ClickFunnels vs GoHighLevel Lawsuit: The 2026 Ruling

For two years, "ClickFunnels is suing GoHighLevel" circulated through agency communities as a half-understood rumor, occasionally inflated into predictions that one platform would be forced to change course. The case is now closed, all the way through appeal, and every document is public. Here is what actually happened and what it means for anyone using either platform.

What was the ClickFunnels vs GoHighLevel lawsuit about?

In April 2024, Etison LLC, the company operating as ClickFunnels, sued HighLevel, Inc. in federal court in Delaware. The case, Etison LLC v. HighLevel, Inc., No. 1:24-cv-00502, was a patent infringement claim, not a trademark dispute or a poaching allegation, which is how it was often misdescribed in YouTube commentary at the time.

ClickFunnels asserted two patents: U.S. Patent No. 10,846,357 and U.S. Patent No. 11,361,047. Both describe a website creation system for building sites with a "series of directional webpages," which is patent language for the thing both companies sell: a funnel builder that walks a visitor through a fixed sequence of pages toward a purchase.

The accusation, in plain terms, was that HighLevel's funnel builder infringed ClickFunnels' patented approach to guiding users through step-by-step page sequences. If the patents had held up, the case could have threatened the funnel-building core of the GoHighLevel platform.

What did the court decide?

The district court dismissed the case with prejudice before the copying question was ever examined. HighLevel never had to defend its technical choices.

Judge J. Campbell Barker applied the standard two-step Alice test. Step one: the patent claims are directed to the abstract idea of "filtering information based on user preferences to arrive at a final result." Step two: the claims add no inventive concept beyond running that idea on generic computers. ClickFunnels' specifications touted gains like reduced processing power and fewer server calls, but the court found those benefits flow from the filtering idea itself, not from any novel technical arrangement. The case was dismissed with prejudice on March 31, 2025, meaning ClickFunnels could not refile it.

"Dismissed with prejudice" at the pleading stage is about as decisive as a patent defense result gets.

Why were the patents ruled invalid?

The outcome surprised patent lawyers far less than it surprised the GoHighLevel community. Since the Supreme Court decided Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank in 2014, courts have invalidated a long line of software patents that describe a familiar business practice and then add "on a computer." Guiding a visitor through a page sequence toward a purchase is a sales technique older than the web; the Alice framework treats a patent on that concept as an attempt to own the idea itself rather than a specific technical invention.

That context matters for reading the result correctly. The ruling is not a statement that funnel builders are trivial software, or that ClickFunnels did not pioneer the category commercially. It is a statement that the legal system will not grant any one company a monopoly on the concept of directional page sequences.

What was the appeal about, and what is the harmless-error ruling?

ClickFunnels appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the specialized court that hears every patent appeal in the country, in case No. 25-1711, filed April 29, 2025.

The appeal rested on a procedural argument: the district court had treated a single claim as representative of each patent without separately analyzing two dependent claims, specifically claim 13 of the '357 patent and claim 16 of the '047 patent, both of which add "one or more triggers" limitations. ClickFunnels argued those specific claims deserved their own analysis.

On July 2, 2026, the Federal Circuit issued a nonprecedential opinion affirming the dismissal. The panel agreed the district court should have resolved the representativeness dispute first. But it held the error harmless: those dependent claims had been examined at step two of the Alice analysis, they fail for the same reasons as the representative claim, and the outcome does not change. According to IPWatchdog's analysis of the ruling, the Federal Circuit also set out procedural guidance for how representative-claim disputes should be handled in future Section 101 cases, a nuance patent practitioners will cite well beyond this case.

For ClickFunnels, the affirmance closed the realistic paths forward. A dismissal with prejudice, affirmed on appeal, leaves only a petition to the Supreme Court, which accepts a tiny fraction of patent cases and has declined every invitation to revisit Alice for over a decade.

Does this affect my GoHighLevel or ClickFunnels account?

No. Neither platform's products were changed, restricted, or enjoined at any point during this litigation, and the July 2026 ruling requires no changes from either company.

For GoHighLevel users: the funnel builder was never at risk of being shut down by a court order, and that risk is now fully resolved. Agencies building client funnels, running SaaS Mode, or operating white-label subaccounts can ignore this lawsuit entirely.

For ClickFunnels users: the company lost the enforceability of two patents, not any part of its software. ClickFunnels' platform, its courses, and its funnel-building tools are unchanged.

The two-year backdrop is worth noting when evaluating either company's marketing. The rivalry is real and occasionally litigious, and it colors how each side's affiliates discuss the other. No court in this case ever decided whether HighLevel copied ClickFunnels; the case was dismissed before that question was examined. The ruling says the patents cover unpatentable subject matter, nothing more.

What does it mean for the funnel-building software market?

The ruling confirms that the fundamental concept of building sequential landing pages cannot be patent-locked by any single company. Every funnel tool on the market benefits from that outcome.

The competitive dynamic between the two platforms returns entirely to the product, where it has been effectively decided anyway. ClickFunnels has stayed focused on funnels and online courses; GoHighLevel has built out a broader agency stack with CRM, SaaS Mode, AI employees, and white-label infrastructure. Users choosing between them should weigh features and pricing, not courtroom outcomes.

The full feature and pricing comparison is in the GoHighLevel review. For those already decided, the ClickFunnels to GoHighLevel migration guide covers the practical steps of moving across.

Timeline of Etison LLC v. HighLevel, Inc.

This article provides general information about a public court proceeding and is not legal advice.