In the wake of a recent major patent ruling from the Supreme Court, the top patent court has been ordered to reconsider one of the more controversial patents that's been fought over in the past few years.

US patent 7,346,545 is owned by a company called Ultramercial, which sued Hulu, YouTube, and a gaming company called WildTangent back in 2011. It describes a "method and system for payment of intellectual property royalties by interposed sponsor on behalf of consumer over a telecommunications network." In plain English, it describes a system in which viewers watch an advertisement as a "payment," and then get to watch a piece of online content.

The district court judge threw out the patent, finding that it was an unpatentable abstract idea. But the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which hears all patent appeals, saw it differently. It said the patent at least passed the "abstract" test of Section 101 of the patent laws.

WildTangent, the only one of the three defendants remaining in the case, kept fighting. It petitioned the Supreme Court, which had broadened Section 101 in recent rulings. The high court didn't take the case, but ordered the Federal Circuit to reconsider its allowance of the Ultramercial patent. A Federal Circuit panel led by now-retired Chief Judge Randall Rader again allowed the patent in June of 2013. Activist groups working to change patent laws, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the high court should intervene once more, and WildTangent filed another petition.

On Monday, the Supreme Court granted WildTangent's second petition, in a short "summary disposition," and ordered the case to be sent to the Federal Circuit for the third time. The Federal Circuit must reconsider the patent in light of the recent ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank, a 9-0 decision in which the Supreme Court ruled that adding computer language to patents on basic ideas isn't enough to stop them from getting tossed out under Section 101.

Ad-supported content is a very old idea. It's more common than ever in the Internet age, with Google and all manner of media companies running ads together with free content. But the idea is much older than that. In the US, the idea of using ads to keep content cheap goes back to the penny press of the mid-1800s; in the video space, it's as old as broadcast TV.

Even though Section 101 uses the language of "abstract" ideas, the Supreme Court's view is that that should apply to things that are very old, as well. Alice's patent was on using an intermediary in finance, and the Bilski patent was on a method of financial hedging; both were thrown out under Section 101. Recently, FindTheBest fought off a patent troll wielding a patent on "matchmaking," when the judge overseeing the case pointed out that matchmaking had been going on "for millennia."