that an AI invention improving how information is represented or processed is eligible, not abstract.

Strategic Parallel:
Both entities recognized that when technology rewires information flow, risk shifts from physical infringement to informational imitation.

Startup Application:

• File patents on systemic improvements, focusing on how your architecture manages data rather than just the outcomes it produces.
• Treat information routing, model-training workflows, and permission layers as protectable inventions.
• Use trade secrets to protect the data and algorithms, but use patents to secure the systemic logic that makes them valuable.

Failing to patent architecture leaves your innovation open to algorithmic imitation that is nearly impossible to detect or litigate later.

2. Competitive Positioning: From Features to Frameworks

MLB AM did not patent baseball highlights. It patented the platform that delivers them.

In Desjardins, the USPTO reaffirmed that improvements to data structures, such as machine-learning models that learn sequentially without forgetting, are patent-eligible architectures.

Strategic Lesson:
Patenting frameworks rather than features creates durable competitive asymmetry.

• A rival can copy an app feature, but cannot easily design around a patented data architecture without rebuilding its system.
• In AI, this means protecting the model-training pipeline, not just the model output.

Startup Translation:
Ask not “what feature is new,” but “what flow of information have we re-engineered?”
That question defines the difference between fleeting innovation and defensible architecture.

3. Valuation Enhancement: Architectural IP as Investor Signal

Disney acquired BAMTech for billions, not because of its user interface, but because MLB AM owned the architecture of adaptive streaming.

The Desjardins decision gives legal legitimacy to that same class of innovation in AI: inventions that improve data handling itself.

Investor Psychology:

• Architectural IP signals technical maturity and scalability.
• It transforms your valuation narrative from “we built an algorithm” to “we re-engineered the digital infrastructure of our industry.”

When Squires said “eligibility follows architecture,” investors should hear “valuation follows architecture.”
Those who control the rails of information control the market.

4. The Layered IP Playbook: Patent What You Show, Guard What You Know

MLB AM combined publicly available patents on streaming architecture with private trade secrets in analytics.

Startups should follow the same model:

• Patent the system’s skeleton, which is eligible under Desjardins.
• Protect the algorithmic intelligence as trade secrets.
• Copyright and trademark the interface that delivers it.

Each layer reinforces the next, forming what M&B IP calls a mutually assured destruction portfolio—a deterrent, not a wall.

5. The Socratic Lens

Ask yourself:

• Does my innovation re-route information in a way that changes performance or capability?
• Can that architecture be mapped, claimed, and defended?
• Would a competitor have to rebuild their data stack to avoid infringement?

If the answer is yes, you have a Desjardins-class invention and should be drafting claims accordingly.

Actionable Recommendations

1. File for Architecture, Not Output: Frame claims around the re-engineering of data structures, workflows, or model interactions.
2. Integrate IP with Data Governance: Maintain documentation linking each architectural improvement to measurable outcomes.
3. Expand Layered Protection: Pair system patents with confidential datasets and process trade secrets.
4. Signal Architectural Ownership to Investors: Present your IP as proof that you own the rails your market runs on.
   Monitor USPTO Guidance Updates: Stay ahead as examiner training aligns with Squire’s directive. Early filers will define the precedent.

Closing Insight

Desjardins confirms that invention begins when technology rewires how information flows.

MLB Advanced Media proved that principle in commerce. The USPTO has now engraved it into law.

For the modern startup, the message is unequivocal: 

Architect the flow. Patent the system. Own the game.