[00:00:04] Speaker 03:
When you're ready.

[00:00:14] Speaker 01:
Morning, Your Honors.

[00:00:15] Speaker 01:
May it please the Court.

[00:00:17] Speaker 01:
The district court ignored specific claim limitations directed to a specially designed dart machine and a series of method steps that allow a referee to monitor and enforce rules for a dart competition between players in remote locations

[00:00:32] Speaker 01:
from the referee or from each other, that was a task that was not possible with the existing DART machines prior to the technological advancements made in the 083 patent.

[00:00:44] Speaker 01:
As a result, the district court erred in the following ways, oversimplified the claims, improperly determined facts against the non-movement, and this is in a motion to dismiss.

[00:00:55] Speaker 01:
There was no fact discovery.

[00:00:57] Speaker 01:
There hasn't even been an answer filed in the case.

[00:00:59] Speaker 01:
He improperly concluded that the asserted claims do not recite something more than a mere abstract idea.

[00:01:06] Speaker 01:
And he improperly concluded that the asserted claims are directed to an abstract idea.

[00:01:14] Speaker 01:
Looking at the facts that the district court.

[00:01:18] Speaker 01:
Under Alice, whether a claimed element or combination of elements is well understood, routine, and conventional to a skilled artisan is a question of fact.

[00:01:30] Speaker 01:
If a fact question exists, then it's improper to grant the motion to dismiss.

[00:01:35] Speaker 01:
And that's under the Seventh Circuit law.

[00:01:41] Speaker 02:
Where in the decision do you see the fact findings that you're referring to?

[00:01:47] Speaker 01:
He determined all of the recited components are generic in nature at appendix 15 and 19.

[00:01:53] Speaker 01:
concluded that the asserted claims recite the use of conventional components for their conventional purposes at Appendix 19 as well, concluded that the process of remotely referring a game by collecting information, analyzing the information, and displaying results are routinely employed in other areas, including professional hockey, baseball, and football at Appendix 11.

[00:02:17] Speaker 04:
So looking at Claim 1, what in this is not routine and conventional components?

[00:02:24] Speaker 01:
So if you look at claim one, that's to the system.

[00:02:27] Speaker 01:
And the system requires the use of a dart machine, one or more dart machines that have play components.

[00:02:33] Speaker 01:
Those are old.

[00:02:35] Speaker 01:
I don't contest those are old.

[00:02:37] Speaker 01:
Those are simply the darts, the board, the area around the board on the machine.

[00:02:42] Speaker 01:
Means to capture multimedia information relating to conduct of play and performance of players using one or more of the dart machines.

[00:02:49] Speaker 01:
Those are the sensors that are on dart machines.

[00:02:51] Speaker 01:
Those are used in a conventional way.

[00:02:54] Speaker 01:
What's not here is at least one camera to capture the conduct of play.

[00:02:58] Speaker 01:
That is unique.

[00:02:59] Speaker 01:
It's not been done before.

[00:03:00] Speaker 01:
It's not been used in its conventional area.

[00:03:03] Speaker 03:
And the reason we say that is... There's nothing unconven... No, go ahead.

[00:03:07] Speaker 03:
There's nothing unconventional about the camera.

[00:03:10] Speaker 01:
No.

[00:03:11] Speaker 01:
Well, the camera has, I think, I argue that the camera has a special filter that allows it to do certain things in variety of lights and in a dark, in a bar.

[00:03:20] Speaker 04:
Did you invent that filter?

[00:03:22] Speaker 01:
We did not.

[00:03:23] Speaker 01:
But we don't have to invent the components.

[00:03:26] Speaker 01:
What we have to do is if the combination of components that we use are inventive, then those are unique components.

[00:03:33] Speaker 01:
The Federal Circuit has repeatedly issued, had ruled that patents that use conventional components and combine them in a unique way, that's a patentable subject matter.

[00:03:46] Speaker 04:
But we've also routinely held that a combination of routine and conventional equipment used to

[00:03:52] Speaker 04:
implement an abstract idea is ineligible under ALICE?

[00:03:56] Speaker 01:
You have.

[00:03:56] Speaker 01:
And in most cases, and almost the majority of cases, those are the use of a standard computer running software.

[00:04:04] Speaker 01:
The wide majority of the cases that you find ineligible include the use of just a general purpose computer running software.

[00:04:11] Speaker 04:
Sure, but we've also done computers, the internet, computers with camera, I think is TLI.

[00:04:19] Speaker 04:
I mean, so it's not limited to abstract idea on a computer.

[00:04:22] Speaker 04:
It's abstract idea on routine conventional equipment.

[00:04:27] Speaker 01:
Right.

[00:04:27] Speaker 01:
And I'll use the Alice case.

[00:04:30] Speaker 01:
There was no dispute that intermediate negotiation was a well-known, well-understood routine function that was known for centuries.

[00:04:41] Speaker 01:
There is no evidence in this case.

[00:04:42] Speaker 04:
Well, there's no dispute that that idea of intermediate negotiation was an abstract idea.

[00:04:47] Speaker 04:
and the only way they tried to make it patentable was to put that abstract idea on a computer.

[00:04:53] Speaker 04:
Isn't that your problem here, too, is you're trying to put the abstract idea of scoring, monitoring, and referring a dark game on conventional computer and camera equipment?

[00:05:06] Speaker 01:
No.

[00:05:06] Speaker 01:
I think what we are doing is permitting by the use of particular

[00:05:15] Speaker 01:
cameras, particular devices on a dart machine that weren't used previously to allow and in providing that information to a remote refereeing center, providing both the conduct of play and the multimedia information to a remote center which would allow a referee to remotely enforce the rules of a dart game.

[00:05:41] Speaker 01:
There is no evidence that remote refereeing itself is a long-standing

[00:05:45] Speaker 01:
routine act that has occurred.

[00:05:49] Speaker 04:
And there's... You think the idea of remote refereeing is patent-eligible?

[00:05:55] Speaker 04:
I think the manner... So I write a claim that says, I claim a system for remote refereeing any type of sport, wherein there's conventional equipment at the sport site that is used to transmit information to a third site or a second site

[00:06:13] Speaker 04:
where the referee sets and can make decisions.

[00:06:15] Speaker 04:
Is that a patentable, eligible idea under ALIS?

[00:06:20] Speaker 01:
Not if you don't, if you don't use specific or unique combinations of elements to get it there.

[00:06:28] Speaker 04:
If all you've done, like you've done in electric... I just said a game site on whatever field using cameras.

[00:06:36] Speaker 04:
You can add in some sensors if you want at the goal line or home plate or the baseline match on tennis.

[00:06:43] Speaker 04:
and then it's all transmitted over the Internet to a second site where the referee sits.

[00:06:51] Speaker 01:
I don't think you could get that, and our claims don't cover that.

[00:06:55] Speaker 01:
Our claims are not written to cover all forms of remote refereeing.

[00:06:59] Speaker 02:
But this was a hypothetical.

[00:07:01] Speaker 01:
Okay.

[00:07:04] Speaker 01:
I would say that it depends on, it depends in your hypothetical on whether there was some unique way in which

[00:07:13] Speaker 01:
the devices were used to transmit the information or they're collecting information that wasn't collected previously, then maybe.

[00:07:22] Speaker 04:
But what's not, what more is in your claims except for a remote monitoring or refereeing system?

[00:07:29] Speaker 04:
I mean, that's in the preamble to describe what your claims are, and then it adds in a bunch of conventional equipment to allow that to happen.

[00:07:36] Speaker 01:
We disagree that it's conventional.

[00:07:38] Speaker 01:
There is a dart machine that has a camera that

[00:07:42] Speaker 01:
captures the conduct of play.

[00:07:44] Speaker 04:
But you don't disagree that all the equipment you're using is conventional.

[00:07:47] Speaker 04:
I guess you're just arguing you've organized it in an unconventional manner.

[00:07:53] Speaker 01:
I don't think the camera itself is conventional.

[00:07:56] Speaker 01:
But it's not claimed to be a specific camera.

[00:07:59] Speaker 02:
No.

[00:07:59] Speaker 02:
Your claim is wrong.

[00:08:00] Speaker 01:
It is.

[00:08:01] Speaker 01:
It's a camera for capturing the conduct of play.

[00:08:04] Speaker 01:
And that means something when you read the specification, capturing the conduct of play.

[00:08:08] Speaker 01:
What all the prior art in this case did

[00:08:11] Speaker 01:
was you had a camera that was an instant camera that took a picture of the player as a reward when he won the game.

[00:08:16] Speaker 01:
There was nothing done before with a camera that captured the player, the surroundings, the dartboard, and provided and captured all of the sensor information to show where the dart was, where it hit, where it was on the device.

[00:08:31] Speaker 03:
But it's still the same non-unique camera.

[00:08:36] Speaker 03:
It's a conventional camera.

[00:08:37] Speaker 03:
I understand you're saying there's this filter on it.

[00:08:40] Speaker 03:
But still, you're using a camera to capture, in one shot, so to speak, a totality of things.

[00:08:50] Speaker 03:
That's just a conventional use of a camera.

[00:08:53] Speaker 01:
No.

[00:08:54] Speaker 01:
Does a camera capture video?

[00:08:56] Speaker 01:
That's a conventional use.

[00:08:57] Speaker 01:
Our use is that the claims specifically require that it capture the conduct of play from beginning to end.

[00:09:03] Speaker 01:
If you read this back, it says you're going to capture everything there.

[00:09:07] Speaker 01:
And the whole purpose of this is to allow refereeing in a remote location that captures the infringements of all the rules.

[00:09:17] Speaker 01:
If you only have a camera focused on the player, you miss the boundaries.

[00:09:21] Speaker 01:
You miss whether he's stepping over.

[00:09:22] Speaker 01:
You miss whether somebody is close to the dartboard and cheating and touching a dart there.

[00:09:26] Speaker 01:
That's what it was designed to capture.

[00:09:28] Speaker 03:
In this case, though, is there anything unique?

[00:09:33] Speaker 03:
Has something been done to the camera?

[00:09:35] Speaker 03:
internally, mechanically, that makes it uniquely suited to do these things that you've just described, catching the whole field of play.

[00:09:46] Speaker 01:
It is incorporated into the dart machine in a manner that captures all that and includes special filter, and I know your honor argued that it's not in the claim, but it's in the specification, indicates that you can use a special filter to capture the images in all the lighting areas.

[00:10:05] Speaker 01:
So the combination, I guess what we're arguing about, you want to say every single element there is conventional.

[00:10:13] Speaker 01:
We don't think it is in the claimed element, because what else isn't conventional is the

[00:10:18] Speaker 01:
transmission of both the camera, images captured, and the multimedia.

[00:10:24] Speaker 01:
Nothing before has ever done that.

[00:10:26] Speaker 01:
Even the NFL and the baseball example and the hockey example that they give don't do that.

[00:10:32] Speaker 01:
They just have a video camera.

[00:10:33] Speaker 02:
Can your specification explain the kind of filter that you need to have in order to be able to capture the play, as you're describing to us, it being so difficult to do?

[00:10:42] Speaker 02:
And I see the description in column four, page, column four,

[00:10:48] Speaker 02:
Line 64, wrapping around to column 5, line 3.

[00:10:52] Speaker 02:
It doesn't give specifics about the filter.

[00:10:56] Speaker 02:
I'm missing something.

[00:10:57] Speaker 02:
Please let me know.

[00:10:58] Speaker 01:
It doesn't.

[00:10:58] Speaker 01:
It simply says the filters can allow you to see it in different various light sources.

[00:11:05] Speaker 01:
But I'll go back to the idea that you can't ignore the elements of

[00:11:12] Speaker 01:
the dart machine and the requirements for how the information is collected, because it's collected differently than it was done in the past.

[00:11:20] Speaker 01:
And you can't just say all this is... How was it collected in the past?

[00:11:25] Speaker 01:
There was no cameras collecting the entire... There was nobody... There was no cameras that were collecting the entire field of play.

[00:11:33] Speaker 01:
As I said, the prior art that's described in our... not in the preamble, in the beginning of the patent talks about an instant camera that only picked a picture of somebody when they won the game.

[00:11:43] Speaker 01:
So the combination of the camera and the multimedia information being sent to the remote location is new.

[00:11:56] Speaker 01:
It hasn't been done before.

[00:11:58] Speaker 01:
I see my, I'm into my rebuttal time.

[00:12:01] Speaker 04:
Yes, would you like to say that?

[00:12:03] Speaker 04:
We'll hear from your friend on the other side now.

[00:12:05] Speaker 01:
I'd like to say that.

[00:12:06] Speaker 01:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:12:15] Speaker 00:
Good morning, your honor, and may it please the court.

[00:12:18] Speaker 00:
The district court got its analysis correct here.

[00:12:21] Speaker 00:
The 083 patent and the asserted claims are directed to the abstract idea of remote referring.

[00:12:26] Speaker 00:
This is collecting information, analyzing information, and then displaying that information, the referee's analysis.

[00:12:34] Speaker 00:
The asserted claims on their face teach this.

[00:12:37] Speaker 00:
This court has called these types of claims a familiar class of claims in the electric power.

[00:12:41] Speaker 04:
What troubles me a little bit about this case is our kind of more recent Berkheimer decision and where there's a factual dispute of whether something is routine and conventional or not.

[00:12:53] Speaker 00:
And I think Berkheimer is instructive here because at Berkheimer, and that was at the second step of the Alice inquiry, right, there was an abstract idea and then at the second step we looked to, this court looked first to the specification and found in the specification that there was at least a purported

[00:13:11] Speaker 00:
inventive concept.

[00:13:14] Speaker 00:
We don't have that here.

[00:13:15] Speaker 04:
The specification here does not... Well, I guess what your friend is arguing is that the inventive concept is nobody has ever come up with this particular combination of a dartboard, a computer, the internet, and a camera to transmit these images across the line.

[00:13:34] Speaker 04:
Why isn't that allegation that that combination is not routine and conventional?

[00:13:39] Speaker 04:
enough to get to a factual dispute?

[00:13:41] Speaker 00:
Well, that's not what the specification is directed to.

[00:13:44] Speaker 00:
And it does not discuss that as being inventive, right?

[00:13:48] Speaker 00:
This specification and the claims and, frankly, the title is directed to this idea of remote referring.

[00:13:56] Speaker 00:
And as my colleague mentioned, was the dartboard with a camera was discussed as being in the prior art.

[00:14:06] Speaker 00:
And while the prior art is not

[00:14:08] Speaker 00:
Not great, but it's, it's, it's looking to that this already existed.

[00:14:11] Speaker 00:
There are dark boards that were interconnected with a network, whether or not that's, you know, an internet-aligned cellular network.

[00:14:21] Speaker 00:
So the, the specification is not looking to, the specification of this pen is not looking to inventing a new way of connecting dark boards or a new way of connecting dark boards with a remote referee.

[00:14:36] Speaker 00:
This specification is directed toward this idea of a remote referee.

[00:14:41] Speaker 00:
And I think that's clear from the specification when it says that this is really the problem that's being solved, is this remote refereeing problem.

[00:14:50] Speaker 00:
It's, and frankly, when you look at the claims, that's clear, the ideas to the claims.

[00:14:57] Speaker 00:
And then at the district court, I don't want to misspeak, but Galco acknowledged that a lot of the technology was not new.

[00:15:05] Speaker 00:
You're right.

[00:15:06] Speaker 00:
It's a camera that's known.

[00:15:08] Speaker 00:
It's not a new camera.

[00:15:10] Speaker 02:
The camera with the... The district court's opinion referring to an admission or argument.

[00:15:14] Speaker 02:
What was that admission?

[00:15:16] Speaker 00:
So this is at appendix 159 and 160.

[00:15:18] Speaker 00:
This is the district court's words.

[00:15:24] Speaker 00:
There is nothing, though, they do argue, erected.

[00:15:28] Speaker 00:
And do you admit there's no algorithm, no special machinery or technology that is involved there?

[00:15:33] Speaker 00:
And Galco admitted true.

[00:15:34] Speaker 00:
That's true.

[00:15:35] Speaker 00:
And then it went on to say the court went on.

[00:15:38] Speaker 00:
But those are already invented cameras and so forth.

[00:15:42] Speaker 00:
And Galka would acknowledge, yes, that's true.

[00:15:44] Speaker 00:
Those are invented cameras.

[00:15:46] Speaker 00:
And with regard to the cameras, with the filters and the mention of lasers and things like that in the specification, as you mentioned earlier, that's not in the claims.

[00:16:00] Speaker 00:
Because this is directed to remote refereeing, which is an abstract idea of collection analysis and display.

[00:16:06] Speaker 02:
Where did the discussion, the district ordinance opinion, talks about how there's remote refereeing in hockey games, remote refereeing in football games?

[00:16:14] Speaker 02:
Was that all stipulated to, or was there any evidence in the record to support that?

[00:16:19] Speaker 00:
No, that wasn't stipulated to.

[00:16:20] Speaker 00:
That was a discussion at oral argument, I believe.

[00:16:24] Speaker 00:
but I believe it was a discussion at oral argument with regard to the abstract idea, and with regard to the abstract idea of collecting, analyzing, and displaying information.

[00:16:34] Speaker 00:
Really, the idea of referring is exactly that, is referring.

[00:16:39] Speaker 02:
Electric power, it seems to me that you're arguing that electric power stands for the proposition that any time there's collecting, analyzing, and displaying data, that it's abstract.

[00:16:49] Speaker 02:
And I don't think that's what electric power stands for.

[00:16:52] Speaker 02:
Is that what you're arguing?

[00:16:53] Speaker 00:
Well, not any time, but I think it was electric power that said we don't need to find the outer bounds of an abstract idea.

[00:17:02] Speaker 00:
And I feel like that's the same place here, is that this is so abstract, right?

[00:17:08] Speaker 00:
We often talk about something that's done within the human mind.

[00:17:12] Speaker 00:
And refereeing is exactly that, whether it's remote refereeing, and the referee here is contemplated as being a human.

[00:17:19] Speaker 00:
Whether that's a remote referee or a referee on the football field,

[00:17:24] Speaker 00:
It's collecting information, what's going on in the play, analyzing that information, and then displaying the referee's decision, whether you throw a flag, or whether it's a foot foul in a dart game.

[00:17:40] Speaker 00:
That's the abstract idea, and then when we move to step two of the Alice inquiry, as has been discussed, these are conventional components used in their conventional manner.

[00:17:53] Speaker 00:
following Berkheimer, we looked to the specification.

[00:17:57] Speaker 00:
There's no purported inventive concept as in there's no technological solution.

[00:18:03] Speaker 00:
And even if there were, it's not included in the claims.

[00:18:06] Speaker 00:
And that's what we saw in Berkheimer, that there was this purported solution.

[00:18:10] Speaker 00:
Then the score looked to the claims, and some claims survived, some did not, based upon whether or not that purported solution was incorporated into the claims.

[00:18:22] Speaker 00:
And if you have no further questions, I will yield my time.

[00:18:26] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:18:26] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:18:32] Speaker 04:
Mr. Rigg, you have a little over three minutes left.

[00:18:34] Speaker 01:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:18:37] Speaker 01:
Your Honor, I will go to what you were recently discussing.

[00:18:41] Speaker 01:
This case is not electric power.

[00:18:44] Speaker 01:
This, the claims in this case are not so broad as to cover, as the Court in electric power said,

[00:18:51] Speaker 01:
They will monopolize every potential solution to the problem, i.e.

[00:18:56] Speaker 01:
any way of effectively monitoring multiple sources on the power grid.

[00:18:59] Speaker 01:
Our claims are much narrower.

[00:19:01] Speaker 01:
They require a specific machine, a specific dart machine to be used in both the system claim and in the method claim.

[00:19:08] Speaker 01:
And that reference to the dart machines has specific elements that must be included.

[00:19:14] Speaker 01:
It can't apply to football.

[00:19:16] Speaker 01:
It can't apply to hockey.

[00:19:17] Speaker 01:
It can't apply to any other sport but darts.

[00:19:20] Speaker 01:
And it is only one way of doing remote refereeing.

[00:19:23] Speaker 01:
There are other ways out there.

[00:19:24] Speaker 01:
It is not limiting it.

[00:19:25] Speaker 01:
And I would cite you to a quote from Research Corporation Technologies versus Microsoft, 627 F3rd, 859.

[00:19:38] Speaker 01:
And the court was talking about, and it says, indeed, this court notes that inventions with specific applications or improvements to technologies in the marketplace are not likely to be so abstract that they override the statutory language and framework of the Patent Act.

[00:19:52] Speaker 01:
That's what we did.

[00:19:53] Speaker 01:
We improved a Dart machine so that you could do some remote referring.

[00:19:57] Speaker 01:
This is a Dart machine that's in the marketplace.

[00:19:59] Speaker 01:
We made an improvement to it in the marketplace.

[00:20:02] Speaker 01:
So we think it's non-abstract.

[00:20:05] Speaker 01:
With respect to the judge relying on

[00:20:08] Speaker 01:
his own personal knowledge about football, hockey games, and baseball, and using that to say remote referring is well understood.

[00:20:22] Speaker 01:
There was no evidence supporting that.

[00:20:25] Speaker 01:
There was no agreement on that.

[00:20:27] Speaker 01:
That was his own personal information that he relied on.

[00:20:31] Speaker 01:
And what's missing from that is we don't know

[00:20:35] Speaker 01:
how they do it in the NFL.

[00:20:37] Speaker 01:
We don't know when they started doing it.

[00:20:40] Speaker 01:
We don't know what information they get.

[00:20:43] Speaker 01:
There is nothing in there but the judge saying, I am equating this to what's going on in some different sport and saying, therefore, it's well-known, routine, well-understood.

[00:20:55] Speaker 01:
The one thing that's important to note about both all of the football, baseball, and hockey examples he gave is none of those

[00:21:05] Speaker 01:
Remove the need to have a referee at the competition.

[00:21:10] Speaker 01:
In each of those cases, you have to have a referee at a competition.

[00:21:13] Speaker 01:
There's eight referees at a football game.

[00:21:15] Speaker 02:
I'm going to interrupt you and just say, now, how do you respond to the fact that your claims don't require that limitation?

[00:21:22] Speaker 01:
They do reply to a remote refereeing center.

[00:21:25] Speaker 02:
But it doesn't say without having a person there at their site.

[00:21:30] Speaker 01:
in the beginning of the patent there is some reference to one of the purposes of the patent is to avoid having referees being present.

[00:21:38] Speaker 01:
It's not in the claim, but it's the basis for why the invention was created and what it was intended to do.

[00:21:46] Speaker 01:
I see my time is up.

[00:21:47] Speaker 01:
Unless there's more questions, I'm happy to answer.

[00:21:50] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:21:50] Speaker 04:
Thank you, Your Honor.