[00:00:07] Speaker 02:
Good morning, please be seated.

[00:00:15] Speaker 02:
First case is Westview Research v. Audi.

[00:00:19] Speaker 02:
Council ready to proceed?

[00:00:36] Speaker 02:
Yep, that's what you've got.

[00:00:37] Speaker 02:
Three minutes.

[00:00:44] Speaker 02:
Please proceed.

[00:00:45] Speaker 00:
Good morning.

[00:00:46] Speaker 00:
May it please the Court.

[00:00:47] Speaker 00:
My name is Adam Garson and I represent Plaintiff Appellant Westview Research.

[00:00:51] Speaker 00:
There are four key areas where the District Court erred in finding the original and alternative claims asserted in this litigation invalid under Section 101.

[00:01:00] Speaker 00:
Let me ask you a question.

[00:01:01] Speaker 02:
This is really heavy for both counsel.

[00:01:04] Speaker 02:
We've received letters from both parties updating us on eight related IPR proceedings.

[00:01:13] Speaker 02:
Keeping those in mind, what's the status of the alternative claims before this court?

[00:01:20] Speaker 00:
The alternative claims were unaffected by the IPRs, and therefore those 32 claims are still in play.

[00:01:28] Speaker 00:
Of the original claims,

[00:01:30] Speaker 00:
All but the seven original claims of the 777 patent were either voluntarily canceled or a request for adverse judgment was filed during the IPR proceedings.

[00:01:41] Speaker 03:
Thank you.

[00:01:41] Speaker 03:
Just curious, why were they disclaimed or you filed a request for an adverse judgment against all of those claims?

[00:01:49] Speaker 00:
Those were strategic decisions that we made primarily to conserve client resources.

[00:01:58] Speaker 03:
OK.

[00:01:59] Speaker 00:
in order to be able to continue this appeal and pursue other business activities for Westview Research.

[00:02:08] Speaker 04:
What about the allegation that you have not appealed the district court's decision denying your leave to assert the alternative claims?

[00:02:15] Speaker 00:
We believe that that's spurious, Your Honor.

[00:02:20] Speaker 00:
You did?

[00:02:21] Speaker 00:
We did appeal the district court's decision refusing leave.

[00:02:26] Speaker 00:
The district court predicated its decision on not granting leave to amend based on its erroneous findings under Section 101.

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And it's clear from the record that had the district court conducted a proper 101 analysis under Promise 1 and 2 of Alice, the district court would have found the alternative claims valid under Section 101 in Aladdin.

[00:02:48] Speaker 04:
Which claims should we be looking at if those claims no longer exist?

[00:02:55] Speaker 04:
the original claims.

[00:02:57] Speaker 04:
You're saying in order for us to see whether the denial of your request to provide alternative claims is based on whether the 101 analysis was correct with respect to those claims that no longer exist?

[00:03:12] Speaker 00:
With respect to the alternative claims.

[00:03:14] Speaker 04:
with respect to the alternative.

[00:03:15] Speaker 00:
The district court found the alternative claims invalid under Alice erroneously, and had the district court conducted the proper analysis of those 32 alternative claims, the record says that leave would have been granted, and we would have proceeded on those alternative claims.

[00:03:27] Speaker 00:
I guess that's what I'm trying to figure out.

[00:03:29] Speaker 03:
Let's hypothetically say this court affirms what happened below.

[00:03:38] Speaker 03:
Would an affirmance mean that

[00:03:40] Speaker 03:
we are affirming the invalidation of all your proposed alternative claims.

[00:03:44] Speaker 03:
Because as I understand the way your motion was filed, it was a motion to add these claims for consideration.

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And then the judge below concluded, no, these claims are really not meaningfully different than the actual claims that were initially asserted and ruled to be invalid under 101.

[00:04:04] Speaker 03:
So I'm going to deny your motion to add the claims to the case.

[00:04:10] Speaker 03:
So affirming that denial of your motion, it's not clear to me it necessarily invalidates those claims, although it was necessarily based on the view that those claims are no better under Section 101.

[00:04:26] Speaker 03:
Is that a fair way to understand what an affirmance here would mean for your alternative claims?

[00:04:32] Speaker 00:
I don't believe so.

[00:04:33] Speaker 00:
I believe, and I believe this is also reflected in Appellee's brief,

[00:04:38] Speaker 00:
that in the March 31st order of the district court, in finding that the claims were not different and were directed to an abstract idea and contained nothing that could be characterized as significant or more under the second prong of Alice, did invalidate those 32 claims.

[00:04:58] Speaker 00:
And that was also reflected in Appellee's brief as well.

[00:05:02] Speaker 03:
OK.

[00:05:02] Speaker 03:
I mean, I see that in her conclusion section, it says Westview's motions to proceed on these substitute claims, therefore, are denied.

[00:05:11] Speaker 03:
And I guess you're saying not only did she deny her motion to proceed on those substitute claims, she also invalidated those substitute claims.

[00:05:22] Speaker 00:
That's our position.

[00:05:23] Speaker 00:
And we also think that had she done the correct analysis, she would have allowed us to proceed on those claims.

[00:05:29] Speaker 04:
Did you raise that issue in your blueberry

[00:05:32] Speaker 04:
Did you raise that issue in your opening brief?

[00:05:36] Speaker 00:
I don't recall, Your Honor.

[00:05:39] Speaker 02:
Let me ask you a question about your standard of review.

[00:05:46] Speaker 02:
In the blue brief of 3132, you argue ultramarital, the Hulu, clear and convincing standard.

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And then you have a footnote that acknowledges that the ultramarital case was vacated by the Supreme Court.

[00:06:02] Speaker 02:
in light of Alice.

[00:06:04] Speaker 02:
And when we issued Ultramershal 2, nowhere do we use a presumption of validity requiring clear and convincing standards, and yet you seem, your brief continues to rely on Ultramershal 1 for that proposition.

[00:06:24] Speaker 02:
And I don't see how you can continue to do that.

[00:06:29] Speaker 00:
Ultramershal 1 was one in a series of three or four cases that had been brought before this court.

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But it is Westview's position that clear and convincing is the appropriate standard for a finding of 101 invalidity.

[00:06:44] Speaker 02:
Despite the next ultramershal, we don't rely on that standard anymore in that case.

[00:06:54] Speaker 02:
Then I apologize, Your Honor.

[00:06:58] Speaker 02:
Let me ask you this.

[00:06:59] Speaker 02:
Given that, this is something that bothers me.

[00:07:06] Speaker 02:
In the gray brief at 4142, you say defendants assert that WVR has not appealed the district court's decision to deny WVR leave to assert the alternative claims.

[00:07:19] Speaker 02:
This assertion is flatly contradicted by the record.

[00:07:23] Speaker 02:
And then you say WVR, in fact, explicitly appealed the district court's decision

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And you say, defendants appear to purposely mislead the court to the contrary.

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Now, an accusation of an attorney intentionally misleading the court is extremely serious.

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Do you have any proof that demonstrates that Appellees intentionally misled the court?

[00:07:52] Speaker 02:
Because it's the kind of thing that should go to a bar if that were true.

[00:07:56] Speaker 00:
We don't have proof that they misled the court.

[00:07:58] Speaker 02:
Westview believes that the court... Well, stop there, because making a groundless accusation is also something that should go to the bar.

[00:08:09] Speaker 00:
I think that that's possibly being misinterpreted.

[00:08:12] Speaker 00:
Westview's position is that appellees were inviting the court to err by taking the view that Westview was not appealing the invalidation of the 32 alternative claims.

[00:08:24] Speaker 00:
as part of the court's March 31st decision.

[00:08:30] Speaker 04:
I think what they were saying was that you didn't specifically appeal from the dismissal.

[00:08:36] Speaker 04:
And that doesn't actually come from your notice of appeal.

[00:08:39] Speaker 04:
It comes from your opening grief.

[00:08:41] Speaker 04:
Regardless of what issues you identify and a notice of appeal, your opening grief then further defines the issues that are properly before this court.

[00:08:51] Speaker 04:
And so that's why I asked you earlier if your blue brief raised the issue of whether the district court erred when it denied your alternative claims.

[00:09:02] Speaker 00:
The blue brief does contain a significant amount of information about how the district court erred in its one-on-one analysis of the 32 alternative claims.

[00:09:14] Speaker 00:
And as I stated previously, the district court's denial of leave was predicated on that erroneous analysis.

[00:09:21] Speaker 00:
For example, the district court determined the first step of Alice at too high a level of generality, not in accordance with this court's precedent.

[00:09:33] Speaker 00:
The district court refused to consider the components of Westview's inventions as part of an ordered combination, including the algorithms, software, and user interface.

[00:09:42] Speaker 04:
I wanted to ask you about something also in your reply brief, where you argue that

[00:09:48] Speaker 04:
When considering whether a claim is directed to an abstract idea, this court must take into consideration whether the claim includes means plus function limitations.

[00:09:57] Speaker 04:
You've cited the Amtox case for that, I think, three times in the gray brief.

[00:10:03] Speaker 04:
Are you aware that that's the dissent that's saying that?

[00:10:06] Speaker 04:
And you're citing the Amdoc's dissent for that position?

[00:10:09] Speaker 00:
We're aware.

[00:10:11] Speaker 00:
And we do believe that that's the better position.

[00:10:14] Speaker 04:
Why didn't you note that that was the dissent if you were aware of the fact that you were citing the dissent?

[00:10:21] Speaker 00:
I don't know, Your Honor.

[00:10:23] Speaker 00:
I, again, apologize for if we should have done that and didn't.

[00:10:26] Speaker 00:
Was that intentional?

[00:10:28] Speaker 00:
No.

[00:10:30] Speaker 03:
Are you familiar with this court's opinion in electric power group?

[00:10:35] Speaker 03:
I am.

[00:10:36] Speaker 03:
Okay.

[00:10:37] Speaker 03:
How come you didn't cite it or discuss it in your gray brief when the two red briefs are discussing electric power group in great punishing detail?

[00:10:49] Speaker 03:
In fact, I think it is highly relevant.

[00:10:54] Speaker 00:
Your Honor, we don't think that this case is analogous to the case that you referred to.

[00:11:01] Speaker 03:
Electric power group.

[00:11:02] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:11:03] Speaker 00:
We think that the case here presents different issues in that Westview's claims are distinguishable.

[00:11:12] Speaker 02:
How?

[00:11:14] Speaker 00:
For example, in the incident case, the court said that the claims cite no more than generic computer components functioning in their conventional manner to provide information to a user, which is

[00:11:31] Speaker 00:
we think not accurate with respect to Westview's claims.

[00:11:35] Speaker 00:
For example, there's no evidence that the combination of components or hardware architecture or algorithms or logical flows or data structures were known in generic at the time.

[00:11:45] Speaker 00:
This case was decided pursuant to a motion for judgment on the pleadings with no evidence before the court.

[00:11:52] Speaker 00:
And at this stage, evidentiary presumptions should have been made in Westview's favor, but they weren't.

[00:11:58] Speaker 00:
And while several of the components

[00:12:01] Speaker 00:
are admittedly off the shelf products.

[00:12:04] Speaker 00:
Several of them are not.

[00:12:06] Speaker 00:
They're not generic.

[00:12:07] Speaker 00:
For example, the software, the algorithms, the user interface, the virtual database, which are undoubtedly components of the system, are custom and not generic.

[00:12:17] Speaker 00:
Additionally, several of these components don't function in a conventional manner.

[00:12:23] Speaker 03:
There's something in the patent specification that says that some of these components are

[00:12:29] Speaker 03:
are very special and that the inventor here actually invented those particular components.

[00:12:34] Speaker 00:
There is information and specifications.

[00:12:36] Speaker 03:
I understand that Ben Sabango pointed to column 7, column 8 of your patent specification at A145, where after you go through some examples of different components and maybe how they would fit together, you communicate from the elevator to a server and then back to the elevator.

[00:12:58] Speaker 03:
it says in the specification, it will be appreciated that many different arrangements for the disposition of various components within the system, including inter alia, the processor motherboard, storage devices, server and memory, and the transfer of data and signals that are between are possible, all of which are encompassed within the scope of the present invention.

[00:13:21] Speaker 03:
So very quickly, I can see where

[00:13:26] Speaker 03:
The lower court was seeing this proclamation and specification and saying, yes, I've provided some examples of how to get information from A to B and then from B to A. But all of that is just standard off-the-shelf arrangements.

[00:13:43] Speaker 03:
And there's many, many, many other arrangements that can do it.

[00:13:46] Speaker 03:
And all of them are encompassed.

[00:13:47] Speaker 03:
And so therefore, there's no specific arrangement, configuration of

[00:13:51] Speaker 03:
well-known components that I'm actually specifically restricting myself to.

[00:13:57] Speaker 00:
Your Honor, I'm well into my rebuttal time, but can I answer your question?

[00:14:05] Speaker 00:
The district court aired because, and this goes back to the 112-6 issue that we discussed earlier, in failing to interpret the claims in light of the specification, the district court didn't take into consideration

[00:14:20] Speaker 00:
the hardware architecture in figure one, the algorithms in figure four of the specification, the virtual data structure in figure 18b of the specification.

[00:14:33] Speaker 00:
And had the district court looked at those and imported that into the claim language, the district court would have seen the level of detail and specificity that your honor was just referring to.

[00:14:46] Speaker 03:
Which claim would you like us to focus on?

[00:14:48] Speaker 03:
You need to go sit down.

[00:14:49] Speaker 03:
But what claim?

[00:14:50] Speaker 00:
I'd like you to focus on claim 63 of the 038 patent and claim 29 of the 156 patent, both of which were presented in table three on page 24 of the blue brief.

[00:15:05] Speaker 00:
Very good.

[00:15:15] Speaker 01:
Thanks.

[00:15:15] Speaker 01:
Proceed, Your Honor.

[00:15:16] Speaker 01:
Please do.

[00:15:17] Speaker 01:
Good morning.

[00:15:17] Speaker 01:
May it please the court?

[00:15:18] Speaker 01:
Garland Stevens representing Tesla Motors and the other defendant, Pelley's.

[00:15:25] Speaker 01:
I'd like to first address the court's question about the claims that are on appeal.

[00:15:29] Speaker 01:
I think we're in agreement that the asserted claims of the 777 patent and all of the alternative claims are before the court.

[00:15:37] Speaker 01:
And also, it is true that Judge Pinchavango did hold all of the alternative claims invalid.

[00:15:43] Speaker 01:
That's in the last sentence, I believe, of her conclusion, where she says, further BW's motion for judgment on the pleadings, docket number 79, is granted for all the same reasons discussed in the court's prior order granting judgment on the pleadings, which she cites there.

[00:16:00] Speaker 01:
So she did, in fact, hold all of the claims that are before the court invalid.

[00:16:04] Speaker 01:
in addition to denying we have to assert those.

[00:16:06] Speaker 03:
Okay, so you had a motion for judgment on the pleadings with respect to the alternative claims, seeking to invalidate all of the alternative claims?

[00:16:17] Speaker 03:
That's correct.

[00:16:17] Speaker 03:
That's docket number 79 in the 2668 case.

[00:16:23] Speaker 03:
Is that in the joint appendix?

[00:16:25] Speaker 03:
I'm sorry?

[00:16:26] Speaker 03:
Is that in the joint appendix?

[00:16:27] Speaker 03:
You don't know, Your Honor.

[00:16:32] Speaker 01:
In 1999, Westview's founder Robert Gazinski filed a patent application on a smart elevator.

[00:16:37] Speaker 01:
And that application forms the basis for all of the patents and claims ensued.

[00:16:42] Speaker 01:
They say nothing about automobiles whatsoever.

[00:16:45] Speaker 01:
And yet, in the district court below, Westview maintained that those patents give them a broad monopoly to a broad range of human interactions with machines, primarily spoken interactions with machines.

[00:16:58] Speaker 01:
Each and every one of the claims before the court today

[00:17:02] Speaker 01:
directed to typical human activities, but performed on generic computer hardware.

[00:17:08] Speaker 01:
All the claims are directed to some variation of the same abstract idea, providing information in response to a user input or request.

[00:17:16] Speaker 01:
And that, of course, is a basic human activity.

[00:17:20] Speaker 01:
The computer hardware and software claims, you can sort of assume we read your grade.

[00:17:24] Speaker 01:
OK.

[00:17:25] Speaker 01:
Fair enough, Your Honor.

[00:17:27] Speaker 01:
So I think the claims that have been discussed before the court are all directed to that same abstract idea.

[00:17:36] Speaker 01:
And all of the hardware is recited generically.

[00:17:39] Speaker 01:
Of course, as Judge Chen observed and Judge Menchimango explained at some length, all of that hardware is described as off-the-shelf standard hardware.

[00:17:48] Speaker 01:
And in the claims, it is specifically recited in that generic way.

[00:17:53] Speaker 01:
And it's not recited as performing any functions other than what it is normally understood to do.

[00:17:59] Speaker 01:
So there's really nothing in the clients other than basic human behavior and generic computer hardware.

[00:18:06] Speaker 04:
How do you respond to Mr. Garson's argument that the software, the algorithms, and the user interface are something new and different that's not in the primer?

[00:18:15] Speaker 01:
It's not reflected in the clients.

[00:18:17] Speaker 01:
I don't think that's really present in the specification either, but that's not the question before the court.

[00:18:22] Speaker 01:
The question before the court is whether it's in the claims, and it's not.

[00:18:25] Speaker 01:
The claims simply refer to things like digitizing speech, and based on that speech, providing an indication of a location on that.

[00:18:33] Speaker 01:
That's what all the claims are directed to, and there's essentially nothing about how that's performed, and that's critical.

[00:18:38] Speaker 01:
If they'd actually written claims that were directed to how these activities and behaviors were implemented,

[00:18:44] Speaker 01:
then they wouldn't have this broad preemption that they claim to have.

[00:18:48] Speaker 01:
Claims would be narrow.

[00:18:48] Speaker 01:
They'd be addressed to some specific technical solution.

[00:18:51] Speaker 03:
Are there any claims that are truly means plus function claim limitations?

[00:18:55] Speaker 01:
There is one claim, which I believe is claim 47 of the 038 patent, if I have the number right, which has a means for processing and a capacitative display means.

[00:19:10] Speaker 01:
But if you were to interpret those to cover the processors that are described as generic in the specification and the capacitative displays that are described as generic and off-the-shelf items in the specification, it would have no effect whatsoever on the 101 analysis.

[00:19:24] Speaker 04:
Is that also the description of those?

[00:19:27] Speaker 04:
Do you find that in column seven of the shared specification?

[00:19:31] Speaker 01:
Yes, I believe that's right.

[00:19:32] Speaker 01:
In the 156 patent, it varies a bit from specification to specification, even though the disclosure is identical.

[00:19:39] Speaker 01:
But the 156 patent is the one that Judge Benjavango cited, and I believe that's right.

[00:19:45] Speaker 01:
And not only that, the specification says that the specific combination and arrangement of these generic computer components also is not part of the invention, and the invention covers all such arrangements.

[00:19:55] Speaker 01:
Judge Benjavango relied specifically on that recitation of generic hardware and the fact that the specific arrangement

[00:20:03] Speaker 01:
really didn't affect the invention in deciding that these claims were directed to basic human activities on generic hardware and therefore held them all invalid.

[00:20:13] Speaker 03:
Just curious, what if we didn't have that statement that I read out of the specification a few minutes ago?

[00:20:19] Speaker 03:
And then all we had was some diagrams that looked kind of complicated with a bunch of circuitry and signal lines going back and forth between them.

[00:20:31] Speaker 03:
I mean, would we be able to conclusively say under those circumstances for a Rule 12 motion that all of that is just conventional configuration of non-components?

[00:20:41] Speaker 01:
I think so because I think you can tell from the specification and those drawings that it is nevertheless generic hardware.

[00:20:50] Speaker 03:
We wouldn't have any confidence that it's a conventional configuration of all those generic components.

[00:20:59] Speaker 03:
known components.

[00:21:01] Speaker 01:
Fair enough.

[00:21:01] Speaker 01:
It certainly helps that the applicant admitted that in the specification.

[00:21:06] Speaker 01:
However, I think if you look at those figures, you'll see it's resided as a processor or DMA or memory and things that are really indisputably well known and reflected in the opinions of this court.

[00:21:17] Speaker 01:
Right, but I'm talking about the configuration of all those components.

[00:21:21] Speaker 03:
There's ways to take known components, combine them in ways that are

[00:21:28] Speaker 03:
novel and perhaps non-obvious, and then all of a sudden we have a very non-conventional configuration of those known components.

[00:21:35] Speaker 01:
True.

[00:21:36] Speaker 01:
That's true.

[00:21:36] Speaker 03:
Then would that be really appropriate to knock out under Rule 12 for Section 101?

[00:21:40] Speaker 03:
I think the answer would be no.

[00:21:42] Speaker 01:
Well, I think the answer might not be no if that structure, which you could not tell from the face of the patent, was generic or not reflected in the claims.

[00:21:51] Speaker 01:
Here that's not the case.

[00:21:53] Speaker 01:
Here, there's merely a recitation of a processor or a processing means and a storage means or a storage device.

[00:22:01] Speaker 01:
And nothing about the specific configuration.

[00:22:05] Speaker 02:
Crayon 1 uses pretty generic descriptions.

[00:22:11] Speaker 01:
So it recites these pieces of a computer system.

[00:22:14] Speaker 01:
It does not describe how they're connected together.

[00:22:19] Speaker 01:
Well, unless the court has other questions, I'll sit down.

[00:22:23] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:22:25] Speaker 01:
Do you have something more to say?

[00:22:30] Speaker 01:
I do.

[00:22:33] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:22:34] Speaker 01:
Yes.

[00:22:34] Speaker 01:
Your Honor asked if the motion for judgment on the pleadings is in the appendix.

[00:22:38] Speaker 01:
It is in fact at 2728.

[00:22:40] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:22:58] Speaker 02:
One.

[00:23:03] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:23:06] Speaker 00:
In light of what Mr. Stevens just said, he was correct in pointing to claim 47 of the 839 patent as being expressly a means claim.

[00:23:14] Speaker 00:
However, there are a number of other claims that, while not reciting means, still have to be analyzed under 112.6 because they are functional without reciting sufficient structure.

[00:23:26] Speaker 00:
point the court to perhaps claim 14 of the 156 for that.

[00:23:31] Speaker 00:
And secondly, that is an alternative claim, Your Honor.

[00:23:36] Speaker 00:
And I'd also like to address Mr. Stevens' opening point about these being elevator patents.

[00:23:41] Speaker 00:
These are not elevator patents.

[00:23:43] Speaker 00:
The specification explicitly states that the technology can be used in other transport apparatuses, including shuttles.

[00:23:51] Speaker 00:
Nearly all of the original independent claims from the grandparent application were not

[00:23:55] Speaker 00:
limited to elevators.

[00:23:58] Speaker 00:
The computer systems in these elevators are sophisticated and comparable to computer systems outside that context.

[00:24:06] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:24:07] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:24:13] Speaker 02:
If Judge Larry was here, you'd have a lot of references to the case having its ups and downs, but I'm not going to