[00:00:00] Speaker 02:
We have two cases set for argument this morning, and one case is being resolved on the written materials and briefs that we have received to date.

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Before we go any further, I want to recognize the student scholars that are participating in the Hispanic National Bar Association IP Intellectual Property Law Institute here in Washington, DC.

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So our first case this morning is Data Engine Technologies LLC versus Google LLC 21-1050.

[00:00:34] Speaker 02:
Mr. Chen, are you ready to proceed?

[00:00:36] Speaker 03:
I am, Your Honor.

[00:00:39] Speaker 02:
And you have reserved five minutes for rebuttal.

[00:00:41] Speaker 02:
Is that correct?

[00:00:42] Speaker 03:
Four minutes for rebuttal.

[00:00:44] Speaker 02:
Four minutes.

[00:00:45] Speaker 02:
OK.

[00:00:46] Speaker 02:
You may start, please.

[00:00:48] Speaker 03:
Good morning, Your Honors, and may it please the court, Justin Chen for the appellant data engine.

[00:00:53] Speaker 03:
The district court's grant summary judgment of non-infringement should be reversed because it was based solely on a preamble term that does not limit the claims.

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And specifically, I'm referring to the term three-dimensional spreadsheet.

[00:01:07] Speaker 03:
First thing I want to address today is the prosecution history, which does not show clear reliance on the term three-dimensional spreadsheet to distinguish the invention.

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Now, the standard that Google and the district court have to meet here is a high one.

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Just showing reliance is not enough.

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It has to be clear reliance on that term.

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And the main point I have to make here is that the applicants could not have distinguished Lotus based on the three-dimensional spreadsheet term because Lotus itself is a three-dimensional spreadsheet.

[00:01:41] Speaker 01:
Council, what about the emphasis on the three-dimensional spreadsheet during the one-on-one proceedings that occurred in district court and before this court?

[00:01:54] Speaker 03:
Right, Your Honor.

[00:01:55] Speaker 03:
So in the previous appeal, there were references made to the term three-dimensional spreadsheet.

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But at that time, I think everyone's understanding of that term was simply as a multi-page spreadsheet.

[00:02:10] Speaker 01:
And if you look at the court's previous... You told us that your claim was directed to a three-dimensional spreadsheet having certain characteristics, right?

[00:02:25] Speaker 03:
Well, the, the term does appear in the preamble of the claim, but I think it's just an intended use.

[00:02:30] Speaker 03:
I don't think we meant to say that.

[00:02:31] Speaker 02:
Counselor, counselor, counselor, this is judge Raina.

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I follow up with judge stole.

[00:02:36] Speaker 02:
I sat on that particular panel that we're talking about and she that she's correct.

[00:02:45] Speaker 03:
Uh, I assume that she's correct that we said it's directed to a three-dimensional spreadsheet.

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Yes.

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That was the invention.

[00:02:54] Speaker 03:
Uh, well, I'd say we didn't mean to say that three-dimensional spreadsheets is the limitation of the invention.

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And I think even if that were the case, I don't think we were using this sort of definition that the district court and Google are proposing.

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We just meant that three-dimensional spreadsheets is a multi-page spreadsheet.

[00:03:17] Speaker 01:
Council, Judge Stoll again.

[00:03:19] Speaker 01:
So I think what I hear you to be saying is that you did tell us, and we actually agreed, that we said specifically in our opinion that your claims were not abstract, but rather directed to a specific improved method for navigating through complex three-dimensional electronic spreadsheets, and that was the basis on which we found your claims eligible.

[00:03:39] Speaker 01:
So you're saying, I think what you're saying is even if that preamble has weight,

[00:03:45] Speaker 01:
that you think is going to have the meaning that the district court ascribed to it, uh, based on the prosecution history.

[00:03:53] Speaker 01:
Is that what I hear you to be saying?

[00:03:56] Speaker 03:
Uh, yes, I'm saying that, but I'm also arguing that the preamble shouldn't be a limitation regardless of what, uh, we may have said in the previous appeal, which was addressing a completely separate issue.

[00:04:08] Speaker 01:
No, it's direct.

[00:04:09] Speaker 01:
It was addressing what are the claims directed to, right?

[00:04:15] Speaker 03:
Uh, yes, I, I guess I, when I say, when I say a claim is directed to something, I guess I don't necessarily mean that it's specifically limited to that.

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And certainly not if this preamble, whether it's a limitation is an issue at that time.

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It was, that was not an issue.

[00:04:32] Speaker 01:
Um, so council, we have, when we're looking at the directed to inquiry, think to ourselves, we're going to say what this claim is directed to for purposes of one of wine.

[00:04:41] Speaker 01:
But ultimately later when we're doing claim construction, we might just say that limitation has no weight at all.

[00:04:52] Speaker 03:
Well, I guess you do have to look at what I guess the potential meaning of that term could be.

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To the extent it just means a multi-page spreadsheet, then it would be duplicative of what's in the body of the claim.

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And so it wouldn't really add anything for the 101 inquiry.

[00:05:16] Speaker 02:
Counselor, in Catalina, we said that a preamble limits an invention if it recites essential structure or steps or if it necessarily gives life, meaning, or vitality to a claim.

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And during prosecution history, the examiner, like the district court did years later, the examiner viewed the term three-dimensional spreadsheet as a fundamental characteristic of invention in responding to the prior arguments that were being made.

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Why if it's a fundamental characteristic of invention, why doesn't that fit in within our expression of how a preamble limits an invention in Catalina?

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Right.

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So if you assume that the three-dimensional expression is a fundamental characteristic, which I disagree with that interpretation of the prosecution history, I think even if that's the case under the Fourth Reasoning and Arctic Cat,

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that term should still not be a limitation because 3D spreadsheet in the preamble is completely conventional and that fact I do not believe is disputed.

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This notion of relative addressability in the patient dimension was well known in the art and in fact practiced by the prior art lotus at issue here.

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And from policy... Do you dispute that the applicants relied on language in the preamble

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during pan-prosecution to distinguish the claimed invention from the prior art?

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Yes, I do.

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So if a distinction was made, and we argue in our briefing that there was no distinction, but assume for the case there was a distinction.

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That distinction was between a multiple spreadsheet and a single spreadsheet.

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And you don't actually need the term three-dimensional spreadsheet to make that distinction.

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And it's because of the word page.

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within the body of the claims.

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So when a person of ordinary skill in the art sees the word pages, they would understand that to refer to pages in a single spreadsheet.

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They would not take that to mean a case where you have multiple separate spreadsheets and each of those separate spreadsheets has a single page.

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And so the distinction can be based on that claim language within the body of the claim.

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You don't have to rely on the preamble term three-dimensional spreadsheet to make that distinction.

[00:07:44] Speaker 01:
Counsel, this is Judge Stoll again.

[00:07:45] Speaker 01:
I understand your position.

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You know, as you probably can tell, I think that preamble has weight, but I understand your position that the claim language itself should be defining what a three-dimensional spreadsheet is.

[00:07:58] Speaker 01:
But what do I do with that language in the prosecution history that it, you know, it was a long time ago, but it says a three-dimensional spreadsheet defines a mathematical relation.

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among the cells on the different pages so that operations such as grouping pages and establishing 3D ranges have meaning.

[00:08:18] Speaker 01:
I mean, how am I supposed to not understand that to be, you know, a definition of a three-dimensional spreadsheet as it was understood by the inventor at the time of the invention?

[00:08:30] Speaker 03:
Well, I think, so they use the term three-dimensional spreadsheet, but that's not really the heart of the distinction that's being made.

[00:08:37] Speaker 03:
And the point the court said,

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There was two sentences earlier, the applicants were talking about really user nameable page identifiers in a 3D spreadsheet.

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And to understand that sentence at issue at the end of that paragraph, you really have to look at the immediately preceding sentence.

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The applicants were talking about the examiner's sort of use of VOTUS where you link individual cells in separate spreadsheets.

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In the next sentence, they're really talking about, well, what would be analogous to that in a 3D, a single spreadsheet?

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So when you link individual cells in multiple spreadsheets, that's kind of a formula that uses a cell reference to another spreadsheet as a variable.

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And in a single spreadsheet, you have that formula, but it's not a link.

[00:09:30] Speaker 03:
It's a mathematical relation, because it's stronger than a link.

[00:09:35] Speaker 03:
So when they talk about mathematical relation, it's really just the analogous operation in a single spreadsheet.

[00:09:48] Speaker 01:
And your view is that opposed would understand that and not view this as a definition of the claim term?

[00:09:56] Speaker 03:
Yes, and if to the extent it does offer a definition, it's just talking about,

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that it has to be a single spreadsheet, not multiple separate spreadsheets.

[00:10:09] Speaker 03:
And unless there are further questions about whether the preamble is a limitation, I do want to make one point about what the proper construction of the term would be if it is a limitation.

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So in reaching its construction, the district court relied on the premise that relative addressability is what really allows 3D ranges to be possible.

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But that premise is not correct.

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It's possible to implement a 3D range using just absolute addresses.

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And there's a diagram on page 23 of appellant's opening brief, also available on appendix page 11, whichever is more convenient.

[00:10:47] Speaker 03:
But basically, it shows a three-dimensional block of cells that are all shaded in on the right-hand side on three pages of a spreadsheet.

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Now, a 3D range is simply a three-dimensional block of cells.

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And here you can see a 3D block of cells that's shaded in and it spans three pages.

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There are 27 cells in this 3D block, and the pages are labeled page one, page two, and page three.

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And you can select this block using relative addressability by selecting the shaded square on page one, which has nine cells in it, and then designating page three as the endpoint.

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And the system would then automatically give you what's shaded here, a 3D block of cells.

[00:11:30] Speaker 03:
But the point is you can select the exact same block of cells, the exact same 3D range, using absolute addresses for the pages.

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All you have to do is select corresponding.

[00:11:42] Speaker 02:
What was your argument to the district court that how we should construe the term three-dimensional spreadsheet?

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I believe it was a spreadsheet having cells arranged in a 3D grid.

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But the way we understood 3D grid was just each cell has three coordinates that you can refer to it by.

[00:12:00] Speaker 02:
The district court construed this to be a spreadsheet that defines a mathematical relation among cells on different spreadsheet pages, such as the cells are arranged in a 3D grid.

[00:12:17] Speaker 02:
Isn't that pretty much what you just said?

[00:12:20] Speaker 03:
No, because the district court had a differing understanding on what it means.

[00:12:26] Speaker 03:
They understood that to mean that you needed this idea of relative address ability in the page dimension.

[00:12:33] Speaker 03:
Uh, whereas our understanding of it was not that limited.

[00:12:37] Speaker 02:
Okay.

[00:12:38] Speaker 02:
You're into your rebuttal time.

[00:12:39] Speaker 03:
Do you want to continue or, or I'd like to, I like to reserve the rest of my time for rebuttal, your honor.

[00:12:47] Speaker 02:
Okay.

[00:12:48] Speaker 02:
Then, um,

[00:12:49] Speaker 02:
Let's hear from the other side.

[00:12:50] Speaker 02:
Ms.

[00:12:51] Speaker 02:
Sanders?

[00:12:52] Speaker 00:
Thank you very much.

[00:12:53] Speaker 00:
This is Ginger Anders for Google LLC.

[00:12:56] Speaker 00:
The preamble term three-dimensional spreadsheet is a claim limitation and the district court correctly construed it.

[00:13:01] Speaker 00:
Both conclusions follow directly from the specification and the prosecution history and are reinforced by all of the other evidence in this case.

[00:13:08] Speaker 00:
That's one of the points that Council for DET just made.

[00:13:11] Speaker 00:
I don't think it would be possible for the prosecution history here to be much clearer.

[00:13:14] Speaker 00:
In that prosecution history, the applicant expressly characterized the invention as an improved user interface in three-dimensional spreadsheets

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And then, to counter the examiner's rejection, the applicant argued that the prior art on which the examiner relied, quote, falls far short of a true three-dimensional spreadsheet.

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So in other words, it is the three-dimensional spreadsheet context that distinguishes the claims from the prior art.

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I think that's very strong evidence that the term is limiting.

[00:13:37] Speaker 00:
And at the same time, the applicant also defined what a three-dimensional spreadsheet is, saying that, quote, a 3D spreadsheet defines a mathematical relation among cells on different pages so that operations such as grouping pages and establishing 3D ranges have meaning.

[00:13:51] Speaker 00:
That is almost word for word the construction that the district court adopted.

[00:13:54] Speaker 01:
And the specification is to the... Judge Stull, could you just slow down a tiny bit and also

[00:14:01] Speaker 01:
I want to say, what does that mean to that language?

[00:14:05] Speaker 01:
A three-dimensional spreadsheet defines a mathematical relation among cells on different pages.

[00:14:11] Speaker 00:
Sure.

[00:14:11] Speaker 00:
So what that means is that the spreadsheet itself are arranged in a 3D grid.

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So there's an X and Y axis and also a Z axis.

[00:14:21] Speaker 00:
And so the pages of the spreadsheet are arranged, they're aligned along the Z axis.

[00:14:26] Speaker 00:
And that alignment along the Z axis gives rise to the mathematical relation between different pages.

[00:14:31] Speaker 00:
So the spreadsheet itself knows, for instance, that page four is three pages back from page one.

[00:14:37] Speaker 00:
So it understands the relative relation of those two pages.

[00:14:41] Speaker 00:
And so it understands that a cell on a particular page is a certain number of pages.

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away from a cell on another page.

[00:14:48] Speaker 00:
So that's the underlying mathematical structure that supports functionality like 3D ranges and grouping pages.

[00:14:56] Speaker 00:
And to something that my friend on the other side said, I just clarified that I think the district court's construction requires that mathematical structure, that 3D structure that gives rise to the mathematical relation on cells among the cells on different pages.

[00:15:09] Speaker 00:
But it does not require any particular type of functionality to be present.

[00:15:14] Speaker 00:
The district court was quite careful to say that the spreadsheet must be able to support functions like 3D ranges and grouping pages, but those don't have to be present as a matter of a claim limitation.

[00:15:27] Speaker 01:
Got it.

[00:15:28] Speaker 01:
So it's like a mathematical relation between a cell, not necessarily a mathematical relation between contents in a cell on different

[00:15:37] Speaker 00:
That's exactly right.

[00:15:38] Speaker 00:
So as the applicant itself defined it in the prosecution history, it's an inherent mathematical relation between the cells.

[00:15:44] Speaker 00:
So it's not what a user does by inputting content into the cell, in other words, by creating a formula or something like that.

[00:15:53] Speaker 00:
That is not the mathematical relation that the applicant was talking about.

[00:15:57] Speaker 00:
And I think the specification is to the same effect because what it says on page 109 of the JA

[00:16:04] Speaker 00:
is that a three-dimensional spreadsheet has cells arranged in a 3D grid.

[00:16:08] Speaker 00:
And in this manner, the user can manipulate multi-dimensional ranges.

[00:16:12] Speaker 00:
So that's getting at the exact same concept, that you have this three-dimensional grid.

[00:16:16] Speaker 00:
It creates the mathematical relation that then supports some of the three-dimensional functionality.

[00:16:22] Speaker 02:
Suppose we were to agree with Data Engine that the preamble is not limiting.

[00:16:28] Speaker 02:
What does that do to your arguments?

[00:16:33] Speaker 00:
Well, I think the court would still have to construe a claim 35 where it is an antecedent basis, so the preamble term is an antecedent basis and a three-dimensional spreadsheet is used in the term itself.

[00:16:45] Speaker 00:
I do think, though, that it

[00:16:47] Speaker 00:
could not be clearer here that the preamble term has to be limiting.

[00:16:51] Speaker 00:
I mean, not only the arguments that DET itself made in the prior appeal and the prosecution history that we were just discussing, but the specification as well explains that the 3D structure is important to the claims because that's the central problem that the

[00:17:06] Speaker 00:
that the applicant set out to solve was the increasing complexity of spreadsheets that culminated really in 3D spreadsheets that became unusable for users beyond the grasp of many users.

[00:17:18] Speaker 02:
It seems to me that the preamble may describe the invention or give a name to the invention, but does it actually recite essential structure or steps?

[00:17:30] Speaker 02:
Because that's what's necessary in order to finish up what Catalina says necessary to give life, meaning, and vitality to the claim.

[00:17:41] Speaker 00:
I think that's right.

[00:17:42] Speaker 00:
And what Catalina said is that in determining whether the preamble term is really essential, you look not only to the claims themselves, but to the prosecution history and the specifications.

[00:17:52] Speaker 00:
So you look to the whole patent and what the applicant has said about what has invented.

[00:17:56] Speaker 00:
So Catalina does say that the prosecution history alone

[00:17:59] Speaker 00:
can be independently dispositive and establish that a preamble term is limiting.

[00:18:04] Speaker 00:
We certainly think that's the case here because of the clarity in the prosecution history.

[00:18:08] Speaker 00:
We think the specification is supportive as well.

[00:18:12] Speaker 00:
But just to make sort of a broader framing point, I take the question to first the fact that Claim 12 itself, considered in isolation,

[00:18:22] Speaker 00:
it doesn't take advantage of three-dimensional functionality.

[00:18:27] Speaker 00:
But I think that that's not uncommon in this court's cases.

[00:18:30] Speaker 02:
What's the structure or step that is recited in the preamble?

[00:18:37] Speaker 00:
So the structure that's recited in the preamble is the three-dimensional grid structure that gives rise to this mathematical relation among cells on different pages.

[00:18:45] Speaker 00:
So we think the applicant made quite clear in the prosecution history it said

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The fact that the claims operate on this structure is what makes them novel over the prior arts.

[00:18:54] Speaker 00:
And then in the specification itself, not only is that the problem that the inventor set out to solve, but there are claims in the 259 patent that depend on the three-dimensional structure in order to operate properly.

[00:19:06] Speaker 00:
So claims 26 and 27 and 43 and 44, for instance, are claims that are directed to particular methods of grouping pages so that a formatting change will propagate through all the pages.

[00:19:17] Speaker 00:
That is a three-dimensional function that requires the spreadsheet to have that three-dimensional grid structure.

[00:19:22] Speaker 00:
for the claims to operate properly.

[00:19:24] Speaker 00:
And just to go back to the point I was making before, I think the premise of this court's

[00:19:30] Speaker 00:
cases on preambles and in particular cases like Corning Glass and General Electric is that it's not that uncommon to have a situation in which you look at the claims and you see that in theory a particular claim could operate more broadly than the context that's defined in the preamble itself.

[00:19:46] Speaker 00:
But the court has said that's not in itself dispositive.

[00:19:49] Speaker 00:
That's why you have to look to the specification and the prosecution history to determine whether the preamble

[00:19:54] Speaker 00:
is actually important to the invention, even when the claim body itself could in theory operate more broadly.

[00:20:00] Speaker 00:
And I think the General Electric case is a particularly good example of that.

[00:20:03] Speaker 00:
And again, here, the applicant told us that in the prosecution history that this is what the claim is directed to.

[00:20:12] Speaker 00:
It's directed to a three-dimensional spreadsheet.

[00:20:14] Speaker 00:
And I think that's particularly notable because what the applicant was expressly distinguishing was that broader spreadsheet context in which the claims in isolation could in theory operate.

[00:20:24] Speaker 00:
So the examiner said, your innovation already exists in the context of a collection of two-dimensional spreads.

[00:20:31] Speaker 00:
And the applicant says,

[00:20:33] Speaker 00:
No, that's not right because those multiple two-dimensional spreads, that's not a true three-dimensional spreadsheet.

[00:20:40] Speaker 00:
My invention is a true three-dimensional spreadsheet.

[00:20:43] Speaker 00:
So I think it's very clear from the prosecution history that this is additional structure that the claims operate on.

[00:20:50] Speaker 00:
That's how the applicant intended this.

[00:20:53] Speaker 00:
And if I could just address

[00:20:55] Speaker 00:
My friend on the other side's argument that the distinction being made in the prosecution history was about separate pages, separate files, separate spreadsheet files versus separate pages.

[00:21:06] Speaker 00:
I think that's just simply not what the prosecution history says.

[00:21:10] Speaker 00:
The applicant mentions Lotus's separate files, but that's not what it identifies as lacking in the prior art.

[00:21:15] Speaker 00:
What it identifies as lacking in the prior art is this three-dimensional grid arrangement and the consequent mathematical relationship among cells.

[00:21:23] Speaker 00:
If the real distinction were between spreadsheet files and spreadsheet pages, the applicant could have simply said that.

[00:21:28] Speaker 00:
It would have been very straightforward.

[00:21:30] Speaker 00:
And I think that everything else points in the same direction.

[00:21:34] Speaker 00:
The specification doesn't mention anything about separate files or pages within a single file.

[00:21:39] Speaker 00:
And that kind of reading, I think, would also be inconsistent with some of the claim language.

[00:21:44] Speaker 00:
Claims 1 and 35 of the 545 patent expressly are directed towards

[00:21:49] Speaker 00:
a spreadsheet with multiple pages in a single file.

[00:21:52] Speaker 00:
So that can't be intrinsic to the three-dimensional spreadsheet because otherwise that language would be redundant.

[00:21:59] Speaker 00:
And finally, the inventor, when asked whether separate files was the relevant distinction between a three-dimensional spreadsheet and the rest of the prior art, he said no, that the relevant distinction was this three-dimensional grid structure.

[00:22:14] Speaker 00:
And that's on page 1235 of the Joint Appendix.

[00:22:18] Speaker 00:
And I guess the other point I would address about the prosecution history is the argument that Mr. Ten makes that LOTUS was in fact a three-dimensional spreadsheet, so the applicant couldn't have been distinguishing LOTUS based on that ground.

[00:22:32] Speaker 00:
Just like to clear that up a little bit.

[00:22:35] Speaker 00:
So LOTUS had both separate spreadsheet files.

[00:22:40] Speaker 00:
And within each file it had multiple spreadsheet pages.

[00:22:44] Speaker 00:
And those multiple pages within the spreadsheet file were a three-dimensional spreadsheet.

[00:22:49] Speaker 00:
They were arranged in this three-dimensional grid structure.

[00:22:53] Speaker 00:
The separate files didn't have that same relationship as between files.

[00:22:57] Speaker 00:
So where the applicant is saying,

[00:22:59] Speaker 00:
Lotus's files are not a true three-dimensional spreadsheet because they don't have the three-dimensional grid that is accurate.

[00:23:07] Speaker 00:
And it's also, I think, entirely consistent with what the applicant says later about the pages being a three-dimensional spreadsheet.

[00:23:15] Speaker 00:
So I don't think that argument works as a way to try to say that the applicant was not distinguishing its invention from the prior art on the basis of the three-dimensional spreadsheet context.

[00:23:34] Speaker 02:
If there are no further questions.

[00:23:37] Speaker 02:
Any questions from my colleagues?

[00:23:40] Speaker 02:
All right.

[00:23:41] Speaker 02:
We thank you, Council, for your arguments.

[00:23:42] Speaker 02:
Mr. Chin, you've got four minutes to rebuttal.

[00:23:47] Speaker 03:
Okay.

[00:23:47] Speaker 03:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:23:48] Speaker 03:
I'd just like to address three points that were raised in Council's argument.

[00:23:52] Speaker 03:
So, first point goes to mathematical relation.

[00:23:55] Speaker 03:
There was a discussion of how

[00:23:57] Speaker 03:
According to counsel, it doesn't go to the contents in the cells, but I disagree.

[00:24:01] Speaker 03:
And it's kind of what I was talking about earlier.

[00:24:03] Speaker 03:
If you look at that sentence in the prosecution history, when you look at the sentence right before it, the emphasis is on the ability to link individual cells in separate spreadsheet files.

[00:24:15] Speaker 03:
And the way to do that is through a formula that references the contents of the cells in those separate spreadsheets.

[00:24:21] Speaker 03:
And so the next sentence, when we're talking about a mathematical relation among cells on the different pages,

[00:24:27] Speaker 03:
The analogous thing in a single spreadsheet would be a formula that references one of the other pages.

[00:24:35] Speaker 02:
Second point I want to make is about the... What do you do about the situation, for example, in the litigation with IBM?

[00:24:46] Speaker 02:
Their data engine attempted to distinguish the side of private art by focusing on the three-dimensional characteristics of the invention.

[00:24:56] Speaker 02:
And that seems to be the common theme through here in the prosecution history, in the litigation before IBM, and now before us in this case.

[00:25:07] Speaker 02:
I'm having a hard time accepting

[00:25:11] Speaker 02:
the argument that there never has been an attempt to distinguish prior from the invention here on the basis that it's not a three-dimensional spreadsheet.

[00:25:27] Speaker 03:
Do you understand?

[00:25:29] Speaker 03:
Yes.

[00:25:29] Speaker 03:
Even if you believe that distinction was based on the 3D spreadsheet term, the distinction is based on the difference between multiple spreadsheets and a single 3D spreadsheet.

[00:25:42] Speaker 02:
The applicants did actually make this distinction in the file history, joint appendix page 2288, where they said that features such as grouping pages... It seems like your arguments are based on functionality and not just on the general definition or name of the invention, the purpose of the invention has to deal with the three-dimensional spreadsheets.

[00:26:11] Speaker 02:
You get away from that expression, three-dimensional spreadsheets, by focusing on functionality.

[00:26:20] Speaker 03:
Well, I don't know if I'd agree with that.

[00:26:21] Speaker 03:
I think whether something is multiple spreadsheets or a single spreadsheet, I think has to go to the structure.

[00:26:28] Speaker 03:
And through your spreadsheet, I think it's just an intended use, because this is maybe getting into the weeds, but in the 90s, there were programs that let you get

[00:26:39] Speaker 03:
spreadsheets beyond three dimensions, four dimensions, even up to 12 dimensions.

[00:26:43] Speaker 03:
And so if 3D spreadsheet limits the claims, it would take those products out of the scope of the claims.

[00:26:49] Speaker 03:
And I don't think that's what the inventors intended.

[00:26:54] Speaker 03:
And one last point I'll make is, as I was discussing at the end of my early remarks, it's possible to implement a 3D range using absolute addresses.

[00:27:03] Speaker 03:
And so when you see references to 3D ranges and specification or prosecution history,

[00:27:08] Speaker 03:
Those references don't actually support requiring relative addressability in the claims.

[00:27:15] Speaker 03:
And if there are no further questions, I urge the court to reverse.

[00:27:20] Speaker 02:
Any additional questions from the colleagues?

[00:27:24] Speaker 01:
None for me.

[00:27:24] Speaker 02:
Okay, counsel.

[00:27:26] Speaker 02:
All right.

[00:27:26] Speaker 02:
We thank you, counsel, for the arguments.

[00:27:29] Speaker 02:
We'll take this case under submission.