[00:00:00] Speaker 02:
Our next case is Bill J. Coe versus Apple, 2023-2417.

[00:00:06] Speaker 02:
Mr. Merrill.

[00:00:09] Speaker 04:
Good morning.

[00:00:10] Speaker 04:
May it please the court?

[00:00:11] Speaker 04:
Courtler Merrill on behalf of Appellant Bill J. Coe.

[00:00:16] Speaker 04:
The patents share a common specification with the case you just heard about.

[00:00:21] Speaker 04:
The patents disclose improvements in mobile systems to receive and act on location information.

[00:00:27] Speaker 04:
The 011 patent in particular teaches location-based exchange, which features mobile devices having a peer-to-peer interaction without a central server.

[00:00:38] Speaker 04:
In this case, the board erred by allowing Apple to satisfy the claim limitation of a location-based content with information regarding non-location-based

[00:00:57] Speaker 04:
information about user profiles, and that was disclosed in the prior art reference, the Roboto reference.

[00:01:04] Speaker 04:
Location-based content is information about a user's location.

[00:01:10] Speaker 04:
The board implicitly construed location-based content to mean any user information

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that may be received when in proximity to the users.

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And that's what Roboto disclosed.

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It disclosed that much of a social media application where two users that are in proximity, closeness together, as opposed to their location, would share information such as a user ID and information about, for example, what university they went to.

[00:01:41] Speaker 04:
And that does not disclose the information about their location.

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Two individuals could have commonality about their social or business interests.

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They could be in close proximity, for example, in Tokyo.

[00:02:01] Speaker 04:
And it wouldn't show what their actual location was, whether they were in Tokyo or New York.

[00:02:07] Speaker 04:
And that's the fundamental problem with the use of the Roboto reference to satisfy that claim element.

[00:02:17] Speaker 03:
I'm not sure I'm remembering that.

[00:02:19] Speaker 03:
So Rubato, is that the one that does make a reference to being on essentially a network just for co-participants at a business convention so that if I get a message from on that network, then I know that that person is basically at the convention.

[00:02:44] Speaker 04:
Yes, I think that's a fair description.

[00:02:47] Speaker 03:
So why is that not location-based?

[00:02:51] Speaker 04:
What Roboto discloses is information about the type of environment, a business meeting, or a social gathering, where two users are in close proximity.

[00:03:01] Speaker 04:
It's not based on their actual location.

[00:03:04] Speaker 04:
A business conference, again, could be in two different locations.

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It could be a bar meeting, a federal bar association meeting, for example.

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something that doesn't tell you specifically where they are.

[00:03:15] Speaker 04:
And that's the crux of the invention, as it's described both in the claims.

[00:03:19] Speaker 04:
Claims of the patent talk about location-based information.

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And the genesis of the invention is to give information about, not the actual physical coordinates, but information about their location.

[00:03:32] Speaker 01:
I thought that it was to give them information about the characteristic or elements

[00:03:40] Speaker 01:
surrounding the individual.

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For example, that you're walking down the sidewalk and you get a notification on your phone and now it turns out that a local coffee shop is offering a dollar off on coffee.

[00:03:58] Speaker 01:
That's it.

[00:04:00] Speaker 04:
Well, that is very much what the invention is about.

[00:04:04] Speaker 01:
But you don't need to have location.

[00:04:06] Speaker 01:
You don't need to say, and by the way,

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It's around the corner at 125 McKinney Street.

[00:04:14] Speaker 01:
Why is that necessary if that's not the purpose of the innovation?

[00:04:19] Speaker 04:
Well, the claim itself does not require physical location coordinates.

[00:04:24] Speaker 04:
That's a claim limitation.

[00:04:26] Speaker 04:
But it does speak about location-based information.

[00:04:29] Speaker 04:
It would narrow the location, for the example you used,

[00:04:33] Speaker 04:
There's an example in the record concerning the accused product about a coffee shop, and you're passing by, and a user in advance downloads an app about that coffee shop, for example, and you wouldn't want to have them provide information about a different location.

[00:04:49] Speaker 04:
You'd want to have some, it has to be location specific.

[00:04:53] Speaker 04:
And that's what a fair reading of the claims referred to.

[00:05:00] Speaker 04:
Just closeness or proximity

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is not enough.

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It needs to be information about the location itself.

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And that's what Roboto fails to offer.

[00:05:13] Speaker 04:
And the board erred by allowing Apple to prove satisfaction of that claim element using Roboto.

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Because as the briefs indicate, as the record indicates, Roboto only discloses user ID and information about preferences, commonality in the same environment.

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It doesn't give information specific enough about the location.

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to be satisfied.

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And we submit that that was an error by the board to implicitly construe the claims in a way that broadened them to allow Roboto to satisfy that claim element.

[00:05:58] Speaker 04:
And we respectfully believe that's an error of law.

[00:06:01] Speaker 04:
I'm going to ask you to reverse it.

[00:06:07] Speaker 04:
Unless the board has any additional questions, I think we'll... We're not a board.

[00:06:12] Speaker 04:
Excuse me.

[00:06:13] Speaker 04:
The panel.

[00:06:15] Speaker 01:
You already argued before the board.

[00:06:17] Speaker 01:
Your honor, thank you.

[00:06:18] Speaker 04:
I stand corrected.

[00:06:20] Speaker 02:
We'll save the rest of your time for you.

[00:06:23] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:06:24] Speaker 02:
Ms.

[00:06:25] Speaker 02:
Zhang.

[00:06:44] Speaker 00:
Good morning, Your Honors.

[00:06:45] Speaker 00:
Francis Eng for Apple.

[00:06:47] Speaker 00:
May it please the court?

[00:06:49] Speaker 00:
Though Bill J. Q. attempts to argue that the board committed legal errors on claim construction and prior art obviousness and disclosure, all of their arguments ultimately boil down to disagreements with factual determinations made by the board, which are supported by substantial evidence and should thus be affirmed by the court.

[00:07:09] Speaker 00:
I'd like to address the claim construction issues that Your Honors discussed

[00:07:14] Speaker 00:
On the location-based content term, Bill Jaco's argument that the board incorrectly construed the location-based content term fails for at least two reasons.

[00:07:24] Speaker 00:
First, the board did not implicitly construe the term, but rather applied the plain meaning of location-based content in making a factual determination that Roboto discloses location-based content.

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And regarding the disclosure that Bill Jaco's counsel

[00:07:44] Speaker 00:
was discussing, that was not actually relied upon by the board in finding that Roboto discloses the proximity, sharing information when a user is in proximity.

[00:07:57] Speaker 00:
That is not the passage that the board relied on to show disclosure of the location-based content term.

[00:08:03] Speaker 00:
Rather, at appendix 29 of the final written decision, the board found that Roboto's disclosure of sharing a business profile, not the user's

[00:08:14] Speaker 00:
dating profile or personal profiles, but the business profile, when a user is at a business conference, satisfied location-based content.

[00:08:24] Speaker 00:
Here the content, which is the business profile, is based on the location, because it is applicable to and depends on the business conference location that the user is located.

[00:08:39] Speaker 00:
So in other words, the content is changing based on where the user is.

[00:08:44] Speaker 00:
And regarding Bill Jinko's other argument that the business conference is not a location but an environment, first of all, that's a new argument raised in the gray brief for the first time.

[00:08:56] Speaker 00:
So it's forfeited.

[00:08:57] Speaker 00:
But regardless, it's meritless, because in Roboto at A2567 paragraph 78, Roboto explicitly discloses that the business conference is, in its own words, a location.

[00:09:13] Speaker 00:
specifically Roboto states that at paragraph 78 the user may be open to sharing more information from one or more of the users, one or more user profiles based on the location.

[00:09:27] Speaker 00:
And then in the very next sentence it says as a particular example and then talks about the business conference as an example of that location.

[00:09:35] Speaker 03:
So certainly... So I'm not sure I heard you correctly, so I thought

[00:09:41] Speaker 03:
passage, which is this paragraph 78, right?

[00:09:44] Speaker 03:
That's right.

[00:09:45] Speaker 03:
That the board relied on at page 29 of the appendix was referring to content sent that itself refers to a location as opposed to

[00:10:03] Speaker 03:
just a message about anything that could only be sent from within a particular location, but that the content might not refer to that.

[00:10:16] Speaker 00:
Your Honor, I would rephrase the first part of your understanding of what I said.

[00:10:22] Speaker 00:
I was not saying that the content disclosed in Roboto refers to location, but rather that it is based on location.

[00:10:29] Speaker 00:
And that's what the claim requires.

[00:10:30] Speaker 00:
And Roboto's content is based on location because which user profile is presented and how much of that user profile is presented dependent on where the user is located.

[00:10:45] Speaker 03:
OK, so where in 78 does it say that the profile refers to the presence at the business company?

[00:10:56] Speaker 00:
OK, so at paragraph 78,

[00:10:58] Speaker 00:
It says, so this is some sense of location.

[00:11:02] Speaker 03:
It's a very long paragraph.

[00:11:03] Speaker 00:
Right.

[00:11:04] Speaker 00:
So there's two parts.

[00:11:06] Speaker 00:
The first part, it says, I'm trying to figure out, it's in the middle.

[00:11:12] Speaker 00:
It starts with, for example, the user may be open to sharing more information from one or more of the users, one or more user profiles based on location.

[00:11:25] Speaker 00:
So that sentence says that,

[00:11:27] Speaker 00:
how much of the user profile is shared is based on location and then if you go to the next sentence that starts at with as a particular example that's where it talks about the business conference example and it says a user at a business conference may be willing to share greater information from the user's business user profile which is now showing that what content you choose to present is changing

[00:11:56] Speaker 00:
based on the fact that a match is detected at the business conference.

[00:12:03] Speaker 00:
That is what the board relied on to show the disclosure of the location-based content term and that was supported by substantial evidence as we just discussed in Roboto.

[00:12:17] Speaker 00:
Bill J. Coe's construction that the location-based content term should be narrower is incorrect.

[00:12:24] Speaker 00:
It's forfeited because it was never raised below, but regardless it's incorrect because it's Unsupported by the claims and the intrinsic record nothing in Bill J. Coe's Cited passages from the intrinsic record even use the word about And do not actually limit content to be about or describe location your honor Judge Reyna

[00:12:53] Speaker 00:
correctly acknowledge it does not actually the content doesn't actually have to describe the location or even describe a specific location as bill jaco's council suggested and even in their sir reply below at a 1040 of their ipr sir reply bill jaco explicitly

[00:13:21] Speaker 00:
said that it was not construing location-based content to require an actual specific location.

[00:13:28] Speaker 00:
So they cannot raise that again now on appeal after they have rejected that.

[00:13:32] Speaker 01:
Could you comment on periodic beaconing?

[00:13:35] Speaker 00:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:13:37] Speaker 00:
On periodic beaconing, the court actually has multiple grounds that they could affirm.

[00:13:42] Speaker 00:
But the easiest one is based on obviousness of the periodic beaconing term based on Roboto alone.

[00:13:50] Speaker 00:
And that's because in their grade brief, they dropped their dispute to that argument entirely.

[00:13:57] Speaker 00:
The board determined, and this is at A22, that a skilled artisan would have been motivated to implement Roboto's beaconing to be periodic based on Apple's expert's testimony that periodic beaconing was a well-known concept.

[00:14:20] Speaker 00:
and a way to save power.

[00:14:22] Speaker 00:
That factual finding that the board credited is not in dispute on appeal, and Bill J. Coe does not re-raise its arguments regarding that ground in their gray brief.

[00:14:36] Speaker 00:
So the court can affirm on those grounds alone.

[00:14:39] Speaker 00:
If there's also additional grounds based on the rubato in view of Lorenz, then those are also supported by substantial evidence.

[00:14:48] Speaker 00:
Unless your honors have further questions on the periodic beginning term, I'm happy to turn to the last issue.

[00:14:53] Speaker 02:
Thank you, Ms.

[00:14:54] Speaker 02:
Zhang.

[00:14:57] Speaker 00:
Just quickly on the secondary considerations, because that wasn't argued.

[00:15:04] Speaker 00:
Oh, I know.

[00:15:06] Speaker 00:
It's more just a point.

[00:15:07] Speaker 00:
OK, I will see the remainder of my time.

[00:15:11] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:15:15] Speaker 02:
Mr. Merrill.

[00:15:26] Speaker 04:
To respond to the arguments of opposing counsel, first with respect to the reference in the bata to paragraph 78 and its references about location.

[00:15:40] Speaker 04:
So references that were identified by counsel deal with how much information is to be provided.

[00:15:47] Speaker 04:
They don't provide information about location.

[00:15:51] Speaker 04:
If you're in a business that the passage

[00:15:53] Speaker 04:
In particular, examples of business conference be willing to share greater information.

[00:15:57] Speaker 04:
That's not information.

[00:15:58] Speaker 03:
But this distinction really does depend on your claim construction position that location-based content has to be content referring to location.

[00:16:11] Speaker 04:
I think that's probably fair.

[00:16:12] Speaker 04:
I think that's probably fair.

[00:16:15] Speaker 04:
With respect to that, the claim construction issue arose out of the decision by the board.

[00:16:21] Speaker 04:
Both parties agreed to a plain and ordinary meaning of the construction.

[00:16:26] Speaker 04:
And then as we saw from the final written decision on pages 29 and 30 of the appendix, it was referred to by the board.

[00:16:34] Speaker 04:
They then said, no, this is what location-based information

[00:16:40] Speaker 04:
They, in our position, as the board, narrowed that to, or I should say, allowed it, expanded it, to allow the type of reference of the information that's identified in Rob and Roboto to satisfy that.

[00:16:53] Speaker 04:
And we would submit that if you look at, this is appendix 603, just the claim one of the 011 patent, the passage at 448, line 19,

[00:17:10] Speaker 04:
It talks about the periodically beaconing and outbound broadcast unidirectional wireless data record.

[00:17:17] Speaker 04:
This is an earlier portion of the same claim that includes the location-based content information.

[00:17:25] Speaker 04:
That's a wireless data record for physically locating in a region of the sending processing system.

[00:17:30] Speaker 04:
So that's the basis of the claim.

[00:17:33] Speaker 04:
That's what the invention is speaking to.

[00:17:36] Speaker 04:
And then later on, it discusses

[00:17:38] Speaker 04:
without the physical coordinates.

[00:17:41] Speaker 04:
Therefore, the type of information disclosed in Roboto does not satisfy that claim.

[00:17:47] Speaker 04:
Limitation.

[00:17:48] Speaker 04:
Unless the court has any further questions, that's all I have for you.

[00:17:51] Speaker 02:
Thank you, counsel.

[00:17:52] Speaker 02:
To both counsel, the case is submitted.