[00:00:15] Speaker 04: The last case for argument is 191765 Dropbox versus Synchronous Technologies. [00:00:50] Speaker 04: OK, I think we're ready to get started. [00:00:57] Speaker 00: Thank you, Your Honor. [00:00:58] Speaker 00: Good morning, and may it please the court. [00:01:00] Speaker 03: On page 15 of the red brief, there's another one in my housekeeping. [00:01:03] Speaker 03: Sinclair says, you don't dispute that claim one of the 541 patent is representative. [00:01:10] Speaker 03: Is that true? [00:01:11] Speaker 00: That is correct, Your Honor. [00:01:12] Speaker 00: OK, great. [00:01:13] Speaker 00: This is easier to start. [00:01:15] Speaker 00: Yes, Your Honor. [00:01:16] Speaker 00: This is an appeal from decisions finding three distinct patents invalid on a motion to dismiss. [00:01:24] Speaker 00: But this is far from the paradigmatic Alice case that can appropriately be decided on the pleadings. [00:01:31] Speaker 00: And it was error for the district court to do so. [00:01:34] Speaker 00: It's undisputed that none of the three patents at issue here claims the computerized implementation [00:01:42] Speaker 00: a long-standing practice or business method. [00:01:45] Speaker 03: On page 28 of the blue brief, you argue that the district court erred by considering whether, quote, each representative patent claim directed to an abstract idea, without considering whether the claim solved technological problems that existed at the time of the invention. [00:02:05] Speaker 03: It's a key phrase. [00:02:08] Speaker 03: Two questions. [00:02:09] Speaker 03: One, what record evidence shows the district court ignored the time of the invention as the state of the art? [00:02:16] Speaker 03: And two, should the time of invention be relevant to determining whether something is a law of nature or a natural phenomenon? [00:02:25] Speaker 00: I'll take the second question first, Your Honor. [00:02:28] Speaker 00: As to whether the time of the invention should be relevant to determining whether something's a law of nature or a natural phenomenon, I don't think we need to reach that question in this case because this is a case about whether [00:02:41] Speaker 00: computerized inventions or computer-based inventions claim an abstract idea. [00:02:47] Speaker 00: And in that context, in the context of that question, I think that the time of the alleged invention and what the state of the art was at that time is relevant because [00:03:00] Speaker 00: This court has explained that one of the ways we determine at ALICE step one, whether we have claims directed to an abstract idea or not, is to ask the question, is this an improvement to computer technology? [00:03:16] Speaker 04: Assuming you're right for the sake of argument, you make the assertion. [00:03:20] Speaker 04: It's a very broad assertion, particularly because we've got three different claims here, which are all quite different. [00:03:26] Speaker 04: But you never tell, I mean, you make this assertion, this is what the district court did. [00:03:30] Speaker 04: You don't point to anything she said, any part of her analysis that clearly does that. [00:03:36] Speaker 04: So even if we were hypothetically to agree with your analysis about this time thing, [00:03:43] Speaker 04: What did she give us in the briefing? [00:03:45] Speaker 04: I mean, did you point to anything? [00:03:46] Speaker 04: Am I wrong? [00:03:47] Speaker 04: I didn't see where you pointed to anything she said in her analysis that would support your assertion. [00:03:55] Speaker 00: Two responses to that, Your Honor. [00:03:58] Speaker 00: First, [00:03:59] Speaker 00: What we pointed to, and this is in the reply brief, is the absence of anything in the district court's decision indicating that she did consider Alice step one from the time of the election. [00:04:11] Speaker 00: All that the appellee's brief pointed to were quotations from our briefing that the district court cited in her decision. [00:04:19] Speaker 00: But I think here the bigger point is this, Your Honor. [00:04:23] Speaker 00: This case, in my view, is unprecedented. [00:04:28] Speaker 00: in the following way. [00:04:30] Speaker 00: We here have three patents that expressly state that they are solving, in the case of the 505 patent, quote, a difficult technical challenge, close quote. [00:04:42] Speaker 00: And that should be taken at face value on a motion to dismiss. [00:04:47] Speaker 00: The district court's conclusions here, by not considering and not going through in her analysis [00:04:55] Speaker 00: the extensive statements regarding the background of the technology and what the problem was that was supposed to be solved, that is an indication that this court should at least clarify [00:05:06] Speaker 04: I really am a little flummoxed by your argument, because it seems to be sort of esoteric. [00:05:14] Speaker 04: But we're looking, I mean, it would be more helpful to me if you pointed. [00:05:18] Speaker 04: I mean, it's difficult. [00:05:19] Speaker 04: This is like three cases in one, because there's three separate patents, and each of the claims rises or falls for completely different reasons. [00:05:27] Speaker 04: But look at the 505 patent. [00:05:30] Speaker 04: I don't know what you think the court should have done more than she did, but this is about data security and clearances. [00:05:40] Speaker 04: This sounds very familiar to me. [00:05:42] Speaker 04: I've been a bureaucrat for 45 years. [00:05:45] Speaker 04: In the government, you have various classifications of documents, and you have various security clearance levels. [00:05:51] Speaker 04: And that when you would mix one to the other seems like a very long-standing, well-accepted practice. [00:05:58] Speaker 04: So you can push back. [00:06:00] Speaker 04: So my understanding is that. [00:06:01] Speaker 04: Then you say there's no recitation of the claims of how you achieve the result of doing it. [00:06:08] Speaker 04: And there's no indication that this is beyond just conventional routine processes that you think you've claimed. [00:06:16] Speaker 04: So tell me why I'm wrong on that. [00:06:17] Speaker 04: Let's analyze the specific claim of 505. [00:06:21] Speaker 00: Yes, Your Honor, and I respectfully think you're wrong for the following reasons. [00:06:24] Speaker 00: I think Your Honor is correct that an access filter does restrict access to a resource. [00:06:33] Speaker 00: And access filters were known in the art. [00:06:35] Speaker 00: We're not claiming that this invention is an access. [00:06:39] Speaker 00: the invention of filtering data. [00:06:41] Speaker 00: In fact, the first five columns of the 505 patent explain in great detail existing access filters. [00:06:50] Speaker 00: And if the court would indulge me and turn to page 187 of the appendix, which is column five of the 505 patent, we can see, for example, that beginning at line 21 and extending to about line 60, [00:07:04] Speaker 00: The patent expressly says, here are the technological problems with quote, present day access filters. [00:07:12] Speaker 00: So what the 505 patent claims is not restricting access to data. [00:07:18] Speaker 00: Instead, it's claiming an improved access filter. [00:07:22] Speaker 00: that the specification expressly states addresses problems that are characteristic of the internet. [00:07:28] Speaker 00: And what it allows is for a faster virtual private network. [00:07:33] Speaker 00: Because in the prior art, what the patent says is every time you had an access filter, it did one thing. [00:07:40] Speaker 00: And you would have to therefore process your requests through multiple filters, slowing down the pathway as you went. [00:07:48] Speaker 00: And what it said is, as we make these virtual private networks larger, we're bumping into a scalability problem because we've got to put so many filters in between the request and the resource that we're burdening the network, and it's not efficient. [00:08:03] Speaker 00: And so the problem that the 505 claim, and this is in the claim, Your Honor, solves is [00:08:08] Speaker 00: Let's do this once. [00:08:09] Speaker 00: Let's have every access filter have a common understanding of the criteria for analyzing the request. [00:08:18] Speaker 00: Designate sensitivity levels by resource, not by should we just let somebody through this firewall or not. [00:08:25] Speaker 00: And then we'll do the filtering once, not five times, between the time that the request is made and the resource is accessed. [00:08:33] Speaker 00: That is an improvement [00:08:35] Speaker 00: to virtual private networks, the patent says that it will make them faster, which is one of the things that this court has recognized is an improvement to computing technology. [00:08:47] Speaker 00: And so, Your Honor, I would respectfully push back on your characterization. [00:08:51] Speaker 00: I think it's the same error that the district court made by not giving, frankly, [00:08:58] Speaker 00: giving appropriate weight to the express statements in the 505 patent itself between columns one and five about what the problem was, and then not taking into account the other 43 columns that follow that. [00:09:12] Speaker 03: In 1991, when I logged into a Pentagon computer system and entered my top secret SCI clearance, [00:09:29] Speaker 00: Your Honor, I think you are conflating what you were doing and what the network was doing at that point in time. [00:09:39] Speaker 00: So what the network was doing at that point in time... Was it a standard practice, was it not? [00:09:44] Speaker 03: I think, Your Honor, in terms of... Let's go back 50 years and say when somebody, when my dad showed his ID card with a security clearance level on it, manually done. [00:09:58] Speaker 00: Absolutely. [00:09:59] Speaker 00: And this patent is not about how do you designate a resource as being sensitive or not sensitive or of medium sensitivity. [00:10:08] Speaker 00: This patent is about how does the computer network itself operate more efficiently to permit access to particular data resources. [00:10:19] Speaker 00: And so I don't think we could come up with some tortured analogy and try to reverse engineer something that was done. [00:10:25] Speaker 00: But the patent itself says, [00:10:28] Speaker 00: that the problem that's being addressed is one that's characteristic of the Internet. [00:10:32] Speaker 00: That's a quote. [00:10:34] Speaker 00: It says it's a difficult technical challenge and on a motion to dismiss the district court should take that at face value. [00:10:41] Speaker 00: You can't disregard what the patent itself says about the state of the art when ruling on a motion to dismiss. [00:10:47] Speaker 00: Maybe later in the case, there's an expert that walks in and says, the patent's wrong on that. [00:10:51] Speaker 00: It was common. [00:10:53] Speaker 00: And that's different. [00:10:54] Speaker 00: But at the motion to dismiss level, we need to take the patent at face value. [00:10:58] Speaker 04: Wait. [00:10:59] Speaker 04: So what is sufficient at the motion to dismiss to just assert that this was a difficult thing that we accomplished? [00:11:07] Speaker 00: If the patent itself, Your Honor, says that the problem that's being addressed is a difficult technical challenge and the claims bear out that what is being addressed is that challenge, then I think that the motion to dismiss phase, that needs to be credited because we're doing this on the pleadings without the benefit of experts or other evidence. [00:11:28] Speaker 00: Now, the 399... I'm a little confused. [00:11:31] Speaker 01: It seems to me you are blurring step one and step two. [00:11:34] Speaker 01: And that what you're saying is very relevant at step two, but the claims, if they're directed to an abstract idea, even if it's a novel abstract idea, it doesn't matter whether it's new or not at step one. [00:11:46] Speaker 01: It's an abstract idea. [00:11:49] Speaker 00: I don't think that's correct, Your Honor. [00:11:50] Speaker 00: And the reason is that the test that the court has, one of the tests that the court has explained for determining whether something is directed to an abstract idea in this context is we need to look at whether it is solving a problem inherent in the computer itself, or is it solving some other problem that exists in the world but uses a computer to solve the problem? [00:12:10] Speaker 00: Sure. [00:12:10] Speaker 01: That's one way of looking at whether it's actually claiming something concrete or not. [00:12:17] Speaker 01: If we look at the claims and say, this is just claiming an abstract idea, even if it's a new way of doing it, it doesn't make it non-abstract if it's abstract altogether. [00:12:28] Speaker 00: I agree with that, Your Honor. [00:12:30] Speaker 00: And then we move to step two and we ask ourselves, is it doing it using an inventive concept? [00:12:36] Speaker 00: Is there some element or combination of elements that is inventive that implements the abstract idea? [00:12:42] Speaker 00: So if we had, for example, [00:12:43] Speaker 00: a patent that was directed. [00:12:45] Speaker 01: So let's say the abstract idea, we disagree with you and agree with the district court that the idea of using these various security things is just an abstract idea of allowing or preventing access and things like that. [00:13:01] Speaker 01: Then move to step two, what besides the abstract idea makes this patent eligible? [00:13:08] Speaker 01: What makes this patent eligible is... Because it's all routine computer equipment, right? [00:13:12] Speaker 01: You haven't invented a new kind of server, you haven't invented new routers, new internet, whatever. [00:13:19] Speaker 00: There's no invention of new hardware, Your Honor, but there is invention of new access filters. [00:13:24] Speaker 00: And an access filter is a component in a computer network. [00:13:29] Speaker 00: And what's being claimed is a novel access filter. [00:13:31] Speaker 00: There's nothing abstract about an access filter. [00:13:34] Speaker 00: But to your honor's question, if we move to step two and you assume that the claim is directed to an abstract idea, what we have here is a combination of elements that is unconventional. [00:13:45] Speaker 00: And this is what the patent says. [00:13:47] Speaker 00: Whereas before, to what elements? [00:13:50] Speaker 00: The elements is pulling into one access filter the analysis of four different things. [00:13:57] Speaker 00: The source of the request, the sensitivity level of the data resource, the path over the internet that the request is going to take, [00:14:06] Speaker 00: and whether it's encrypted or not in the level of the encryption. [00:14:11] Speaker 00: That was never done in one place. [00:14:14] Speaker 00: And what the patent says at column 8, Your Honor, is doing this in one place means we don't have to do it at other filters as we go through the network. [00:14:23] Speaker 00: And that's unconventional in the same way that in Bascom, the opposite, I would say, was unconventional, where we were moving something that had been done in one location [00:14:32] Speaker 00: to a different location. [00:14:34] Speaker 00: It's a very similar reasoning for why at ALICE step two we would pass muster. [00:14:39] Speaker 00: Now the 399 patent is different and it's valid for a different reason. [00:14:45] Speaker 03: The reason the 399 patent is different... Show me where in claim one in 505 it describes how the access filters restrict or allow access. [00:14:57] Speaker 00: Because that's step two. [00:14:59] Speaker 00: Take me there. [00:15:01] Speaker 00: Yes, your honor so if we review claim one it's directed to an apparatus that provides in for an information resource And it defines what the access control information is going to be in the first limitation give me you I'm sorry I apologize our appendix 209 the column 49 beginning at line 2 ok go ahead and [00:15:22] Speaker 00: So the claim says the apparatus needs to define two things. [00:15:28] Speaker 00: One is the sensitivity level associated with the resource, and the second is a trust level associated with the mode of identification. [00:15:36] Speaker 04: So we're assuming that's part of the abstract idea, that you couldn't consider both things. [00:15:42] Speaker 00: And we'll assume that that's part of the abstract idea, Your Honor? [00:15:44] Speaker 00: Yeah. [00:15:46] Speaker 00: OK. [00:15:46] Speaker 00: We'll do. [00:15:47] Speaker 00: We obviously disagree with that, but I understand Your Honor's question. [00:15:51] Speaker 00: Assume that that's part of the abstract idea, the definition of the sensitivity level of the resource and the trust level associated with the motive identification. [00:15:59] Speaker 00: That's my ID card. [00:16:01] Speaker 00: The second limitation is an access checker, which permits the apparatus to provide the resource only if [00:16:08] Speaker 00: The trust level for the mode of identification is sufficient for the sensitivity level of the resource. [00:16:13] Speaker 00: Combining those two determinations in one place. [00:16:17] Speaker 00: In the prior arc, that was two separate access filters that needed to be used to make those two determinations. [00:16:25] Speaker 00: In this invention, in claim one, it's one access filter. [00:16:29] Speaker 00: That's unconventional at step two. [00:16:31] Speaker 00: If we go to claim eight, we have more, because there's more required in claim eight in terms of the path that the resource [00:16:38] Speaker 00: request takes and the encryption level. [00:16:43] Speaker 00: As I was saying before, if we look at the 399 patent, Your Honor, it's valid for a different reason. [00:16:49] Speaker 00: And that is, it makes the internet more useful for ordinary people. [00:16:54] Speaker 00: And that has been found by this court in Core Wireless versus LG, for example, to be something that is not ineligible at ALICE step one. [00:17:04] Speaker 00: What the 399 patent claims is the combination of two distinct networking technologies that it states had not previously been combined. [00:17:14] Speaker 00: They had been siloed from one another. [00:17:17] Speaker 00: And what it meant was that ordinary people who didn't have the computer sophistication to upload large amounts of data by initiating a file transfer protocol session could now do so with a website, an interactive web session as the patent describes it. [00:17:33] Speaker 00: And that is an advantage and an improvement to computer networks itself. [00:17:40] Speaker 00: And finally, Your Honor, on the 5-4-1 patent, it says, and I think at the motion of dismiss phase we have to take it at face value, that it enabled for the very first time wireless backup of personal devices like cell phones. [00:17:55] Speaker 00: It transformed a process that is said [00:17:58] Speaker 00: used to have to be performed with two devices in the same room and a wire into a process that could be done without a wire over a mobile network and it describes a specific way of doing that. [00:18:14] Speaker 00: Your honors, unfortunately, there was no time clock going, so I don't know how much. [00:18:18] Speaker 04: Oh, you ever have a time clock? [00:18:19] Speaker 00: It's been blacked out, so I would like to reserve some time. [00:18:22] Speaker 04: Well, because you've exceeded your time by two minutes. [00:18:25] Speaker 04: I don't know what your clock says. [00:18:27] Speaker 00: Mine doesn't say. [00:18:28] Speaker 04: So we'll restore some time for rebuttal. [00:18:30] Speaker 00: Thank you, your honors. [00:18:36] Speaker 03: That's the best excuse I've ever heard. [00:18:38] Speaker 03: It's true, too. [00:18:39] Speaker 03: Yeah, oh, you're an officer of the court. [00:18:48] Speaker 02: Good morning, Your Honors, and may it please the Court. [00:18:50] Speaker 02: Better take your watch off. [00:18:52] Speaker 02: I'll start the time now. [00:18:54] Speaker 02: The claims of Dropbox's patents are abstract, which renders them invalid. [00:18:59] Speaker 02: The claims in these patents are incredibly broad. [00:19:03] Speaker 02: But Dropbox, in their briefing and in the case below, really ignored the claims. [00:19:08] Speaker 02: Instead, their arguments focused on general statements from the specification that they allege constitute improvements over the prior [00:19:18] Speaker 02: However, the specifications in a vacuum really can't describe the patents as not abstract. [00:19:25] Speaker 02: Instead, the analysis really needs to focus on the claims and the claim language itself. [00:19:29] Speaker 02: No, I know. [00:19:30] Speaker 04: And like your friend, you're starting off in all of this nebulous kind of wording and discussion is not terribly helpful to me personally. [00:19:37] Speaker 04: So why don't we turn to the 399? [00:19:39] Speaker 04: Sure, Your Honor. [00:19:40] Speaker 04: And as your friend had a little time to say, [00:19:44] Speaker 04: This patent lays out a specific solution to a problem arising only in computers, and it employs synchronizing. [00:19:53] Speaker 04: And they claim, and I don't think you can dispute it, the motion to dismiss it. [00:19:58] Speaker 04: This is the first time that synchronization has been used for the file transfer session and an interactive session. [00:20:06] Speaker 04: Why isn't that sufficient? [00:20:07] Speaker 04: Why does that not feel like? [00:20:09] Speaker 04: I mean, it might be an obviousness case, but why does that not feel like? [00:20:13] Speaker 02: eligibility issue right well so I mean looking at the claims you know like I said you really need to look at the claim so claim one claims you know really only has three elements it's just it's a method claim and it claims creating an interactive connection creating a data transfer connection and creating a single session ID okay Dropbox does not dispute [00:20:34] Speaker 02: that that interactive connection and data transfer connection are, one's an HTTP connection, and one's an FTP connection. [00:20:41] Speaker 02: And those were incredibly well known in the article. [00:20:43] Speaker 04: Yes, but nobody hits. [00:20:44] Speaker 04: But the question, well, it's a little confusing to me because in claim one, I mean, clearly the sequentization appears in the later claims, claim 25. [00:20:53] Speaker 04: I don't know what the deal is in claim one, whether it's a preamble thing. [00:20:57] Speaker 04: But we'll assume for a moment that sequentization is claimed. [00:21:01] Speaker 02: Okay, well, if we want synchronization, it's Claim 25. [00:21:04] Speaker 02: That's the one we briefed before the district court. [00:21:06] Speaker 02: The district court relied on Claim 1 as representative. [00:21:09] Speaker 02: Either way, I mean, we believe that Claim 25 is the best representative of the claim. [00:21:12] Speaker 02: Well, let's go to another claim. [00:21:14] Speaker 02: I mean, it's a functional claim. [00:21:15] Speaker 02: That's the problem with the way it's claimed. [00:21:18] Speaker 02: Everything is claimed in a functional manner. [00:21:20] Speaker 02: Claim 25, you know, has the interactive connection server, has the file transfer connection server, and then this, you know, claims synchronizer. [00:21:30] Speaker 02: And if you look at it and you look at the spec, it's almost a means plus function limitation. [00:21:34] Speaker 02: Now, I'm not trying to argue 112 or anything right now, but it's a very functional claim. [00:21:39] Speaker 02: And so, I mean, a claim element. [00:21:41] Speaker 02: And the problem with that is if you look at the court's precedent, and I believe it's the Amarant [00:21:49] Speaker 01: I mean, they're allowed to claim it in functional language as long as the specification shows how they're doing it. [00:22:02] Speaker 01: Isn't that the problem here? [00:22:05] Speaker 01: is that the district court found that all they're claiming is idea. [00:22:09] Speaker 01: They're not actually claiming how to do it. [00:22:11] Speaker 01: And this is a hard line for us, I think, in these abstract idea cases. [00:22:15] Speaker 01: But I think it's the critical line, is if the claim is only claiming an abstract idea of something rather than claiming how to do it, then it's abstract, which I think is where the district court went here. [00:22:27] Speaker 01: But is there not enough in the specification to show what the synchronizer is here? [00:22:32] Speaker 01: I'm going to get in trouble. [00:22:47] Speaker 01: functional idea, then you haven't actually claimed something that's patent eligible. [00:22:53] Speaker 01: But I don't know how we, I mean, is that, this is just a morass. [00:22:57] Speaker 01: Is that something that we look at at step one? [00:23:00] Speaker 01: Is it something we look at at step two? [00:23:02] Speaker 02: Well, it would definitely be a step one issue, Your Honor. [00:23:04] Speaker 02: And this Court's addressed that before in Apple v. Amaranth and the electric power group cases. [00:23:10] Speaker 02: And really what the court said is it needs to be a specific improvement in technology. [00:23:19] Speaker 02: Now, whatever that might be, the courts addressed that. [00:23:23] Speaker 02: I believe it's the core wireless cited by Dropbox. [00:23:30] Speaker 02: The court did address that in core wireless. [00:23:32] Speaker 02: But in that case, it was a [00:23:34] Speaker 02: It was in the claims, and it was a very specific technical improvement into a UI. [00:23:39] Speaker 02: I mean, core wireless is about a user interface. [00:23:40] Speaker 04: Well, I mean, maybe the other side is better positioned than you to answer this. [00:23:43] Speaker 04: But what is your understanding of what their argument is? [00:23:47] Speaker 04: Is it everything was well known? [00:23:50] Speaker 04: These two things and synchronization in and of itself was well known. [00:23:54] Speaker 04: And we just came up with this great idea that we should get a patent to because we're applying synchronization in this context. [00:24:01] Speaker 04: Or is it? [00:24:02] Speaker 04: that in order to synchronize these things, which have never been synchronized, and there's a good reason to do it because it makes it more user-friendly, we've got some inventive concept of doing something that hasn't been done before. [00:24:17] Speaker 04: What is your understanding of at least how the district court viewed these? [00:24:20] Speaker 02: Well, I mean, the district court, the inventive concept thing from Alice is definitely, I mean, that's the step two analysis. [00:24:28] Speaker 02: And I think Dropbox is really making [00:24:31] Speaker 02: putting words in their mouth and I'm sure that I'll be corrected when when rebuttal gets up here but you know they're making an argument that this is a technical improvement and therefore it gets out of step one and therefore they're done but that's not really the case because there's no there's no specific improvement they really cite they don't tell how to do any of these things there's no code there's no there's no even real association in the synchronizer it just says it synchronizes the the operation of the respective connections [00:24:58] Speaker 02: And so it's very results-oriented. [00:25:01] Speaker 02: It's very functional. [00:25:02] Speaker 04: But what if that's true? [00:25:03] Speaker 04: Let's assume hypothetically that your friend doesn't disagree with you and that everybody knew how to synchronize and there was nothing monumentally inventive about synchronization. [00:25:11] Speaker 04: But they had this idea. [00:25:13] Speaker 04: Nobody had thought about synchronizing these two things. [00:25:17] Speaker 04: And it's an important advance in technology. [00:25:19] Speaker 04: So what about that? [00:25:20] Speaker 04: I mean, even if it wasn't a technological advance in and of itself to do synchronization, [00:25:27] Speaker 04: Why isn't Patent eligible if they came up with this new method, technological method? [00:25:33] Speaker 04: Their idea was the application of this synchronization in this context. [00:25:40] Speaker 02: I mean, that's just not present in the claims or in the background. [00:25:44] Speaker 01: Is synchronization an abstract idea? [00:25:46] Speaker 02: And synchronization, I mean, yes. [00:25:47] Speaker 02: This court's found in Amherst that synchronizing, I think the quote is, [00:25:57] Speaker 02: I may, Your Honor. [00:25:58] Speaker 02: It says that, as recited in the claims, the concept of synchronous communication and automatic formatting for different handheld devices without more is an abstract idea. [00:26:09] Speaker 02: I mean, this court has addressed that before directly on point. [00:26:13] Speaker 02: And synchronizing the communications in this context, there's no structure. [00:26:18] Speaker 02: There's no specific enablement. [00:26:22] Speaker 02: I'm going to get in trouble with talking about 112. [00:26:24] Speaker 02: But there's no specific technological improvement here. [00:26:27] Speaker 04: OK, why don't you turn to 505, where your friend spent most of his time referring to the first five pages of the patent and the discussion of the filters and so forth. [00:26:40] Speaker 02: Yes, Your Honor. [00:26:41] Speaker 02: So the real problem, again, with the 505 patent is the claims. [00:26:45] Speaker 02: I mean, the things that Dropbox says are all these great ideas that are in the background and the specification. [00:26:51] Speaker 02: really don't come through the claims. [00:26:53] Speaker 02: As Your Honor mentioned, identifying people or identification to allow access to resources has been well known. [00:27:01] Speaker 02: And this is what we pointed out in our briefing. [00:27:03] Speaker 02: This is what, for example, Judge Bryson held in the British telecom case, and it's sitting in designation, that restricting security to resources is a time-old human practice. [00:27:16] Speaker 03: And so there's a famous story following World War II of two British [00:27:21] Speaker 03: secret agents who were what is called bigoted, that is, secure, compartmented information. [00:27:27] Speaker 03: They were married 45 years. [00:27:30] Speaker 03: And at the end of that 45 years, they revealed to each other that they had both been secret agents. [00:27:36] Speaker 03: You get the picture. [00:27:36] Speaker 02: As your honor noted, this is years old. [00:27:42] Speaker 02: And this was well known before this patent was filed, I believe, in the late 90s. [00:27:46] Speaker 02: And the problem is, all these things that they talk about as being great ideas [00:27:50] Speaker 02: don't flow through to the claims. [00:27:52] Speaker 02: There's no real limitation that this be any sort of operation done in a computer. [00:27:58] Speaker 02: And so it's clearly an abstract idea. [00:28:00] Speaker 02: And then when you get to the incentive, the incentive concept step, it's step two. [00:28:05] Speaker 02: You know, the specification, you don't even have to look beyond anything in the intrinsic record. [00:28:09] Speaker 02: And the specification makes clear that all of these things were well-known in the prior art, and that this really hasn't come up with any sort of concept. [00:28:15] Speaker 01: What about your friends? [00:28:17] Speaker 01: And I'm probably badly paraphrasing his argument, but what I got from it was that these checks occurred at different points, at least to maybe more points, and there had been a concept to do it all at once. [00:28:29] Speaker 02: I mean, again, Your Honor, that's not in the claims. [00:28:32] Speaker 02: And that's almost more of an obviousness analysis, perhaps, than really an inventive concept, Alice analysis. [00:28:39] Speaker 02: And so the court's precedent makes clear that you need something more. [00:28:44] Speaker 02: And it's not an obviousness analysis. [00:28:46] Speaker 02: And that's what Dropbox is almost trying to make it in this case, is some sort of. [00:28:54] Speaker 02: If there are any more questions, thank you for your time. [00:29:12] Speaker 00: Thank you, Your Honors, and I appreciate you restoring a small amount of time. [00:29:15] Speaker 00: I'll keep it brief. [00:29:17] Speaker 00: Three points on the 399 patent, which Your Honor spoke with my colleague about. [00:29:23] Speaker 00: First is this. [00:29:25] Speaker 00: His argument was that Claim 25, because it just states synchronizing, doesn't contain any discussion of how to perform the synchronizing. [00:29:37] Speaker 00: If that is a hang-up, Claim 26 directly after Claim 25 and dependent on Claim 25 explains exactly how to do the synchronizing, and that is through the creation of a single session ID. [00:29:49] Speaker 00: The second is there was an argument made for the 399 patent. [00:29:53] Speaker 04: Wait, so that's the description of synchronization. [00:29:55] Speaker 04: That's the definition. [00:29:56] Speaker 04: I'm looking at claim 26. [00:29:58] Speaker 04: Apparatus according to 25, synchronization, which said synchronization generates a single session ID for two associated sessions, each on a different one of said servers. [00:30:12] Speaker 00: Yes, Your Honor, that is a specific- So that's how it's done. [00:30:15] Speaker 00: Correct. [00:30:16] Speaker 00: And, Your Honor, in the specification itself, there is not only express description of how to do that. [00:30:23] Speaker 00: I refer, for example, to column 8 of appendix page 146, lines 34 to 39. [00:30:30] Speaker 00: But, contrary to what Synchronousness Council said, there was code provided. [00:30:36] Speaker 00: At appendix page 148, column 11, lines 44 and following, it states that attached herewith is a software appendix of a system for synchronized file upload using an interactive connection. [00:30:50] Speaker 00: Etc so the patent owner. [00:30:52] Speaker 00: This is not the paradigmatic alice case where there's nothing in the specification that tells you how to do this in fact It's quite the opposite there was a discussion of disclosure of source code The second thing I would say your honors is on the 505 patent the argument I'm hearing is yes there is and there is a patent eligible invention described in the 505 [00:31:16] Speaker 00: Patent written description, but it didn't make it into the claims. [00:31:20] Speaker 00: I think in a nutshell That's what what he may have been saying or maybe that's not a fair characterization But I would like to address the I don't think your friend would agree Okay, his argument your honor as I heard it. [00:31:34] Speaker 00: Maybe I misheard it was if you didn't have it in the claims It's not in the claims. [00:31:36] Speaker 00: It's not in the claims. [00:31:37] Speaker 03: It's not you seem to be arguing that [00:31:40] Speaker 00: I disagree, and we discussed what's in the claims, but what I would say to Your Honors is the claims in the 505 patent are more specific than the claims that this court found did describe patent-eligible subject matter. [00:31:55] Speaker 00: In the fin jan verse blue coat systems case at eight seventy nine F 30 1299 these claims in the 505 patent Describe exactly what steps the access filter is going to take in order to achieve the improvement Whereas in the claims in fin jan [00:32:14] Speaker 00: They were similar because they were directed to virus screening. [00:32:17] Speaker 00: It's sort of a form of filtering. [00:32:20] Speaker 00: And what the improvement was was screening according to behavior, not just code. [00:32:26] Speaker 00: And that's all the claims said. [00:32:28] Speaker 00: So that's the, Your Honor, reverse the district court's decision on those bases. [00:32:32] Speaker 04: Thank you. [00:32:33] Speaker 04: We thank both sides. [00:32:34] Speaker 04: The case is submitted.