[00:00:03] Speaker 01: We will hear argument this afternoon in number 15, 1778, electric power group versus Alstom. [00:00:14] Speaker 01: Mr. Hassam? [00:00:15] Speaker 01: Yes, Your Honor. [00:00:16] Speaker 02: Please. [00:00:29] Speaker 02: May I please record, Your Honors, by way of just a very brief [00:00:33] Speaker 02: brief background, the US electric power grid is considered the most complex machine in the world. [00:00:40] Speaker 02: It consists of thousands of sources and sinks interconnected by millions of miles of transmission lines. [00:00:46] Speaker 02: A relatively limited number of sources, such as power plants, must constantly be monitored and adjusted to load requirements to provide the correct amount of power to sinks of power, including home lights, for example, all the way to large scale [00:01:03] Speaker 02: industrial machinery, and all of this must be done in real time. [00:01:07] Speaker 02: The reason for this is because electricity is very difficult to store. [00:01:13] Speaker 02: Generation and load are in a constant state of flux and must be balanced continually over various control areas. [00:01:23] Speaker 02: The problem here that the claims at issue attempt to solve is directed to how to provide an operator with situational awareness of sub-second [00:01:33] Speaker 02: transient events that can affect the dynamic stability of the electric power grid and cause faults that can lead to a blackout. [00:01:42] Speaker 00: Well, that sort of gets right at the core of what I have a problem with this whole concept of having solved a problem here. [00:01:53] Speaker 00: You've described the problem. [00:01:55] Speaker 00: Yes. [00:01:55] Speaker 00: The problem is to have a system [00:01:59] Speaker 00: that allows a simultaneous, synchronized receipt and display of information at a pace and in a form that humans can understand. [00:02:12] Speaker 00: But my question to you is, how has your invention solved that problem, other than to say that the solution to the problem is to have a system in which there is a synchronized display of information [00:02:28] Speaker 00: in a way that humans can understand, which is just a restatement of the problem. [00:02:33] Speaker 00: I don't see what technological advance you have made over the problem that was there at the doorstep. [00:02:44] Speaker 02: Well, Your Honor, the problem and the solution to the problem, particularly, is in the language of the claims. [00:02:50] Speaker 02: We take a look, for example, at claim one of the 259 patents, and that includes [00:02:55] Speaker 02: a double transformation and concurrent visualization of certain types of raw data. [00:03:02] Speaker 02: Now, that raw data is sub-second, synchronized, synchrophasor data. [00:03:08] Speaker 00: But that's just commonplace in the industry, as I understand it. [00:03:13] Speaker 00: That's the kind of data that's out there. [00:03:15] Speaker 00: That is the basic data that you deal with, the synchronized sub-second phasor [00:03:23] Speaker 00: I understand. [00:03:25] Speaker 00: So what is it that you're doing with that data that goes beyond simply announcing that you're going to display it in a user-friendly way? [00:03:35] Speaker 02: Well, first of all, that is not the common data that's used. [00:03:38] Speaker 02: The common data that's used is SCADA data, which is at multiple second intervals, not sub-second, and it doesn't have the same resolution as phasor data does. [00:03:47] Speaker 02: But let me answer your question. [00:03:50] Speaker 02: on page 83076, page 20 of the brief, this is what raw synchrophaser data looks like. [00:03:57] Speaker 02: It looks like an EKG or something that would come out of a monitoring machine, for example, that you may be familiar with to monitor the heart or the biological process. [00:04:07] Speaker 02: This is information that is humanly incomprehensible. [00:04:11] Speaker 02: This raw data that comes out of the phasers cannot be interpreted. [00:04:16] Speaker 03: Did others use that kind of data? [00:04:19] Speaker 03: albeit from one source, in order to be able to display it in a way that was humanly readable and understandable? [00:04:26] Speaker 02: No. [00:04:28] Speaker 02: No. [00:04:28] Speaker 02: That was not done. [00:04:30] Speaker 02: And what the invention does here is it takes this humanly incomprehensible data that, for example, if there were a transient propagating through the system and could create a fault, that fault could go right through the control area of an operator before he or she would even be aware of it. [00:04:46] Speaker 02: Because that's what he or she, the operator, would see. [00:04:49] Speaker 02: Now what the claims do, and this is engrafted in the language of the claims, is that it takes this and then what it does is through four carefully chosen dynamic stability metrics, for example, phase angle is one of them, it extracts values from this synchrophasor data that's humanly incomprehensible, streams it in real time, which is defined to be one to four seconds, and then that streaming data [00:05:18] Speaker 02: is still, because it's coming from multiple sources over a wide area in this invention, is still overwhelming. [00:05:26] Speaker 02: Imagine streams of discrete data coming out of this phaser data, but coming out from multiple sources in your control area and another control area, and this would be overwhelming. [00:05:37] Speaker 02: This would not allow the operator to be aware of the conditions that are propagating through her network. [00:05:43] Speaker 02: So what the system then does, as part of the second part of the [00:05:48] Speaker 02: this transformation is that it takes the discrete streaming values and then it provides what's called a concurrent visualization interface. [00:05:57] Speaker 02: This concurrent visualization interface provides the situational awareness of the once transformed data. [00:06:04] Speaker 02: This is the second transformation as we call it. [00:06:07] Speaker 02: That interface, for example, can be seen on figure 16 and the subsequent figures in the patent. [00:06:15] Speaker 00: Well, we can look at the... Which patent are you... The 259. [00:06:19] Speaker 02: They have the same spec, 8179, if you are, for example. [00:06:23] Speaker 02: So, you can see here a depiction on that ACE 179. [00:06:32] Speaker 02: Figure 16 of the patents. [00:06:38] Speaker 02: And the subsequent figures. [00:06:39] Speaker 02: You can see this concurrent visualization panel. [00:06:42] Speaker 02: The concurrent visualization panel [00:06:45] Speaker 02: provides overlays of the streaming metrics coming from different areas over a geographical map. [00:06:55] Speaker 02: And it includes other data, grid data that's carefully defined in the claims, such as SCADA data and other non-grid data. [00:07:02] Speaker 02: And it provides overlays. [00:07:04] Speaker 02: Now this is not a static picture. [00:07:05] Speaker 02: This is rapidly streaming and moving data. [00:07:08] Speaker 02: But even that isn't enough. [00:07:10] Speaker 02: The claims go on to talk about, in the context of concurrent visualization, [00:07:15] Speaker 02: that it requires two other sources of information that are put onto the same screen in order to give context to the information that the operator is seeing. [00:07:27] Speaker 02: For example, the operator will see this information and still may not be aware of whether this transient, because there are thousands of transients that occur at any moment. [00:07:36] Speaker 02: Which ones are the problematic ones? [00:07:38] Speaker 02: Very few. [00:07:39] Speaker 02: But the problem is how do you determine which ones are there? [00:07:42] Speaker 02: How can you become aware [00:07:44] Speaker 02: This system allows you to do that with the contextual information. [00:07:47] Speaker 00: And what is it that the system does that identifies the problematic kinds of data? [00:07:54] Speaker 02: What it does is that it displays the data in context of, for example, geographic maps. [00:08:01] Speaker 02: It could have power line maps on there. [00:08:03] Speaker 02: This is in the claims. [00:08:04] Speaker 02: It could have other data that shows whether it's close to a sink. [00:08:09] Speaker 02: A large population center can show whether it's close to a power plant. [00:08:12] Speaker 00: It shows you a map, and it shows you somewhere on the map there is a problem. [00:08:16] Speaker 02: And it does that, and it shows you the context of the problem, because even that isn't enough. [00:08:24] Speaker 02: So for example, in the claims, if you look in the 710 patent, claim 12, it specifically states, that's the one that the district court went into, that it has other panels of historical data and tracking data. [00:08:39] Speaker 02: So, for example, you can see the data being tracked and you can say, well, this transient occurred similarly some time in history in the past. [00:08:48] Speaker 02: Was it a problem then? [00:08:49] Speaker 02: Well, if it was a problem then, looking at the historical data and what happened, could it be a problem now? [00:08:55] Speaker 02: Yes or no? [00:08:56] Speaker 02: That way you're not chasing false alarms, so to speak, and taking action when you don't need to, such as shutting off a generator or adding more, which itself can cause a fault. [00:09:07] Speaker 02: So this is engrafted into the claims. [00:09:11] Speaker 02: So if you look at, for example, in the 843 patent, the first one, it's more general, but we believe that the claim constructions would lend itself to that. [00:09:19] Speaker 02: In the 259 patent and the 710 patent, which are the asserted patents as well, the asserted claims, this is spelled out in great detail, every one of these elements. [00:09:31] Speaker 02: And this is very different than just taking some data and saying, here's a solution to a problem. [00:09:36] Speaker 02: There's a physical transformation and characterization of the data so the operator can be situationally aware. [00:09:43] Speaker 02: Now, what's important, I think, to understand is to distinguish this from the prior art in how things were done in the context of power grid monitoring. [00:09:52] Speaker 02: The way that they were done is shown on page 85022, for example, of the appendix. [00:10:00] Speaker 02: But I can show it to you. [00:10:02] Speaker 02: These were done using SCADA data, and then they were displayed [00:10:06] Speaker 02: using one-line diagrams. [00:10:08] Speaker 02: There was no transformation in SCADA data, which was done once every few seconds, far too slow to detect sub-second transient events, no transformation. [00:10:20] Speaker 02: It would go into an estimation program, and then it would be displayed in a one-line diagram. [00:10:26] Speaker 02: Now, these could fill up an entire wall of a control room. [00:10:29] Speaker 02: And these one-line diagrams are basically electric circuit representations [00:10:35] Speaker 02: as you would see a conventional electric diagram of a physical grid. [00:10:41] Speaker 02: That's how it was done. [00:10:43] Speaker 02: And when you talk about, oh, for example, somebody would say this is just geographical maps and overlays. [00:10:50] Speaker 02: In this industry, that is very different from what was done. [00:10:56] Speaker 02: And Alice, a careful reading of Alice, says that was this problem known in the industry? [00:11:04] Speaker 02: It's not whether it was generally known in some other place. [00:11:08] Speaker 02: Was it an issue in this industry? [00:11:10] Speaker 02: Was it different from what was done in this industry? [00:11:14] Speaker 02: And it's very different. [00:11:17] Speaker 02: I mean, you can just imagine a one-line diagram. [00:11:19] Speaker 02: Now, this one-line diagram is not very useful when you have to do wide area. [00:11:26] Speaker 02: That's why it was only used for local area. [00:11:28] Speaker 02: And what happened is, is that the monitors kept getting bigger and bigger, the wider you tried to go. [00:11:34] Speaker 02: the data control area got. [00:11:36] Speaker 02: Further, the types of SCADA data that was used is not time synchronized. [00:11:40] Speaker 02: And therefore, if you get data from two disparate points and try to compare it, the timing will be off. [00:11:46] Speaker 02: So it will not give you readable data because additional error, creep, and the like will be put into it. [00:11:54] Speaker 03: Where is that reflected in your claims? [00:11:57] Speaker 02: What, the deficiencies of SCADA data? [00:11:59] Speaker 03: Or the problems of bringing [00:12:01] Speaker 03: data from two different systems and having them work together? [00:12:07] Speaker 02: Well, where it's reflected, for example, is in claim... Can we look at claim 12, for example, of the 710 patent? [00:12:23] Speaker 03: Sure. [00:12:26] Speaker 02: So claim 12 of the patent talks about [00:12:34] Speaker 02: taking grid data, and the grid data is defined as including power line data or SCADA data. [00:12:42] Speaker 02: So for example, it says receiving data from other power system data sources, the other power system data sources comprising at least one of transmission maps, power plant locations, EMS SCADA systems. [00:12:59] Speaker 02: So this is the other type of data that can be overlaid. [00:13:02] Speaker 03: I understand, but you were talking about solving a technical problem. [00:13:05] Speaker 03: I thought I heard you talking about a technical problem where you have all these different kinds of data coming from different sources. [00:13:14] Speaker 03: And then you bring them together and you want to display something meaningful. [00:13:18] Speaker 03: And so you were saying there's problems that the invention overcomes with respect to bringing those different types of data together. [00:13:25] Speaker 03: And I was asking, where is that reflected in the claim? [00:13:28] Speaker 03: I understand the claim talks about generally bringing this different data together. [00:13:33] Speaker 03: But it doesn't, I was wondering where it talks about the solving the particular problem that you were mentioning. [00:13:39] Speaker 02: I may have been speaking too fast and I shifted gears a little bit. [00:13:42] Speaker 02: So what I was saying with the double transformation is that if you look at the first subparagraph of claim 12, for example, it says we're receiving a plurality of data streams, each of the streams comprising [00:13:54] Speaker 02: sub-second, time-stamped, synchronized phasor measurements, where in each stream are collected in real-time and geographically, this first point. [00:14:03] Speaker 02: Then it talks about deriving from the phasor streams very particular measurements, including at least one of frequency instability, voltage, power flows, phase angles, and damping. [00:14:20] Speaker 02: So those are the streaming values that are derived from it. [00:14:24] Speaker 02: Because, again, when you look at the original information, it's like this. [00:14:28] Speaker 02: It's completely meaningless. [00:14:30] Speaker 02: And what you do is you extract the values. [00:14:32] Speaker 02: You just take components of it at a real-time level, which is once every few seconds. [00:14:37] Speaker 02: That's defined in the spec. [00:14:38] Speaker 02: And then you stream those onto the map. [00:14:41] Speaker 02: And that geographical map is the third part of it, which then overlays that information next to power plants, power lines, cities, [00:14:50] Speaker 02: other aspects of it, and then you have the contextual displays that are part of the visualization. [00:14:56] Speaker 02: That's the solution to the problem. [00:14:58] Speaker 02: Because even this data is incomprehensible. [00:15:02] Speaker 02: But when you take it from geographically dispersed points, it's even more incomprehensible. [00:15:08] Speaker 02: And even when you distill it to values, taking those values from different points, even at a few seconds apiece, is still an overwhelming amount of data. [00:15:18] Speaker 02: especially with respect to the inherent problem, which is the movement of transients through the system. [00:15:24] Speaker 00: And the solution to the overwhelming number of data points is sampling? [00:15:30] Speaker 00: Is that essentially what you're saying? [00:15:33] Speaker 00: Well, not exactly in this case. [00:15:36] Speaker 00: What is the solution if it's not sampling that this patent claims? [00:15:41] Speaker 02: The solution is, okay, part of it is sampling in the broad sense. [00:15:46] Speaker 02: However, it is sampling. [00:15:48] Speaker 02: Very specific components that are carefully chosen and a small, finite amount of components. [00:15:56] Speaker 02: So you just need at least one of these components. [00:15:59] Speaker 02: And it's very specific components that are noted over there. [00:16:03] Speaker 02: It's not just any component. [00:16:04] Speaker 02: It's just not any type of sampling. [00:16:06] Speaker 02: These are the components that you were then streaming. [00:16:10] Speaker 02: And then it explains how. [00:16:12] Speaker 03: What specific language in the claim are you lying on for that? [00:16:16] Speaker 02: For which one? [00:16:17] Speaker 03: The components. [00:16:18] Speaker 02: Oh, yes. [00:16:20] Speaker 02: The components are... So, for example, you have the 259,000, just right here, where the monitor computer provides... What claim of the 259,000 are you looking at? [00:16:40] Speaker 02: I had nine of them. [00:16:42] Speaker 02: Okay. [00:16:42] Speaker 02: We're in the monitor computer derives in real time from the quality of data streams. [00:16:46] Speaker 02: These are the timestamped data streams from at least two distinct entities. [00:16:51] Speaker 02: And these are in different areas. [00:16:53] Speaker 02: One or more dynamic stability metrics, including phase angles, damping, oscillation modes, and sensitivities. [00:17:00] Speaker 02: Four. [00:17:03] Speaker 01: This is claim nine of what? [00:17:04] Speaker 01: Claim one. [00:17:05] Speaker 01: Claim one, yes. [00:17:13] Speaker 01: And you have exhausted your time level of this or your free huddle time. [00:17:19] Speaker 01: Thank you. [00:17:34] Speaker 01: Ms. [00:17:34] Speaker 01: Bishop. [00:17:35] Speaker 04: May it please the court? [00:17:37] Speaker 04: According to this court's recent decision and fish, the Alice inquiry begins [00:17:42] Speaker 04: by asking whether the focus on the claims is on a specific asserted improvement in computer functioning, or instead on a process that qualifies as an abstract idea that merely uses computers as a tool. [00:17:56] Speaker 04: Here we have the latter. [00:17:58] Speaker 04: Computers are merely invoked as tools to implement the idea of a real-time wide area monitoring system. [00:18:05] Speaker 04: The district court correctly held that the patents claimed the idea of solving a problem [00:18:11] Speaker 04: rather than a particular concrete solution to the problem. [00:18:14] Speaker 04: And he gave the example of a self-driving car. [00:18:17] Speaker 04: It might be novel, but it's no less abstract. [00:18:20] Speaker 04: Here, the patents claim the result, the idea. [00:18:24] Speaker 04: The idea of taking known power grid monitoring technologies and scaling them up into an integrated, wide area system that allows an operator to see beyond its own boundaries. [00:18:36] Speaker 04: But an idea of itself is not patentable. [00:18:39] Speaker 04: This court and the Supreme Court have said that time and time again, and the patents don't explain how to accomplish the result. [00:18:45] Speaker 04: They merely describe the result using well-understood routine and conventional activities previously known in the industry, which is exactly what Alice forgets. [00:18:56] Speaker 03: I heard your adversaries say that they were the first ones to use sub-second timestamps synchronized phasor measurements. [00:19:03] Speaker 03: Maybe I misunderstood that, but what's your position on that? [00:19:06] Speaker 04: That certainly is not the case. [00:19:08] Speaker 04: EPG repeatedly admits throughout its briefs and the record that it did not invent the incoming data, and this consists of metrics, a whole variety of metrics are recited throughout the claims, and the synchofrasia streams, or the algorithms, the, quote, derived metrics or the analyzing the data type limitations. [00:19:28] Speaker 04: Vikram Budhraj's testimony [00:19:31] Speaker 04: is cited in the record. [00:19:32] Speaker 04: And this was EPG's sole rule 30b6 designee. [00:19:36] Speaker 04: He stated. [00:19:37] Speaker 00: We know that they didn't invent the data. [00:19:39] Speaker 00: The data was there. [00:19:40] Speaker 00: That's what they're doing is exploiting the data. [00:19:43] Speaker 00: And they say in a novel way. [00:19:46] Speaker 00: So what is it about the prior art that would have exploited that data in a way that's similar to what the patents suggest? [00:20:01] Speaker 00: Or is this a new way of exploiting that data? [00:20:04] Speaker 00: Or is it a new idea to exploit that data by way of some form of display of the data? [00:20:11] Speaker 04: So point one, it's not new data. [00:20:14] Speaker 04: And you'll find that there's a DOE report in the record at A6970 and A6971 that contains essentially a primer on synchrophaser technologies. [00:20:30] Speaker 04: that explains the basics and in footnote 5 on page 6971 it says the use of PMUs, those are phasor measurement units, began during the 1990s. [00:20:41] Speaker 04: So synchrophasors were known and the ability to correlate that data among different software, that's not in the claims. [00:20:51] Speaker 04: And in fact that's the subject of something else which is called phasor data concentrators and those are explained [00:20:58] Speaker 04: in page A6970 in the primary synchrophasers technology. [00:21:02] Speaker 04: It explains how the phasor data concentrators time align the data as it comes into a system. [00:21:10] Speaker 04: EPG admits that it didn't explain, that it didn't invent any of this. [00:21:15] Speaker 04: And in fact, synchronizing the data and the phasor data concentrators, also called PDCs, they're mentioned in the patent specification as known technologies. [00:21:24] Speaker 04: Column A, line 63. [00:21:27] Speaker 04: and they're not recited in the claims. [00:21:29] Speaker 04: These are known power grid monitoring technologies. [00:21:32] Speaker 04: So Vik Krimbu Raj admits that they're using the same data, using standard algorithm and power system metrics, which are well known and have been in use forever. [00:21:43] Speaker 04: They recognize that this technology is conventional and well known. [00:21:49] Speaker 04: What about the display of that information? [00:21:53] Speaker 04: The display of that information [00:22:02] Speaker 04: The problem, I think, with the display argument is that the claims don't recite how to translate that incoming data into displays. [00:22:12] Speaker 04: They recite taking that incoming data and applying various algorithms to it. [00:22:19] Speaker 04: Algorithms that EPG admits it didn't invent, and algorithms which wouldn't work if you didn't have the data to run it on. [00:22:26] Speaker 04: And so, by definition, those algorithms don't [00:22:30] Speaker 04: were well known in the art. [00:22:31] Speaker 04: They admit that on page 5 of their reply brief, quote, EPG does not report to have invented the underlying algorithms. [00:22:38] Speaker 04: And also, in EPG's brief at page 21, they say the claims derive dynamic stability metrics, which is exactly what you get from synchrophasers, using, quote, known formulations and algorithms. [00:22:52] Speaker 04: So they, by their own admission, they go on in page 22 of their opening brief [00:22:56] Speaker 04: to recite the various metrics that you compute with these dynamic stability metrics. [00:23:00] Speaker 04: Phase angles, damping, oscillation modes, sensitivities, frequency and stability, voltages, and power flows. [00:23:05] Speaker 04: They're the exact types of things you see in the claims. [00:23:08] Speaker 04: And so they admit that they did not invent these algorithms that process the incoming data, all of which was known. [00:23:15] Speaker 04: Synchrophaser technology is repeatedly mentioned throughout specification. [00:23:19] Speaker 04: It wasn't new, and they did not invent that. [00:23:22] Speaker 04: And so really the problem is scaling this up into a wide area system. [00:23:27] Speaker 04: How do you integrate these known systems? [00:23:30] Speaker 04: The identified problem is recited in column two of the patent, and is acknowledged by EPG's expert in the case, and also the problem is acknowledged in EPG's brief at, their opening brief at eight, 10, and their reply brief at 13. [00:23:50] Speaker 04: And EPG states that the claims solve the problem by providing a single integrated wide area real-time power grid monitoring system. [00:23:57] Speaker 04: I want to pause just for a moment and say one other thing. [00:24:00] Speaker 04: The claims here aren't just limited to synchrophaser technologies. [00:24:03] Speaker 04: They're limited to a wide variety of metrics that EPG's own expert in the deposition testimony that we recited from him reflects almost any data that you would pull from the power grid. [00:24:13] Speaker 04: In other words, these are known local area monitoring systems [00:24:18] Speaker 04: which is scaled up into a wide area, which EPG also didn't invent, but reports to claim by virtue of simply receiving data streams for multiple areas, which is certainly computers behaving exactly how one would expect they would work. [00:24:34] Speaker 04: They're monitor computers with interfaces. [00:24:37] Speaker 04: This is generic computers and components. [00:24:41] Speaker 04: The claims are replete with known power grid monitoring technologies. [00:24:45] Speaker 04: The visualization features [00:24:47] Speaker 04: The claims do not recite how to translate the results of those known algorithms, which EPG admits it did not invent. [00:24:56] Speaker 04: It does not explain how to translate those results in some new way. [00:25:04] Speaker 04: They just claim the result. [00:25:06] Speaker 04: Let's just display the results of the known algorithms. [00:25:09] Speaker 04: They don't explain how to translate them in some known way. [00:25:13] Speaker 04: They don't explain how to filter the data. [00:25:16] Speaker 04: The claims contain nothing about how to filter the data into the important information. [00:25:21] Speaker 04: They just claim the results of displaying the algorithm's known output. [00:25:27] Speaker 04: We see that time and time again throughout the claims. [00:25:30] Speaker 04: The claims repeat the data that's already been gathered and processed. [00:25:33] Speaker 04: For example, the metrics being monitored. [00:25:36] Speaker 04: That's 843 patent claim one. [00:25:38] Speaker 04: They recite display at least one of historical tracking, prediction, or actions related to the metric. [00:25:45] Speaker 04: All known algorithms which EPG admits it did not invent. [00:25:49] Speaker 04: It claims concurrent displays of at least one of dynamic geographic displays maps and a plurality of text or data panels. [00:25:56] Speaker 04: Maps, text, and data panels. [00:26:00] Speaker 04: These seem like conventional display technologies to me. [00:26:03] Speaker 04: I mean, you can think of watching a weather report, a storm report. [00:26:07] Speaker 04: and you brought a map and it shows the storm areas coming and a scroll bar running across the bottom of the screen letting you know what's going on. [00:26:18] Speaker 04: Another claim claims operator-defined areas. [00:26:21] Speaker 04: An interesting one, claim 49 of the two-figure giant pattern claims visualization of abnormal operating conditions. [00:26:28] Speaker 04: But again, there's no disclosure of how to filter the data so as to identify those abnormal operating conditions time and time and time again [00:26:36] Speaker 04: you just see that they claim the result of displaying known power grid algorithms. [00:26:43] Speaker 04: The specification, nothing about these visualization features gets them over the patentability hurdle. [00:26:53] Speaker 04: As the district court recognizes, it's insignificant post-solution activity. [00:26:57] Speaker 04: For example, in a self-driving car, by the time you make a self-driving car, maybe the self-driving car is driving along and you've got a navigation system that tells you where it's going. [00:27:07] Speaker 04: The navigation system already exists. [00:27:09] Speaker 04: That's not new. [00:27:10] Speaker 04: And it doesn't make this self-driving car self-driving. [00:27:13] Speaker 04: It's just a display that results from the underlying system, which here is efficiently claimed with generic computer elements. [00:27:23] Speaker 04: Some examples of possible patent-eligible visualization features, just as an example. [00:27:28] Speaker 04: This would be a different discussion if the claims claimed something like this. [00:27:32] Speaker 04: Perhaps some type of improved graphics display card. [00:27:36] Speaker 04: that would increase the processing and display speed of all this data. [00:27:40] Speaker 04: Now it would have to be not deficiently claimed, but that could be presumably some type of technical advance in visualization, or improved pixelation, or an improved refresh rate to where as the data's coming in, you are seeing the data refreshed as it comes in. [00:27:59] Speaker 04: Merely reciting displays is typically insufficient to impart patent eligibility. [00:28:04] Speaker 04: One good example of that is, there's a few different ones in this court. [00:28:08] Speaker 04: Internet patents, mortgage greater, and ultramarcial. [00:28:11] Speaker 04: All of those resulted in some display as a result of the patented technology in that case. [00:28:17] Speaker 04: Internet patents court versus active network is the most like this case. [00:28:22] Speaker 04: There the claims were directed to the idea of retaining information that would otherwise be lost in online forums when you navigate away with back and forward buttons. [00:28:32] Speaker 04: The claimed result was maintaining the state of the form. [00:28:35] Speaker 04: But there was nothing in the claims that explained how to achieve that result, the maintaining the state. [00:28:42] Speaker 04: The court specifically noted, claim one contains no restriction on how the result is to be accomplished. [00:28:48] Speaker 04: The mechanism for the maintaining the state is not described, although that's stated to be essential. [00:28:54] Speaker 01: Would that have been any different if the maintaining had not existed in the art, the claim [00:29:00] Speaker 01: claimed maintaining, but the spec finally taught the world how to do it? [00:29:11] Speaker 04: Perhaps if there were some claim construction. [00:29:16] Speaker 04: So for example, I'm thinking of the Enfish, recent Enfish case where there was a self-referential table in [00:29:23] Speaker 04: It actually wasn't in the claims, but it was means for configuring, and then that was construed. [00:29:27] Speaker 00: But the means for assumption would be incorporating part of the steps. [00:29:31] Speaker 04: Right, right. [00:29:33] Speaker 04: So that's not what we have here. [00:29:36] Speaker 04: So there was no claim construction here. [00:29:39] Speaker 04: And in that instance, the specification did not teach how to maintain the state. [00:29:44] Speaker 04: It essentially just said, do it. [00:29:46] Speaker 04: The mechanism there for maintaining the state was not described, although it was supposed to be the essential innovation. [00:29:53] Speaker 04: And that claim, like this one here, was directed to the abstract idea there of avoiding data loss without articulating how to do it. [00:30:02] Speaker 01: Do we, on the assumption for purposes of this question, that the claims themselves don't indicate how to concurrently visualize or how to do a number of things, does the specification give us more by way of how detail? [00:30:19] Speaker 04: The specification gives us broad examples. [00:30:22] Speaker 04: It just describes, it shows a lot of pictures, a wide variety of different types of displays. [00:30:29] Speaker 04: Some of them have multiple windows, some have maps, some have text boxes or scroll bars, data and text panels, charts, tabs, color coding, none of which is reflected in the claims conclaimed. [00:30:44] Speaker 04: So they latch onto the word concurrent visualization. [00:30:47] Speaker 04: Well, a lot of the claims don't even contain the word concurrent visualization. [00:30:52] Speaker 04: and really concurrent visualization, all it means is you're displaying two things. [00:30:56] Speaker 04: So if you've got two windows, you're displaying two things. [00:31:00] Speaker 01: Well, suppose it meant displaying them with time stamps that keep both of them aligned with the same clock, which I took it to be at least what your friend on the other side was explaining one of the important features that the information in the upper left-hand corner is [00:31:22] Speaker 01: comes from the same moment in time as the information in the lower right hand. [00:31:30] Speaker 04: So there's still no, there's no instruction in the claims or in the specification as to how to translate the output of those known algorithms into these claimed visualization features. [00:31:45] Speaker 04: The claims just say, do it. [00:31:47] Speaker 04: And literally each of the claims essentially recites the algorithm that's performed. [00:31:51] Speaker 04: displaying XYZ, whatever's recited in the claims. [00:31:56] Speaker 04: So for example, in the case of the 710 patent, the display is, you're displaying claim 12 with 710 patent. [00:32:10] Speaker 04: You're displaying the event analysis results. [00:32:13] Speaker 04: The claims don't tell you how to analyze the event. [00:32:16] Speaker 04: They just claim analyzing the event. [00:32:18] Speaker 04: You're displaying the diagnosis of events. [00:32:21] Speaker 04: Again, the claims don't tell you how to diagnose events. [00:32:24] Speaker 04: They just say display the results. [00:32:28] Speaker 04: They claim displaying different categories of data. [00:32:31] Speaker 04: Again, the claims don't tell you how to compute. [00:32:34] Speaker 03: But if the specification, if it did have some new technical innovation in it about how to achieve these steps in these claims, would that change the outcome in this case? [00:32:49] Speaker 04: Now without an appropriate supporting claim construction, I wouldn't have added. [00:32:53] Speaker 04: I don't think it does in this case, because there is no how anywhere in the specification. [00:32:58] Speaker 04: There's just results. [00:33:00] Speaker 04: We bring in all this data. [00:33:01] Speaker 04: We process it according to known algorithms that we didn't invent, and then we display it. [00:33:08] Speaker 00: So what you're saying is without a narrowing claim construction, the claims should continue to read on any other invention, any other way of [00:33:17] Speaker 00: of achieving the same objective without being limited to the particular notion in the specification. [00:33:25] Speaker 00: With respect to the question that just Toronto asked you a moment ago about synchronization, it strikes me that there are potentially inventive components to synchronization. [00:33:39] Speaker 00: Take an example, in a hospital now we often see displays that will show the patient's [00:33:47] Speaker 00: intensive care unit, the patient's blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate, and so forth. [00:33:55] Speaker 00: Various vital signs are all displayed on a single display. [00:34:00] Speaker 00: Wouldn't you think that that, if that were new, would be inventive? [00:34:06] Speaker 00: It wouldn't be subject to, I would think, would it be subject to 101 challenge? [00:34:11] Speaker 04: If there was some teaching about how to get there, again, [00:34:15] Speaker 04: We can't just claim the result. [00:34:17] Speaker 04: So how do we get all that? [00:34:19] Speaker 00: No, but what I'm suggesting to you is you've got five different measures that everybody knows how to do. [00:34:25] Speaker 00: And getting there is not very complicated because you just put them all in one machine. [00:34:29] Speaker 00: But isn't it an inventive, maybe not the most cross-gating, brilliant invention of all time, but nonetheless an invention to say, hey, we can give added value by putting these all together so that when one looks at it, [00:34:45] Speaker 00: this whole array of conditions, one sees a picture that you wouldn't see by looking at each of them separately. [00:34:54] Speaker 04: I don't think that would be the case, because then you're just talking about the routine and conventional functioning of what computers do. [00:35:01] Speaker 04: You bring in data, you process it, you display it. [00:35:05] Speaker 04: According to Alice, there needs to be some, or for example, this court's decision in DDR holdings, there the claims were held, were found to be patent eligible because they altered, they manipulated interactions in a way that altered the routine functioning of internet hyperlink protocol, right? [00:35:25] Speaker 04: And so it kind of disrupted the normal sequence of events. [00:35:29] Speaker 04: And here there's no, all of the features function exactly how you would expect them to. [00:35:34] Speaker 04: If you bring in all this data from all these different sources and you process it according to all these known algorithms and you have a bunch of results, as Mr. Hassan said, and some of these displays are entire walls, well of course you're going to display the variety of information that you get as a result of processing and displaying the data. [00:35:50] Speaker 03: What about the step in claim 12 about driving a composite indicator of reliability? [00:35:57] Speaker 04: Again, that one claims the result with no teaching of how to get there. [00:36:03] Speaker 04: And so theoretically, I suppose it would cover any kind of composite indicator of reliability that you would get from all of those measurements that are recited in the claims. [00:36:13] Speaker 04: That claim recites literally the breadth is compounded by the breadth of the claim. [00:36:22] Speaker 04: Sorry, let me find that one real quick. [00:36:28] Speaker 04: So that claim recites gathering data streams [00:36:32] Speaker 04: plurality of data streams, receiving data from other power system data sources. [00:36:39] Speaker 04: Could be maps, power plant locations, EMS scatter, receiving data from a plurality of non-grid data sources. [00:36:45] Speaker 04: Then you've got these measurements and then you detect and analyze the events based on limit sensitivities and rates of change. [00:36:52] Speaker 04: And then you derive dynamic stability metrics from that. [00:36:55] Speaker 04: And then you have metrics indicative of events. [00:36:59] Speaker 04: And then you have accumulating and updating the measurements. [00:37:03] Speaker 04: And after all of that is done, you have deriving a composite indicator of reliability that is an indicator of power grid vulnerability and is derived from a combination, presumably any combination, of one or more real-time measurements and the dynamic stability metrics, as well as non-power grid [00:37:24] Speaker 04: data received from the non-grid data source. [00:37:25] Speaker 04: And so talking about just endless amounts of information and somehow you're supposed to compute a compositive indicator of reliability. [00:37:32] Speaker 04: There's no how as to how you compute that compositive indicator of reliability here. [00:37:37] Speaker 04: That's exactly this claiming result. [00:37:41] Speaker 04: It's a result-oriented claim rather than teaching the how of how you get there. [00:37:46] Speaker 04: And I see that I'm way over. [00:37:48] Speaker 01: Thank you very much. [00:37:55] Speaker 01: Six minutes. [00:37:59] Speaker 01: Six minutes. [00:37:59] Speaker 01: Thank you. [00:38:00] Speaker 01: Thank you, your honor. [00:38:09] Speaker 02: When the court asked of my esteemed colleague whether this was novel, there really wasn't an answer over here that I heard. [00:38:19] Speaker 02: And the fact of it is that this is what you got. [00:38:23] Speaker 02: You got this humanly incomprehensible data that's completely meaningless. [00:38:28] Speaker 02: As Dr. Bryson inquired, if you put, for example, basic data, this is far more than that, but the blood pressure and the heart monitoring and the like, and the breathing up there, any one component by itself may not have particular meaning. [00:38:43] Speaker 02: However, if two of the factors are going in a certain direction, and you can see that in the visualization screen, if there's abnormalities in other aspects of bodily function, [00:38:52] Speaker 02: Well, that might make the physician or the nurse aware that there is an issue over here. [00:39:00] Speaker 02: The court brought up plane construction. [00:39:03] Speaker 02: Concurrent visualization, that is a term that, in the concept of which is described in the specification, is shown in Figures 16 through 32. [00:39:13] Speaker 02: Figure after figure after figure shows the examples [00:39:17] Speaker 02: with the associated description of the concurrent visualization. [00:39:21] Speaker 01: And I don't remember, but is concurrent there being used to mean something like synchronized? [00:39:27] Speaker 02: Yes. [00:39:28] Speaker 02: Following the same clock? [00:39:30] Speaker 02: Following the same clock, showing different types of data, historical tracking. [00:39:34] Speaker 02: This is in detail, it's disclosing this fact. [00:39:37] Speaker 02: One thing that happened here is that EPG, Electric Power Group, submitted a detailed expert report. [00:39:45] Speaker 02: The defendants [00:39:47] Speaker 02: submitted nothing. [00:39:48] Speaker 02: And the district court did a claim construction that didn't do a claim construction and just called it a display. [00:39:59] Speaker 02: There was no claim construction. [00:40:01] Speaker 02: It equated it to a display. [00:40:03] Speaker 02: And that doesn't make sense in the context of some of the claim language, because some of the claim language says displaying a concurrent visualization. [00:40:12] Speaker 02: If it was just to display a concurrent visualization, [00:40:15] Speaker 02: it would reduce the claim language to displaying it as well. [00:40:19] Speaker 00: So the current visualization then means synchronous display of two or more data sources? [00:40:28] Speaker 02: Two or more different data sources, which are specifically enumerated in the claim, to be the screening metrics which are derived from the timestamp synchrophasia data, along with contextual data, to understand the import of that [00:40:45] Speaker 02: of that information that you're seeing. [00:40:48] Speaker 02: The data is moving and rapidly streaming. [00:40:51] Speaker 02: It's like a heart rate. [00:40:51] Speaker 02: If a heart rate is going and you have EKG information, seeing one of those, it's very difficult to decipher. [00:40:58] Speaker 02: So usually, you have different concurrent. [00:41:01] Speaker 02: You could have a different information that can give context to it. [00:41:04] Speaker 02: That's what happens here. [00:41:06] Speaker 02: And the inherent problem here has to do with sub-second transient events. [00:41:10] Speaker 02: This is not like some of the other cases that this court has found or abstract. [00:41:15] Speaker 02: where, for example, you're taking thousands of digital photos and you're categorizing them, for example, or you're taking checked data or credit fraud data. [00:41:24] Speaker 02: A user can do that on his or her own, given a week or two, and could do the same type of analysis on pen and paper. [00:41:31] Speaker 02: None of this can be done. [00:41:33] Speaker 02: And even if it could be done, it's totally irrelevant, because the transient event that caused the blackout has already occurred. [00:41:42] Speaker 02: The only way to do that, according to this invention, and this is one way, is to take the high resolution data, lower the resolution to streaming discrete metrics that are very specific. [00:41:54] Speaker 02: She said they were general, but they're just four in the 259 claim and six in the claims in the 710 patent. [00:42:01] Speaker 02: So just four or six very specific metrics, stream them, and since you're doing this over a wide area so you can see what your neighbor's activity is doing to you, [00:42:11] Speaker 02: provide contextual, synchronized information. [00:42:15] Speaker 02: And if a proper claim construction had been done, then we would have seen that. [00:42:21] Speaker 02: Now, Ms. [00:42:22] Speaker 02: Mitchell had gone through and pointed out, oh, this is very general, this is very general. [00:42:26] Speaker 02: Well, the claims have to be read in light of the specification. [00:42:30] Speaker 02: And specialized terms in concepts, such as concurrent visualization, that are defined by over 15 drawings in this very detailed specification [00:42:40] Speaker 02: should be taken into account. [00:42:43] Speaker 02: And to just call it a display is not building justice to what that term really means. [00:42:48] Speaker 02: Because if you see what was analogized to ultramersion, using advertising as a currency, what was the display doing there? [00:42:57] Speaker 02: The value of the advertisement and how much you could trade it for? [00:43:01] Speaker 02: In diet goals, a meal, that's what it was providing. [00:43:04] Speaker 02: None of that required any context. [00:43:06] Speaker 02: All of it had to do with an abstract underlying situation. [00:43:10] Speaker 02: She mentioned the latest case, internet patents. [00:43:15] Speaker 02: That would have to do with an online forum. [00:43:18] Speaker 00: Those things have nothing to do with this application. [00:43:20] Speaker 00: Does the limitation deriving a composite indicator for liability, that is an indicator of power grid vulnerability, is that narrowing at all other than to say it works? [00:43:35] Speaker 00: No. [00:43:36] Speaker 00: How does that narrow? [00:43:40] Speaker 02: It narrows the claim because when an operator is immersed in all of this fast-moving data, to provide an indicator such as color coding, for example, could be one of them or that. [00:43:54] Speaker 02: And grafting that onto the display gives additional information that this is where you look. [00:44:00] Speaker 02: Imagine seismic detection systems, flight control systems. [00:44:04] Speaker 00: I'm trying to focus in on that particular limitation and asking [00:44:08] Speaker 00: essentially whether this is not simply saying that we have a claim to something that will provide an indicator of reliability. [00:44:17] Speaker 00: That's the whole purpose of the claim. [00:44:19] Speaker 00: And the last limitation of which is deriving a composite indicator of reliability. [00:44:25] Speaker 00: That doesn't seem to add anything at all. [00:44:27] Speaker 02: Well, I think it does in this sense, Your Honor. [00:44:29] Speaker 02: If you have, for example, the real-time screening data, and then you have the historical data and the tracking data, [00:44:36] Speaker 02: And you can see there that there is some issue. [00:44:39] Speaker 02: For example, the tracking data isn't matching up with the synchronized data. [00:44:44] Speaker 02: Then you say, okay, there's a potential issue over here because this data isn't measuring up in this particular location on the map. [00:44:52] Speaker 02: If you're looking across the entire western interconnect, that could cover several states, for example. [00:45:00] Speaker 02: And that's a wide area for somebody to have to review and to understand. [00:45:06] Speaker 02: Thank you very much.