[00:00:00] Speaker ?: sure. [00:00:32] Speaker 01: Okay, the next argued case is number 16, 2465, Mastermind Software Incorporated against Microsoft Corporation. [00:00:42] Speaker 01: Mr. Steiner, when you're ready. [00:00:50] Speaker 03: Just in case we haven't heard enough about user selection. [00:00:56] Speaker 00: Yes, this appears to be a sort of shockingly similar technology today. [00:01:02] Speaker 00: Thank you, Your Honor, and may it please the Court. [00:01:07] Speaker 00: The patents at issue here today talk about data mining from the Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, database program. [00:01:17] Speaker 00: We're here to address two issues. [00:01:19] Speaker 00: One is the construction of the term pivot table by the District Court, a term that the patents did not redefine from its plain, ordinary name. [00:01:29] Speaker 00: The other is to address [00:01:30] Speaker 00: the district court's decision that some of the mastermind's apparatus claims impermissibly mix statutory classes. [00:01:39] Speaker 00: Regarding the definition of pivot table. [00:01:41] Speaker 03: Can we start backwards? [00:01:42] Speaker 03: Can we start with the second issue? [00:01:45] Speaker 00: Absolutely. [00:01:46] Speaker 03: OK. [00:01:48] Speaker 03: I know that our cases are, it's hard to get a bright line necessarily from the cases. [00:01:55] Speaker 03: And your argument is that ultimate pointer is [00:01:59] Speaker 03: probably the best support for what you want to say here, right? [00:02:05] Speaker 00: We think so. [00:02:06] Speaker 00: But not only that it's the best support for the outcome we'd like, but that it best encapsulates the state of the law. [00:02:14] Speaker 03: One problem I have, and this is what I just want you to talk to me about. [00:02:18] Speaker 03: So when you look at the language that we're talking about here, it does refer to user selection. [00:02:29] Speaker 03: And in that language, it says the machine receives from the user a selection of one or more of the user selectable database fields. [00:02:39] Speaker 03: And elsewhere in your claim, in your patent, you use language that says the system is adapted to. [00:02:53] Speaker 03: Now, you're essentially asking us to put the adapted to language into this [00:02:59] Speaker 03: claim as well. [00:03:00] Speaker 03: Is that right? [00:03:02] Speaker 00: I don't think we are, Your Honor. [00:03:04] Speaker 00: This Court has never taken the line that words adapted to, configured to, sized for are necessary modifiers of action verbs as long as there's sufficient structure in the claim language itself to understand what the apparatus being claimed is. [00:03:24] Speaker 03: I understand. [00:03:25] Speaker 03: I guess part of my problem, and maybe that's [00:03:28] Speaker 03: part of what I'm saying is your problem is that you did use adapted to in other places. [00:03:32] Speaker 03: So its absence here could be more meaningful than it might be in a different circumstance. [00:03:39] Speaker 00: And what I would say is this is not the only case in which there have been claims where in front of some action verbs, the word adapted to appeared. [00:03:52] Speaker 00: In others, they didn't. [00:03:54] Speaker 00: The court has never said that that's a requirement. [00:03:56] Speaker 00: For example, the MEC case had some language that included the modifying words, some language that didn't. [00:04:07] Speaker 00: Requiring modifying language turns this indefiniteness doctrine into a bit of a gotcha doctrine. [00:04:14] Speaker 00: It's a trap for... What kind of doctrine? [00:04:18] Speaker 00: Gotcha. [00:04:18] Speaker 00: Gotcha. [00:04:19] Speaker 00: I apologize. [00:04:19] Speaker 00: I started practicing in New York. [00:04:21] Speaker 00: OK. [00:04:21] Speaker 00: And that particular phrase has never left my vocabulary. [00:04:25] Speaker 00: OK. [00:04:25] Speaker 01: But isn't the answer that it depends on whether that's the distinguishing factor from the prior art, whether that's the distinguishing factor of rendering it obvious or non-obvious, rather than whether it's always or never to be considered? [00:04:43] Speaker 00: I do think that it depends. [00:04:45] Speaker 00: It is the right answer, Your Honor. [00:04:48] Speaker 00: This doctrine of indefiniteness comes from the question of, is it clear what the claims cover or not? [00:04:54] Speaker 00: Do the claims cover a system when it is built and sold, or does infringement occur during the act of use? [00:05:02] Speaker 00: And that's the concern that this court's precedent is addressed. [00:05:05] Speaker 00: If you have an action that's untethered to structure, there's a question as to when infringement occurs, what the claims cover. [00:05:13] Speaker 00: If you have an action that must be performed by the user, if you have an active verb talking about the user does this, how can you say whether that's covering the system or the actions? [00:05:27] Speaker 00: When you're talking about the actions performed by the user interface, you're talking about the capabilities, the configuration of the system. [00:05:36] Speaker 04: In other words, I think what you're saying is that [00:05:38] Speaker 04: infringement would occur when the apparatus is made used or sold because that apparatus has the capability of performing the function that's in the claim? [00:05:47] Speaker 00: Exactly, Your Honor. [00:05:49] Speaker 00: And that's very much what these claims are. [00:05:51] Speaker 00: These are apparatus claims directed to the user interface, the system. [00:06:00] Speaker 00: Do you want to discuss that further before I move on to the claim construction? [00:06:03] Speaker 04: Well, going back to that for a minute, I think one of the arguments that is made is that the language receiving from the user a selection of one or more user-selectable databases suggests that the user is performing some sort of action. [00:06:19] Speaker 04: How do you respond to that? [00:06:21] Speaker 00: Because this is a user interface, the configuration of the software is inherently all about how it interacts with the user. [00:06:30] Speaker 00: But the words here are very carefully [00:06:34] Speaker 00: not directed to claiming the user does this. [00:06:37] Speaker 00: It's receiving the selection from the user. [00:06:39] Speaker 00: It's responding to the selection made by the user. [00:06:42] Speaker 00: That's all performed by the software, by the user interface. [00:06:46] Speaker 00: The claim does not say the user selects. [00:06:50] Speaker 00: The claim says the software receives a selection from the user. [00:06:54] Speaker 00: That's different because we can tell what it takes to fall within those claims. [00:07:00] Speaker 00: It's a user interface that is configured in that manner. [00:07:05] Speaker 00: Does that answer your question? [00:07:07] Speaker 00: OK, go for you. [00:07:08] Speaker 04: You can go to your claim. [00:07:10] Speaker 00: So on the issue of claim construction, Pinnock Table is a term that, while maybe not common to your average person on the street, was common to people skilled in the art of software development working with spreadsheets. [00:07:28] Speaker 00: It is a term that the patent never intended to redefine. [00:07:32] Speaker 00: And we know that because, [00:07:35] Speaker 00: The patents expressly state that a pivot table is an analytical function that is found in conventional spreadsheet applications, such as Microsoft Excel. [00:07:46] Speaker 00: That appears in the specification for the 850 patent in column two, starting at line five and going through lines 22. [00:07:53] Speaker 00: That is an express statement in the patent to evoke the plain and ordinary meaning of the term. [00:08:01] Speaker 00: It could not be clearer, and absent any [00:08:06] Speaker 00: lexicography, or disclaimer. [00:08:07] Speaker 00: To the contrary, the patentee is entitled to the full scope of the plain and ordinary meaning of that term. [00:08:16] Speaker 00: We propose that that plain and ordinary meaning is a computer software object or structure defining an interactive table that can show the same data from a list or database in more than one arrangement. [00:08:28] Speaker 00: That definition comes straight from Microsoft's own contemporaneous computer dictionary. [00:08:33] Speaker 00: It's talking about [00:08:35] Speaker 00: the pivot tables that existed in Microsoft Excel at that time, the exact same pivot tables that the patent is referencing. [00:08:44] Speaker 00: What Microsoft has proposed and what the court adopted is that a pivot table isn't really the underlying software. [00:08:52] Speaker 00: A pivot table is just this thing you see on the screen. [00:08:55] Speaker 00: That's not the way a person of ordinary skill in the art, that's not the way a software developer or a computer programmer would understand a pivot table or anything else in software. [00:09:05] Speaker 03: What you see on the screen is literally a pivot table. [00:09:08] Speaker 03: Is it your position that a person of ordinary skill in the art would interpret a pivot table in one of two ways and that you don't have to choose between the two ways? [00:09:19] Speaker 03: It could be either? [00:09:20] Speaker 00: I think the idea of the two ways is a misnomer. [00:09:25] Speaker 00: It's a misdichotomy that was introduced by Microsoft's argument. [00:09:29] Speaker 00: They've suggested that there's a fundamental change in category [00:09:33] Speaker 00: between a pivot table whose data display has numbers populated in it and a pivot table whose data display is blank. [00:09:42] Speaker 00: They've created this one-zero distinction. [00:09:45] Speaker 00: I don't think there is one. [00:09:46] Speaker 00: I think a pivot table exists when the table exists. [00:09:51] Speaker 00: There's data in the pivot table's cache that's part of the action of creating a pivot table. [00:09:57] Speaker 00: But whether the data display is blank has [00:10:01] Speaker 00: four fields populated into it has one field has three it doesn't matter and that's the way these pivot tables work you could be looking at a pivot table whose data display is currently displaying analysis of eight fields and you could go and deselect all of them so that now zero fields are being displayed the pivot table goes blank the data display goes blank the table is still there the structure is still there the data is still sitting in cache all of the [00:10:29] Speaker 00: metadata, all of the functions, all of the richness that makes this an analytical function, as identified in the patent, they're still there. [00:10:37] Speaker 00: And as soon as you drag and drop some different fields in, in a different arrangement, the display pops up with a different way to look at the data. [00:10:45] Speaker 00: The point is that the pivot table is something unique to computers. [00:10:50] Speaker 00: It is this almost metaphysical operational structure that can take an enormous amount of data with different fields, different attributes, [00:10:59] Speaker 00: And analyze it different ways. [00:11:01] Speaker 01: All right. [00:11:02] Speaker 01: So you've explained very nicely the prior art. [00:11:05] Speaker 01: So where is the distinction that supports these claims? [00:11:12] Speaker 00: You mean, Your Honor, how was the prior art distinguished in prosecution? [00:11:15] Speaker 01: No, to understand now, since this is really, I think, what the district court also adopted as his understanding of the pivot table and how it worked. [00:11:29] Speaker 01: Isn't that correct? [00:11:30] Speaker 00: Yes, I think the district court agreed with how the pivot table worked, but then took the leap that a pivot table, as defined in the patents, only exists when there is data actively being displayed in it. [00:11:44] Speaker 03: Right, so in other words, as I understand it, the district court conceded that the plain meaning could be a blank table or a populated table, but in the context of this specification and this patent, [00:11:56] Speaker 03: the district court ultimately concluded that it has to be a populated table. [00:12:00] Speaker 00: I believe that was what he concluded. [00:12:02] Speaker 00: And yes, I do believe he agreed that people use PivotTable both ways. [00:12:08] Speaker 00: And we think that it was legal error, having recognized that people skilled in the art use PivotTable both ways to refer both to the image on screen and the underlying structure, to say, but in this context, we're going to limit the patent to just a populated table. [00:12:24] Speaker 04: Now, you do agree, though, that kind of setting the facts of this case aside, if there was an ordinary meaning of a word, but then when that same word is understood in light of the specification, the prosecution history, it might have a different meaning, right? [00:12:42] Speaker 04: It could, but that didn't happen here. [00:12:44] Speaker 04: But I think that's what the district court was saying, was that it has, perhaps pivot table has a meaning that is broader in the ordinary sense, but when I read it, [00:12:54] Speaker 04: In light of the specification, I have a different understanding. [00:12:58] Speaker 04: And I think that as used in the specification, the inventor has used the word pivot table to mean a table that's populated. [00:13:05] Speaker 00: I think that an inventor certainly can limit the meaning of an ordinary term in the specification. [00:13:13] Speaker 00: That didn't happen here. [00:13:14] Speaker 00: There was no lexicography. [00:13:16] Speaker 00: In fact, Microsoft didn't even argue lexicography until it's a book. [00:13:19] Speaker 03: But they argued. [00:13:21] Speaker 03: Even in the context of the language itself, the full phrase says automatically generate a pivot table within the electronic worksheet according to the database query wherein the pivot table contains the CRM data from the CRM database. [00:13:39] Speaker 03: that we're talking about generating a populated pivot table, right? [00:13:45] Speaker 00: Addressing the fact of the CRM, of the pivot table containing the data from the query, that all exists in the pivot cache the entire time, whether it's displayed on the screen or not. [00:13:56] Speaker 00: Part of the pivot table object is this data cache, which contains all of that information. [00:14:01] Speaker 00: That absolutely happens as part of the process of creating the pivot table. [00:14:06] Speaker 00: And that's represented on the screen by the field well [00:14:09] Speaker 00: listing all of the different database fields that are in the cache. [00:14:13] Speaker 00: The question is then, on the analytic data display, what's been selected from the field well? [00:14:19] Speaker 00: What's been selected from the cache? [00:14:20] Speaker 00: Where have you placed it? [00:14:22] Speaker 00: And that drives the representation of that data, the analysis of that data performed by the pivot table. [00:14:29] Speaker 00: But it doesn't change the fact that, yes, when you create the table, all that data from the query is in the cache. [00:14:36] Speaker 00: Separate from the creating step is the presenting step in claim one, and then the optional for claim one and required for claim three, formatting step. [00:14:45] Speaker 00: Those are different activities. [00:14:48] Speaker 00: Creating the pivot table happens when you create the object in the source code, in the software. [00:14:54] Speaker 00: Presenting it, it appears on the screen. [00:14:58] Speaker 00: And in either case, there is no requirement that it be presented with a particular set of analytics [00:15:06] Speaker 00: displayed in the data display. [00:15:08] Speaker 00: To the contrary, you can present it. [00:15:10] Speaker 00: You can even present it with one set of data, unclick all of the fields from the field well. [00:15:15] Speaker 00: The display goes blank. [00:15:16] Speaker 00: The technical advisor and the court's definition would tell you the pivot table has been destroyed. [00:15:21] Speaker 00: It hasn't. [00:15:21] Speaker 00: It's still sitting there. [00:15:23] Speaker 00: It's just waiting for someone to pop up a new arrangement of the data. [00:15:29] Speaker 00: Does that answer your question, Your Honor? [00:15:31] Speaker 00: I think so. [00:15:34] Speaker 00: Briefly, because I realize I'm short on time, this issue of prosecution disclaimer. [00:15:39] Speaker 04: Can I just go back a minute? [00:15:41] Speaker 04: Sure. [00:15:41] Speaker 04: OK. [00:15:41] Speaker 04: So your point, as I understand it, is that even though an earlier limitation might talk about generating the pivot table containing CRM data from the CRM database, later on when it's talking about presenting the pivot table with antecedent basis, [00:15:57] Speaker 04: We should understand that to not necessarily include the CRM data. [00:16:00] Speaker 00: No, no. [00:16:01] Speaker 00: It does include the CRM data. [00:16:03] Speaker 04: But it doesn't have to be shown. [00:16:04] Speaker 00: It doesn't have to be actively shown at that moment in time. [00:16:07] Speaker 00: But the CRM data is part of that pivot table that is presented. [00:16:13] Speaker 03: All right. [00:16:13] Speaker 03: Now, even if we don't think the prosecution history is a disclaimer, it is informative that when in your history you talk about constructing [00:16:26] Speaker 03: pivot table or creating a pivot table as by populating it, right? [00:16:31] Speaker 03: And you use the word creating in conjunction with populating it with data. [00:16:38] Speaker 00: There's a distinction there, Your Honor. [00:16:42] Speaker 00: Yes, the one sentence summary of the Conlon reference referred to it as a drag and drop method for creating a pivot table. [00:16:51] Speaker 00: That was language originally put in by the examiner. [00:16:55] Speaker 00: It was not [00:16:57] Speaker 00: No one disagreed with it because, frankly, the definition of pivot table was never an issue. [00:17:01] Speaker 00: No one was arguing about what was or was not a pivot table. [00:17:05] Speaker 00: What the Kotlin reference describes is a three-step process. [00:17:09] Speaker 00: First, you have a set of data in the Kotlin example in Excel to begin with. [00:17:14] Speaker 00: You select the data, then you create the pivot table, and then you use the drag and drop formatting process to move the data around within the pivot table starting from the field [00:17:28] Speaker 00: Mastermind distinguished the Conlin patent based on the fact that it did not automatically select the data from any source, let alone a CRM database, to create the pivot table. [00:17:40] Speaker 00: The issue of the dragging and dropping wasn't part of Mastermind's argument. [00:17:45] Speaker 00: It wasn't what Mastermind's invention was directed towards, and that wasn't the point of distinction. [00:17:50] Speaker 00: There was no intention in any of that exchange, either on the examiner's part or on Mastermind's part, [00:17:56] Speaker 00: to redefine what a pivot table was or to narrow its meaning. [00:18:03] Speaker 01: OK. [00:18:03] Speaker 01: Let's hear from the other side, and we'll save your rebuttal, Mr. Steinhardt. [00:18:07] Speaker 00: Thank you, Your Honors. [00:18:18] Speaker 01: Ms. [00:18:18] Speaker 01: Wilson. [00:18:19] Speaker 02: Good morning, Your Honors. [00:18:20] Speaker 02: May I please the Court? [00:18:22] Speaker 02: Mr. Moynihan, this litigation is attempting to recapture ground [00:18:26] Speaker 02: that it explicitly gave up in an attempt to overcome prior art rejection during prosecution of these patents. [00:18:33] Speaker 03: So you think it's a disavowal, clear and unmistakable disavowal? [00:18:39] Speaker 02: I think it is an unmistakable disavowal, Your Honor, but I also don't believe you have to get that far in order to construe a pivot table in the way that the district court construed it. [00:18:50] Speaker 03: Can you just do me a favor? [00:18:52] Speaker 03: Can you explain [00:18:53] Speaker 03: I mean, it's stipulated to non-infringement under this construction. [00:18:57] Speaker 03: So how does the allegedly infringing product work with a blank table? [00:19:04] Speaker 02: Yes, Your Honor. [00:19:04] Speaker 02: So the allegedly infringing product is Dynamics CRM working with Microsoft Excel. [00:19:10] Speaker 02: And the way Dynamics CRM works is a user wants to create a pivot table. [00:19:17] Speaker 02: They first interact with Dynamics CRM [00:19:20] Speaker 02: and they choose basically the data source that they want to use for their pivot table. [00:19:26] Speaker 02: Excel then is then launched and what happens is this blank shell is what Conlon called a region layout diagram or a drag and drop form appears on Excel. [00:19:42] Speaker 02: The fields for the data that were selected by the user from the CRM program appear in the field well. [00:19:50] Speaker 02: But then when the user wants to create their Excel pivot table, they interact with the Excel spreadsheet program one way. [00:20:00] Speaker 02: They drag, same as in Conlin, drag and drop fields in the various regions of the region display, a region layout diagram that's on Excel. [00:20:11] Speaker 02: And so that's how they create the pivot table. [00:20:13] Speaker 03: OK, so it doesn't automatically populate the pivot table. [00:20:16] Speaker 03: Absolutely not. [00:20:17] Speaker 02: No, Your Honor. [00:20:17] Speaker 03: So you would agree, I take it, with the district court that the common meaning of pivot table could be one that's empty or one that's populated? [00:20:30] Speaker 02: No, Your Honor. [00:20:31] Speaker 02: I wouldn't say that we would agree that in the abstract, that pivot table could be one that is, you know, could just be that empty shell. [00:20:39] Speaker 02: We wouldn't agree with that. [00:20:41] Speaker 03: You wouldn't agree with that? [00:20:42] Speaker 03: Well, you just described your empty shell as a pivot table. [00:20:45] Speaker 02: No, I said it's an empty shell. [00:20:47] Speaker 02: And then what happens is you create a pivot table when you drag and drop. [00:20:51] Speaker 02: So no, absolutely not agree that an empty shell is a pivot table. [00:20:54] Speaker 02: And certainly not in the context of these. [00:20:56] Speaker 01: Well, it's just because you don't have a table until you have figures or numbers or whatever it is that you're directed to. [00:21:05] Speaker 01: But as far as the overall breadth, didn't the district judge define pivot table quite broadly? [00:21:16] Speaker 01: To include the empty shell capable of receiving data? [00:21:23] Speaker 02: What the district court said was that he had seen evidence that the term pivot table had been used to include, to refer to an empty shell for which one still must pick the fields. [00:21:39] Speaker 02: The pivot table empty shell has a row field, a column field, a data field, [00:21:45] Speaker 02: And then there's something else on a page field that wasn't really an issue here. [00:21:48] Speaker 02: But you have nothing in that empty shell until you pick the field that's going to go in your row. [00:21:56] Speaker 03: Right. [00:21:56] Speaker 03: But as I understand the district court's analysis, it was pivot table could have either meaning if you're just looking at how it's been used historically. [00:22:06] Speaker 03: But in the context of this patent, it must have this particular meaning. [00:22:11] Speaker 02: That's correct. [00:22:12] Speaker 02: The district court did say you see it used either way. [00:22:14] Speaker 02: I don't disagree with that. [00:22:16] Speaker 04: What's that? [00:22:16] Speaker 04: You disagree with that, that the ordinary meaning of pivot table includes an empty table. [00:22:22] Speaker 04: You've said you disagree with that, right? [00:22:24] Speaker 04: Yes. [00:22:25] Speaker 04: Where in the record is there evidence to support that that is not the ordinary meaning of pivot table? [00:22:31] Speaker 02: Well, first of all, there's nothing in the patent itself to suggest that an empty shell is a pivot table. [00:22:38] Speaker 02: They don't talk about empty shells. [00:22:40] Speaker 02: They don't talk about how fields in the patent get into that empty shell. [00:22:44] Speaker 02: So there's nothing in there. [00:22:45] Speaker 02: So what happens is one has to end up going to other intrinsic evidence or, as Mastermind did, to the extrinsic evidence. [00:22:55] Speaker 02: In the intrinsic evidence, you have the Conlon patent, which is, I said, a Microsoft patent directed to Excel. [00:23:01] Speaker 02: and the subject of what we say gave rise to a disclaimer and certainly defined pivot table. [00:23:09] Speaker 02: But Conlon says the empty shell is a drag and drop form or a regional layout diagram. [00:23:15] Speaker 02: He doesn't say it's a pivot table. [00:23:16] Speaker 02: And that's the intrinsic evidence, and that's what I think he would go to. [00:23:21] Speaker 03: But you didn't have any extrinsic evidence that said that [00:23:24] Speaker 03: It only has one meaning. [00:23:26] Speaker 03: It's got to be populated. [00:23:27] Speaker 02: We did not, Your Honor. [00:23:30] Speaker 02: The mastermind relies, for example, on the Excel 97 Developers Guide. [00:23:37] Speaker 02: And in that, there is a reference that could be contrued as saying a pivot table is a blank shell. [00:23:44] Speaker 02: On the other hand, in the Excel 97 Developers Guide, it also says the pivot table is constructed by dragging and dropping fields [00:23:54] Speaker 02: into an empty skeleton. [00:23:57] Speaker 02: So at 1575, at 1444, that same guide that mastermind says defines an empty shell as a pivot table also calls it an empty skeleton and also says that you've got to drag and drop fields into this empty skeleton in order to construct your pivot table. [00:24:22] Speaker 02: Okay. [00:24:22] Speaker 02: So in this case, [00:24:24] Speaker 02: Your Honor, what's very stark is originally Mastermind's 279 patent, which is a parent patent to the patents in suit, had a claim term generating a pivot table within an electronic worksheet. [00:24:42] Speaker 02: The examiner said that the Conlin reference, which is a Microsoft reference, Microsoft's patent directed to Excel, [00:24:53] Speaker 02: taught or generating a pivot table within an electronic worksheet. [00:24:59] Speaker 02: And that's at 322, where the examiner makes this rejection. [00:25:04] Speaker 02: In so doing, the examiner pointed to a section of Conlin, which is column two, lines 25 to 46, which talks about having, you know, taking these fields, interacting with a spreadsheet program, taking these fields, [00:25:21] Speaker 02: dragging the fields and dropping them into an empty shell. [00:25:27] Speaker 02: And that's what the examiner pointed to as Conlon teaching that a pivot table is generated. [00:25:34] Speaker 02: Mastermind, in order to overcome that rejection, Mastermind amended its claims and added the word automatically in front of generate a pivot table, required that each one of its claims [00:25:51] Speaker 02: automatically generate a pivot table within an electronic worksheet. [00:25:55] Speaker 02: And then after doing so, they said this. [00:25:58] Speaker 02: They then traversed the examiner's rejection based on Conlin and said this. [00:26:05] Speaker 02: Conlin describes a user interface for a spreadsheet application that allows a user to drag and drop fields to manually create a pivot table on a spreadsheet. [00:26:19] Speaker 02: And so they're very plainly talking about having what Conlin calls a region layout diagram, what the Excel developer's guide is called the empty skeleton, and picking the fields from a field well and putting them in the rows, columns, and data section in order to create a pivot table. [00:26:39] Speaker 02: Mastermind went on to say, Conlin requires that the user interacts with the spreadsheet application directly [00:26:48] Speaker 02: and that the user manually selects each of the fields. [00:26:53] Speaker 02: And that was in the summary of the invention of Conlin, and they have a footnote summary. [00:27:00] Speaker 02: At the very next sentence, after saying that Conlin teaches dragging and dropping to create manually a pivot table, [00:27:11] Speaker 02: They say applicant has amended claim one to include limitations of previously dependent two, claim two to clarify that the claimed method automates the creation of a pivot table within a worksheet directly from a CRM application. [00:27:29] Speaker 02: So it's right there that the entire claim term or the second claim term that was at issue here was what does it mean to automatically generate a pivot table? [00:27:39] Speaker 02: At this juncture, [00:27:40] Speaker 02: Mastermind agrees that user interaction with a spreadsheet application to create a pivot table is not automatic. [00:27:50] Speaker 02: Automatic means it can't be user interaction. [00:27:53] Speaker 03: What is your response? [00:27:55] Speaker 03: They concede that that language is all in there, but they say that the thrust of their argument wasn't the distinguishing between a manual system where there's an empty shell [00:28:10] Speaker 03: and their system, they said what their argument was, that Conlon didn't describe a system for communication between a CRM application and a spreadsheet application at all, let alone automatically. [00:28:23] Speaker 02: That is a separate argument that they made. [00:28:26] Speaker 02: But the disclaimer that we're talking about, or the definitional piece here, however, whatever analytical framework that you want to use, is they do not dispute. [00:28:38] Speaker 02: that when they're discussing, Conlon describes a user interface for a spreadsheet application that allows a user to drag and drop fields to manually create a pivot table on a spreadsheet. [00:28:50] Speaker 02: They don't dispute that they were talking about clicking on fields over here. [00:28:54] Speaker 03: Right. [00:28:54] Speaker 03: They said that they were just summarizing. [00:28:56] Speaker 03: Conlon, that wasn't their attempt to distinguish the claim. [00:29:00] Speaker 02: There's two points to that. [00:29:02] Speaker 02: First of all, we'd say this is still highly probative evidence of what they meant by pivot table and what they meant by manual creation of a pivot table. [00:29:11] Speaker 02: And second, though, we would disagree that they did not use that to distinguish their automatically generated pivot table claims from manually generated pivot table claims. [00:29:26] Speaker 02: Certainly, it's in the argument section here, but down below on 1501, [00:29:31] Speaker 02: Let's see, about the third paragraph down, they say, Conlon describes a technique that requires a user to interact with a user interface of the spreadsheet application to manually select the fields for a pivot table. [00:29:51] Speaker 02: Conlon does not describe any mechanism by which this process can be automated. [00:29:56] Speaker 02: That sentence is virtually identical to their second sentence where they're describing the drag and drop feature of Conlin. [00:30:04] Speaker 02: Now, I know Mastermind argues, at least on reply, they argued, oh, we were talking about something completely different there, a completely different field selection. [00:30:14] Speaker 02: But Conlin doesn't discuss two different types of manual field selection. [00:30:20] Speaker 02: In the section cited by Mastermind, [00:30:24] Speaker 02: for the proposition that they were talking about something else, that that section of Conlin, I believe it's that column five of Conlin, Conlin discusses Excel and discusses the idea that the user selects a data source. [00:30:42] Speaker 02: That's what the user does. [00:30:44] Speaker 02: Whether it be an external database, whether it be an Excel worksheet, the user selects a data source. [00:30:53] Speaker 02: And then all Conlin says further about that is that when you select the data source, the field well gets populated with the fields for the data source that was selected by the user. [00:31:09] Speaker 03: They argue that Conlin actually says that it talks about a pivot table data display. [00:31:16] Speaker 03: So in other words, it seems to distinguish between a pivot table, qua pivot table, and a pivot table data display. [00:31:24] Speaker 02: So what we'd say, Your Honor, about that is, first of all, the examiner understood the pivot table data display to be a pivot table. [00:31:33] Speaker 02: And when the examiner made his rejection, he pointed to column two, lines 25 to 46 of the summary of the invention. [00:31:42] Speaker 02: And there, it's talking about creating a pivot table, and it refers to it as a pivot table data display all throughout. [00:31:49] Speaker 02: So the examiner clearly understood a pivot table and a pivot table data display in Conlin to be the same thing. [00:31:56] Speaker 02: Mastermind, when they summarized Conlin, they did the exact same thing. [00:32:02] Speaker 02: They didn't say, oh no, we're wrong here. [00:32:04] Speaker 02: Pivot table data display is something completely different. [00:32:06] Speaker 02: That's an argument that they're making some 10 years later. [00:32:11] Speaker 02: What they said was, they said also that Conlin shows this dragging and dropping [00:32:18] Speaker 02: in order to create a pivot table. [00:32:20] Speaker 02: And then, as was set out in our briefing, fundamentally, if you look at the description in Conlin of a pivot table data display and the description in the patents in suit of what is a pivot table, it's the same description. [00:32:37] Speaker 02: They have the same function. [00:32:38] Speaker 02: In fact, the Conlin says that the pivot table is the same thing as a crosstab. [00:32:44] Speaker 02: And that's exactly what Mastermind says. [00:32:47] Speaker 02: And they both say that they are there to allow a user to analyze, summarize, and view data, you know, in different ways. [00:32:56] Speaker 02: Both of them say summarize and analyze large amounts of data. [00:33:00] Speaker 02: They're using those terms absolutely equivalently. [00:33:05] Speaker 03: Okay. [00:33:05] Speaker 03: Any more questions? [00:33:07] Speaker 03: Yeah, we never got to indefiniteness, but there's only 30 seconds left, 10 seconds left. [00:33:12] Speaker 01: That's all right. [00:33:13] Speaker 01: All right. [00:33:15] Speaker 01: I think that's all right. [00:33:16] Speaker 01: Thank you. [00:33:16] Speaker 01: OK. [00:33:16] Speaker 01: Thank you, Ms. [00:33:17] Speaker 01: Wilson. [00:33:23] Speaker 01: Mr. Steiner? [00:33:28] Speaker 00: Thank you, Your Honors. [00:33:32] Speaker 00: I would like to very briefly respond to the comment that Conhome does not disclose more than one user selection of fields, because that's not true. [00:33:54] Speaker 00: If you look at the abstract of the Conlin path, which appears on appendix page 1067, Conlin says, a drag and drop form displayed directly on a spreadsheet enables the user to drag and drop fields to create a pivot table data display directly on the spreadsheet. [00:34:15] Speaker 00: Then it goes on to say, fields of data selected by the user, user field selection, are displayed within a field well [00:34:24] Speaker 00: an array included with a pivot table button bar. [00:34:30] Speaker 00: The detailed description of common goes on to explain how that happens. [00:34:33] Speaker 00: It is a multi-step process. [00:34:35] Speaker 00: First, the user selects the fields that are going to become part of the pivot table. [00:34:40] Speaker 00: That creates the pivot table field well populated with those fields. [00:34:44] Speaker 00: Then, the user drags and drops fields from the field well to format or create the particular data display. [00:34:53] Speaker 00: That's the description in Conlin of the process of selecting fields for the field well from the data source. [00:35:02] Speaker 00: That appears in column five of the Conlin pattern from around line eight through around line 48, which is on appendix page 1078. [00:35:14] Speaker 00: And Conlin says, at the end of that process, if the user selects a control button labeled finish, [00:35:21] Speaker 00: and has chosen to place the pivot table data display on a new worksheet, a drag-and-drop Form 30 is opened on the new worksheet as shown in Figure 2. [00:35:31] Speaker 00: Conlon then goes on to describe formatting the data display with the fields from that field. [00:35:37] Speaker 00: Well, that starts in Column 6 around Line 36. [00:35:41] Speaker 00: These are multiple steps. [00:35:46] Speaker 00: The pivot table was created when [00:35:50] Speaker 00: That data display, no empty, popped up in the field well popped up with the list of fields that had been selected by the user. [00:35:59] Speaker 00: That process is completely manual, as described in Ponle. [00:36:03] Speaker 00: Mastermind talks about an automated way of doing that. [00:36:06] Speaker 00: Not from within the user interface of the spreadsheet application, but rather from within the user interface of the CRM software. [00:36:15] Speaker 00: A reporting module in the CRM software that performs [00:36:20] Speaker 00: those functions automatically based on the user selection within the CRM software that then automatically sends that information over to the spreadsheet application to create the pivot table. [00:36:32] Speaker 00: That's what the patent is talking about. [00:36:33] Speaker 00: That was the distinction drawn in the prosecution, not attempting to redefine pivot tables. [00:36:46] Speaker 01: Any more questions? [00:36:48] Speaker 01: Thank you. [00:36:48] Speaker 01: I think we have the issues in mind. [00:36:51] Speaker 01: Thank you both. [00:36:52] Speaker 01: The case is taken under submission.