This follows immediately from the fact that one of a or b is divisible by four, together with the definition of congruent numbers as the areas of rational-sided right triangles. See e.g. Koblitz, Neal (1993), Introduction to Elliptic Curves and Modular Forms, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 97, Springer, p. 3, ISBN9780387979663.
jstor.org
Mitchell, Douglas W. (July 2001), "An Alternative Characterisation of All Primitive Pythagorean Triples", The Mathematical Gazette, 85 (503): 273–5, JSTOR3622017