[00:00:00] Speaker 03:
We will hear argument next in number 231528, centripetal networks against Palo Alto networks.

[00:00:08] Speaker 03:
Mr. Hanna.

[00:00:11] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honors.

[00:00:12] Speaker 00:
May it please the Court.

[00:00:14] Speaker 00:
This case turns, as both parties have acknowledged, on claim construction.

[00:00:21] Speaker 00:
The claims in this case recite receiving a plurality of rule sets.

[00:00:27] Speaker 00:
After those rule sets are received, it recites

[00:00:29] Speaker 00:
executing a first rule set, a second rule set, and a third rule set in sequential order.

[00:00:39] Speaker 00:
The issue turns on whether long-standing precedent should be followed that every claim term is given patentable weight, specifically whether the rule sets that are received are the ones that are executed.

[00:00:57] Speaker 00:
The petitioner, in this case, has said no.

[00:01:01] Speaker 00:
There's no linkage between the received rule sets and the rule sets that are executed.

[00:01:07] Speaker 00:
Now, the procedural history in this case is a little interesting.

[00:01:13] Speaker 03:
I'm not sure how important the procedural history is, but I guess just the way that I've been thinking about it is this seems to me one of those cases in which it is

[00:01:27] Speaker 03:
exceptionally easy to do what patent drafters do all of the time, which is to pay attention to the linking of different limitations, and it would have been trivial.

[00:01:43] Speaker 03:
in the executing one to talk about the rule from among the received rule sets.

[00:01:51] Speaker 03:
And the absence of that very easy standard linking language seems to be speak volumes.

[00:02:03] Speaker 03:
And I'm not sure that there's anything remotely sufficient in respect to provide a basis for overriding the absence of something that we would ordinarily expect to see.

[00:02:15] Speaker 00:
Well, if we have to point to the specification, Your Honor, I'd point you to the appendix of 61.

[00:02:21] Speaker 00:
And we're talking about column 9, lines 11, lines 16 through 21.

[00:02:29] Speaker 00:
And this goes to the whole premise of the invention.

[00:02:32] Speaker 00:
The premise of this invention is to do what's called recovery from a denial of service attack.

[00:02:39] Speaker 03:
What that means is... Your claims are not limited to that.

[00:02:43] Speaker 00:
The claims talk about executing these rule sets in sequential fashion in order to allow more and more IP addresses, essentially computers, to come online within a network.

[00:02:54] Speaker 00:
And so they are absolutely directed to this embodiment in that it will receive these rule sets and then execute them.

[00:03:02] Speaker 01:
Why wouldn't that be reading in limitations from the specification?

[00:03:06] Speaker 00:
Well, because it's providing the context for the invention.

[00:03:09] Speaker 01:
It could have been easily claimed, as George Toronto pointed out, and even the board pointed out on page A11.

[00:03:15] Speaker 01:
They say we ascertain no such limitation of rule sets.

[00:03:19] Speaker 01:
They say a first rule set could have been followed with the language of a received plurality of rule sets, right?

[00:03:27] Speaker 00:
Well, it could, of your honor, but the way that it's drafted as is, it has that by implication.

[00:03:34] Speaker 01:
And as we know... Because you have to have us find that from the specification, right?

[00:03:39] Speaker 00:
Well, no, I think it's in the claims as well, because if you read the natural reading of these claims, it says receiving a rule set, a plurality of rule sets, and then executing those rule sets.

[00:03:49] Speaker 03:
And so... Except somebody doesn't use the word those.

[00:03:53] Speaker 03:
It doesn't use any linking language in a way that, it seems to me, patent drafters are, this is the most obvious thing to be careful about.

[00:04:06] Speaker 00:
Well, Your Honor, I mean, this is common, as we pointed out in the mobile telecom case, this is the Eastern District of Texas case, we had very similar language, almost identical.

[00:04:17] Speaker 00:
That was receiving plurality blocks of information, and then it said executing a first block of information, a second block of information, and a third block.

[00:04:30] Speaker 00:
And the court there held that if you don't have that linkage by implication, it renders the receiving element superfluous.

[00:04:39] Speaker 00:
It completely reads out that element altogether.

[00:04:42] Speaker 03:
I'm sorry, but why would that be true since receiving does tell you that there is, I'm sorry, rule sets must be received, some rule sets must be received from elsewhere.

[00:04:58] Speaker 03:
The second step says, not

[00:05:02] Speaker 03:
that the second limitation says, you've got to execute a rule set, but that could be one that is already resident on the executing component.

[00:05:14] Speaker 03:
It doesn't make the first thing insignificant in what the claim covers.

[00:05:23] Speaker 00:
Well, Your Honor, that's exactly the opposite decision that was rendered in mobile telecom.

[00:05:28] Speaker 00:
They said specifically that just receiving a block of information, a plurality of blocks of information, or a plurality of rules, as in our case, there would be no point in order to receive those if you don't follow the natural reading of the claims.

[00:05:44] Speaker 00:
In the natural reading, if you give this to one of skill in the arc,

[00:05:48] Speaker 00:
is that you would receive a rule set and you're going to execute those rule sets.

[00:05:52] Speaker 01:
What about, I think one of the arguments that is made is that the specification discloses an environment in which the rule sets can be changed.

[00:06:03] Speaker 01:
in the course of the operation of the device such that, you know, maybe certain rule sets are received, it's a comprising claim.

[00:06:11] Speaker 01:
So because the rule sets could be changed, those last three limitations, executing the first set, the second set, the third set, could actually be referring to different rule sets than the initial ones that were received.

[00:06:23] Speaker 00:
So in those environments, Your Honor, you're talking about the rule sets that are received at this server.

[00:06:28] Speaker 00:
the server is actually the one that's gonna be taking in a variety of information, and it's going to be changing or updating those rules, and then sending that to, for example, a gateway device.

[00:06:39] Speaker 00:
So the gateway device here is still receiving those rule sets that have already been changed.

[00:06:44] Speaker 00:
And then it's just executing those rule sets in order to allow more and more network devices to come online during these type of attacks.

[00:06:54] Speaker 00:
And so it comes down to,

[00:06:56] Speaker 00:
If you handed this to one of skill in the art and how they're going to read this, they're going to read that says receiving a rule set, a plurality of rule sets and executing these rule sets in sequential order.

[00:07:08] Speaker 00:
That's the natural reading of the claims and otherwise you're just completely reading out what receiving a rule set would be.

[00:07:15] Speaker 00:
It eliminates all the context completely.

[00:07:24] Speaker 00:
The Energizer Holdings case is also relevant here because it tells us that you can have antecedent bases by implication.

[00:07:35] Speaker 00:
And that is exactly what we have here.

[00:07:38] Speaker 00:
The main argument on the other side is that it doesn't have the word the in the claims.

[00:07:45] Speaker 00:
Now Energizer Holdings says you don't need that if you have the proper context and you have a specification that supports that.

[00:07:51] Speaker 00:
And that's exactly what we have here.

[00:07:52] Speaker 00:
We have an embodiment that is directed exactly to these claims.

[00:07:57] Speaker 00:
And we have a natural reading of the claims that if you receive the rule set, those are going to be the rule sets that are executed.

[00:08:08] Speaker 00:
Our fourth argument in our briefing here is that if there are multiple ways to interpret this, it goes to the longstanding doctrine that you should not snare the prior art, which is exactly what the board did here.

[00:08:20] Speaker 00:
There's no question that, and there's no real argument on the other side, that the proper reading or natural reading of the claims could be that the rulesets that are received are executed.

[00:08:32] Speaker 00:
That's exactly what the spec says.

[00:08:34] Speaker 00:
And so, contrary to this long-standing precedent, the claim should be interpreted as they would flow naturally, not to ensnare the prior art.

[00:08:44] Speaker 00:
And that was an error on the board in doing so.

[00:08:53] Speaker 00:
Now, based on this proper construction of the term, I think that reversal would be warranted based on the facts that have been issued here, in that there is not a single rule, there are not multiple rule sets that are received in any of the prior art.

[00:09:13] Speaker 00:
There hasn't been an argument to that effect.

[00:09:17] Speaker 00:
that the ART does not disclose a rule set that has multiple, what they have IP addresses as set forth in the claims.

[00:09:28] Speaker 00:
And so the opposing side has raised collateral stopple issues here.

[00:09:34] Speaker 00:
I think that that doesn't start, has no bearing in this case.

[00:09:39] Speaker 00:
It was under a different standard, different claim construction standard.

[00:09:42] Speaker 00:
We have different limitations that are issued here.

[00:09:46] Speaker 00:
The other patents talked about this dynamic security policy, that's not at issue here, which was interpreted to be a very broad term, and there's no disclosure and no discussion in any prior case of receiving these multiple rule sets with these increasing IP addresses.

[00:10:02] Speaker 00:
If you don't have any questions, I'll reserve the rest of my time for about a minute.

[00:10:20] Speaker 02:
Good morning, Your Honors.

[00:10:21] Speaker 02:
May it please the Court.

[00:10:21] Speaker 02:
My name is Andrew Ratch for Appellee Palo Alto Networks.

[00:10:25] Speaker 02:
I think there are three independent bases to affirm.

[00:10:27] Speaker 02:
The first is claim construction.

[00:10:29] Speaker 02:
And the second, we do believe collateral estoppel would apply if the claims are interpreted as the centripetal would like them to be.

[00:10:39] Speaker 02:
And third, even under centripetal construction, even without the application of collateral estoppel, the Board made fact findings that would satisfy centripetal construction.

[00:10:48] Speaker 02:
and those fact findings are supported by substantial evidence.

[00:10:53] Speaker 02:
I would like to start with the claim instruction point because if the court agrees with the board's construction, that's dispositive of the appeal because Centrifal makes no patentability arguments under the board's construction.

[00:11:04] Speaker 02:
As Your Honour Judge Toronto pointed out, there are no linking words linking the executed rule sets to the received rule sets.

[00:11:12] Speaker 03:
I take it that the core of the argument on the other side is step back for just one second and see what surely is going on in these claims.

[00:11:27] Speaker 03:
And even in the absence of the linking words, it surely must be about the executing of what has been received.

[00:11:36] Speaker 03:
Why is that an incorrect argument?

[00:11:39] Speaker 02:
I think there are a couple of reasons why that's incorrect.

[00:11:42] Speaker 02:
Firstly, the received rule sets are there because they set up what is being addressed in the dependent claims.

[00:11:49] Speaker 02:
So each of the dependent claims in this patent specifically refer back to the plurality of rule sets and talk about executing one or more of those plurality of rule sets to do something other than forwarding packets.

[00:12:04] Speaker 02:
So in the independent claims, the executed rules

[00:12:06] Speaker 02:
are floating packets that correspond to network addresses.

[00:12:10] Speaker 02:
The dependent claims recite other rules such as blocking certain packets or sending packets to a monitoring device.

[00:12:18] Speaker 02:
So the received rules there are being set up to then provide antecedent basis support for every dependent claim.

[00:12:29] Speaker 02:
In addition, if we look only at the independent claim itself, for example, claim eight, which is a system claim, that recites a system where the processor is configured, it has memory instructions where the processor is configured to receive rules.

[00:12:45] Speaker 02:
So that's an important limitation all by itself, separate from executing rules, because that means it has the processing capability to receive rules from another device.

[00:12:56] Speaker 02:
And so it doesn't have to correspond, and in fact it doesn't in the claim language, correspond to the executed rules.

[00:13:02] Speaker 02:
And as Your Honor said, it's a very easy drafting exercise to add in linking language where that's intended.

[00:13:09] Speaker 02:
And again, the applicant did that in all of the dependent claims.

[00:13:13] Speaker 02:
It's expressly in the dependent claims linked back to

[00:13:17] Speaker 02:
the plurality of received rule sets.

[00:13:20] Speaker 02:
And it chose not to do that with respect to the executed rule sets of the independent claims because it had very broad claims.

[00:13:28] Speaker 02:
And I think the other facet that's important about just focusing on the independent claims is that the three executed rules are of a very particular type.

[00:13:35] Speaker 02:
They have particular criteria, which are network addresses,

[00:13:38] Speaker 02:
and a particular associated function, which is forwarding packets.

[00:13:43] Speaker 02:
None of that is recited with respect to the received rule sets, which could be of any type.

[00:13:48] Speaker 02:
And so again, we see there's not only no linking language, but the type of executed rule sets are of a particular type, whereas the received rule sets can be of any type.

[00:13:57] Speaker 02:
And so again, we see there's no connection between the two.

[00:14:01] Speaker 02:
In addition, under their construction, it would impose an ordering of steps within the method claim one that's not expressly recited.

[00:14:08] Speaker 02:
It would require the receiving step to occur before the executing steps.

[00:14:13] Speaker 02:
And again, this is a case where the patentee knew how to impose an ordering of the steps when it intended to do so, because it imposed an ordering of steps with respect to the execution.

[00:14:23] Speaker 02:
The first rule set must be executed before the second, must be executed before the third.

[00:14:28] Speaker 02:
So it had those tools available to it, those drafting tools, had it intended to create and craft claims in the way that centripetal asks the court to construe them.

[00:14:40] Speaker 02:
There's certainly no argument been made that there's any sort of a stopper or disclaimer or other sort of limiting language that would read in the embodiment at column nine of the 246 patent on the phase restoration service.

[00:14:57] Speaker 02:
But even if that embodiment were to apply and be limiting, nothing in that embodiment at column nine, that's lines 10 through 35, state where those rules come from.

[00:15:09] Speaker 02:
It talks about executing the three sequential rule sets, but it does not in any way limit the genesis or origin of those rules.

[00:15:19] Speaker 02:
In addition, there are certainly other, as the board below noted, there are other embodiments that would be addressed by these claims, and so the claims are not limited to those embodiments.

[00:15:31] Speaker 02:
In addition, just to briefly address the point that

[00:15:33] Speaker 02:
the council made with respect to the specification, there are certainly embodiments where rules are received from servers, from an external device.

[00:15:42] Speaker 02:
But that's not the only embodiment, and the specification is clear.

[00:15:46] Speaker 02:
For example, it's appendix 59, column five, lines 59 through 61, that the package security gateway, that's the filter, may be configured to receive policies from a server.

[00:15:58] Speaker 02:
It doesn't have to be so configured.

[00:16:01] Speaker 02:
And just before that, at column 5, again starting at lines 44 going through 57, it discusses what the packet security gateway is, and the specification states that the packet security gateway itself has memory 204 that may include one or more program modules that when executed by processor 202,

[00:16:21] Speaker 02:
configure Packet Security Gateway to perform various functions as described herein.

[00:16:26] Speaker 02:
So they're describing already a Packet Security Gateway that has a programming to perform the functions described in the specification, which are modifying, creating, and executing rules.

[00:16:36] Speaker 02:
Court has no further questions on claim construction.

[00:16:38] Speaker 02:
I'll turn very briefly to the claddle-estoppel point and just note our claddle-estoppel argument isn't about

[00:16:44] Speaker 02:
the claim construction or depend upon what the different claims mean.

[00:16:49] Speaker 02:
The claddle stopper has to do with the findings the board made in the prior IPR about the same art at issue here.

[00:16:56] Speaker 02:
That's Yonk in view of Batia.

[00:16:58] Speaker 02:
Those findings were made under the same standard.

[00:17:01] Speaker 02:
That's a preponderance of the evidence in both the prior board action and the board action below.

[00:17:06] Speaker 02:
the board's prior determination of a related 205 patent that was affirmed by this court.

[00:17:12] Speaker 02:
And in that prior IPR, the claims there, and that's a 205 patent, required receiving three successive dynamic security policies where each had more addresses than the previous one.

[00:17:27] Speaker 02:
It recited expressly what Centripetal says these claims would require under its construction,

[00:17:34] Speaker 02:
The board found that Young, in view of Batia, rendered obvious those limitations.

[00:17:40] Speaker 02:
This court affirmed.

[00:17:41] Speaker 02:
And we believe that clatteral stopple would apply to those factual findings.

[00:17:45] Speaker 02:
And those factual findings, when applied to their construction, is absolutely correct.

[00:17:49] Speaker 01:
So it's clear that the board did not apply clatteral stopple, right?

[00:17:52] Speaker 01:
The board did not.

[00:17:54] Speaker 01:
Correct.

[00:17:54] Speaker 01:
They did say that the elements of clatteral stopple would require, but they just resolved it on the claimant charge.

[00:18:00] Speaker 02:
Correct.

[00:18:01] Speaker 02:
The board, however, also made fact findings under the construction that it adopted.

[00:18:07] Speaker 02:
But those fact findings would satisfy even their proposed construction.

[00:18:13] Speaker 02:
And we believe that those fact findings are supported by substantial evidence.

[00:18:17] Speaker 02:
So the petition, what it set out was that it relied upon Young's rules, which are received from an external device.

[00:18:25] Speaker 02:
So Young discloses dynamic rules received from Young's external devices.

[00:18:30] Speaker 02:
To that applied Batia's teachings of an expanding whitelist.

[00:18:35] Speaker 02:
So you apply Batia's teaching of an expanding whitelist to the rules received from Young's external devices.

[00:18:41] Speaker 02:
That was the ground.

[00:18:42] Speaker 02:
That's what the board understood the ground to be.

[00:18:44] Speaker 02:
And that's what the findings of the board made.

[00:18:46] Speaker 02:
And those findings are Appendix 27 that the grounds taught and that Young and Batia teaches applying an expanding whitelist over time

[00:18:57] Speaker 02:
to dynamic rules that are received from Yonk's external devices.

[00:19:01] Speaker 02:
So they would be all received, and as you expand the whitelist over time, as those rules are received, they would have successively more network addresses.

[00:19:09] Speaker 02:
and the board cited Palo Alto Network's petition and evidence.

[00:19:14] Speaker 02:
They found it credible.

[00:19:15] Speaker 02:
The petition cited the declaration of V.J.

[00:19:18] Speaker 02:
Madisoni, as well as the teachings of Yankin-Batia, and so we believe.

[00:19:22] Speaker 03:
Can I just ask this, and maybe it's more theoretical, or maybe of importance here, or maybe it is important on the collateral self question.

[00:19:34] Speaker 03:
You want to separate the different claim language, the different

[00:19:38] Speaker 03:
standards for claim construction and say that it doesn't really matter what the claim construction standard would be.

[00:19:48] Speaker 03:
That's different because we're just talking about the factual finding about what's in the prior art.

[00:19:55] Speaker 03:
But one element of issue preclusion or collateral estoppel is whether a particular finding is necessary to the outcome.

[00:20:03] Speaker 03:
What's necessary to the outcome would depend, would it not, on

[00:20:08] Speaker 03:
the claim construction in the given case, so that a finding might go beyond what was actually necessary in the earlier matter, in which case perhaps one element of collateral estoppel would not be met.

[00:20:25] Speaker 02:
I think in a theoretical sense that might be the case.

[00:20:29] Speaker 02:
That's not the case here.

[00:20:30] Speaker 02:
And for two reasons.

[00:20:32] Speaker 02:
One, the claim language in the 205 patent.

[00:20:36] Speaker 02:
So that's the parent patent.

[00:20:38] Speaker 02:
And that can be found in the appendix.

[00:20:42] Speaker 02:
And that's claim one of the 205 patent.

[00:20:44] Speaker 02:
It was receiving dynamic security policies.

[00:20:46] Speaker 02:
And in the specification,

[00:20:48] Speaker 02:
you know, sets forth what a dynamic security policy is.

[00:20:50] Speaker 02:
It's essentially the same as a rule.

[00:20:52] Speaker 02:
It includes one or more rules that specifies criteria and a function.

[00:20:57] Speaker 02:
Here the reconstruction of a rule is essentially criteria and a specified function.

[00:21:04] Speaker 02:
So what the 205 patent required was receive a first, a second, and a third dynamic security policy, each of which has more network addresses than the other.

[00:21:16] Speaker 02:
That's what they're saying the claims here mean.

[00:21:21] Speaker 02:
And the findings about the teachings of Yunk and Bhatia in the prior IPR proceeding that was affirmed do not reach beyond what was necessary to decide whether the art taught that three successively receiving steps.

[00:21:36] Speaker 02:
And our point is simply that there were findings made about the art that were litigated

[00:21:42] Speaker 02:
you know, extensively in that prior IPR proceeding and resolved in the final written decision, the same arguments that they're presenting here were made in that prior IPR.

[00:21:53] Speaker 02:
They were resolved by the board against centripetal, that is, the art, the combination of Yonkin-Batia teaches receding through rules with successively larger sets of network addresses, and that decision was then affirmed by this court.

[00:22:07] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:22:22] Speaker 00:
I think what's missing here is common sense and context of the claims.

[00:22:31] Speaker 00:
If we look at claim one, claim one starts off saying

[00:22:35] Speaker 03:
Right, but the principle point that I think Mr. Rach made about the common sense of this is that the opening receiving limitation serves a function in the claims as a whole by establishing a starting point for a whole lot of dependent claims.

[00:22:58] Speaker 03:
Why does that not provide a kind of common sense from a claim drafting standpoint for the existence of that limitation?

[00:23:09] Speaker 00:
Sure, Your Honor.

[00:23:09] Speaker 00:
I actually think that the dependent claims, as pointed out in our brief, supports the fact that these plurality of rule sets need to be executed.

[00:23:17] Speaker 00:
That's what the dependent claims say.

[00:23:19] Speaker 00:
If you don't execute these rule sets that are received, then you're not going to be able to perform the various functionality that's set forth in the claims.

[00:23:26] Speaker 00:
And that was laid out in our briefing.

[00:23:29] Speaker 00:
Again, this comes down to the context.

[00:23:30] Speaker 00:
If I hand this to one of skill and the art, what are they going to understand?

[00:23:35] Speaker 00:
This is what the court in Texas struggled with.

[00:23:38] Speaker 00:
They had the exact same language, receiving a plurality of blocks of information, and then executing first, second, third blocks without antecedent basis for the plurality.

[00:23:50] Speaker 00:
If you look at these contexts of the claims, it says receiving a plurality of rule sets, then you receive a plurality of packets, and then it says you execute the rule set

[00:24:01] Speaker 00:
that specify which network addresses for which packet should be forwarded.

[00:24:06] Speaker 00:
The natural reading of that is that you receive these rule sets, you receive the packets, and then you're gonna execute these rule sets for these packets.

[00:24:14] Speaker 00:
That's what the patent lays out.

[00:24:16] Speaker 00:
In each of those steps where it says executing, it always refers back to the first two limitations, the rule sets that are received and the packets that are received, at least by implication.

[00:24:27] Speaker 00:
And it lays out, that's why you have to have this solution.

[00:24:32] Speaker 00:
Again, looking at the context, and if I was trying to prove this case in front of a jury using common sense, and I said, the received rule sets don't have to be the executed ones.

[00:24:45] Speaker 00:
I don't think I'd even get to a jury at that point.

[00:24:46] Speaker 00:
I'd be kicked on summary judgment.

[00:24:48] Speaker 00:
Because a natural reading of this patent is that if you receive the rule sets, those have to be the same rule sets.

[00:24:54] Speaker 00:
They're going to be executed.

[00:24:56] Speaker 00:
Otherwise, it doesn't make sense.

[00:24:58] Speaker 00:
It doesn't make sense in light of the specification.

[00:25:00] Speaker 00:
And that's why the law says that you have to give meaning to all the terms in the claim.

[00:25:07] Speaker 00:
You have to look at the context, including the specification, to provide that.

[00:25:13] Speaker 00:
Unless your honors have any questions, I'll say there is my time.

[00:25:16] Speaker 03:
Thanks to both counsels.

[00:25:17] Speaker 03:
Case is submitted.