[00:00:00] Speaker 04:
Our next case for argument is 24-1089, Lyft versus Quartz Auto.

[00:00:07] Speaker 04:
Mr. Rosen, please proceed.

[00:00:09] Speaker 00:
Good morning, Your Honors, and may I please support Michael Rosen for the defendant and appellant, Quartz Auto Technologies, LLC.

[00:00:17] Speaker 00:
I'd like to reserve about five minutes for rebuttal, if I could.

[00:00:22] Speaker 00:
And, Your Honors, for both of the patents at issue here, this is a classic instance of the district court improperly importing limitations into the specification, from the specification into the claims.

[00:00:35] Speaker 00:
And I could start with the 871 patent here.

[00:00:39] Speaker 00:
And the claim term at issue here is defective operational conditions in said automobile.

[00:00:48] Speaker 00:
The claim term itself does not necessarily in any way imply any sort of limitation to any type of repair in a repair shop or a maintenance shop.

[00:01:00] Speaker 00:
And in fact, we agree with at least one part of what the district court held at Appendix 24, where the court said the claims are broad and their language does not place any limit on the claim term, meaning the claims themselves encompass a wide range of potential

[00:01:17] Speaker 00:
embodiments and are not limited to typical problems that would be repaired in a repair shop.

[00:01:23] Speaker 00:
These could include the loss of traction on icy roads, could include windows that aren't properly defrosted.

[00:01:30] Speaker 00:
could include a vehicle stopped in the middle of the road.

[00:01:32] Speaker 00:
These are all defective conditions.

[00:01:35] Speaker 00:
You wouldn't take your car to a garage, typically, to address.

[00:01:40] Speaker 05:
The written description seems to talk heavily about the kinds of defects that need to go into a repair shop.

[00:01:48] Speaker 05:
But then the idea here, the invention is, let's see if we can

[00:01:54] Speaker 05:
head off those repair needs right in the car and figure out if there's some kind of apparatus we can build into the car that can self-correct the car defects without needing to ever take the car into a repair shop.

[00:02:09] Speaker 05:
And so the claim reads pretty consistently with that, where you have all these sensors in the car, sensing various parameters, sending that data to some remote diagnostic station, and then the diagnostic station

[00:02:27] Speaker 05:
sending information back to the automobile as to what the defective operating condition is in said car.

[00:02:36] Speaker 05:
And just right there, the language of the claim itself, it seems like at least it's reasonable to read that as being based upon car defects themselves.

[00:02:51] Speaker 00:
And that is one example, Judge Fenn, that is certainly an example that is mentioned in the specification.

[00:02:57] Speaker 00:
And part of, as your honor said, part of the purpose of the invention is to head off the need to fix or redress any sort of defective condition.

[00:03:06] Speaker 05:
Right, to send the car to the repair shop.

[00:03:09] Speaker 05:
That seems to be the thrust of the written description.

[00:03:12] Speaker 05:
You might say it's an example.

[00:03:15] Speaker 05:
I read the spec a little differently.

[00:03:17] Speaker 05:
It seems to be leaning pretty hard in that exclusive direction.

[00:03:21] Speaker 05:
I understand your point about bad weather and things like this.

[00:03:26] Speaker 00:
Well, that's right.

[00:03:27] Speaker 00:
There certainly are examples of that where there would be types of conditions or defects that would be repaired in a repair shop, but there are many others as well, and just one example that's listed.

[00:03:40] Speaker 00:
is throughout our briefs at column 5, lines 9 through 21, there the issue is diminished traction, which can come up in conjunction with wet weather conditions.

[00:03:51] Speaker 00:
Now, if you have diminished traction in your vehicle because of conditions on the road, that's not something you would take your car in to be repaired for.

[00:03:59] Speaker 00:
It's anything would be something.

[00:04:01] Speaker 00:
that could be, in the spirit of this invention, redressed.

[00:04:04] Speaker 05:
There's a way to read this passage in column five about the diminished traction being the sensed defect.

[00:04:13] Speaker 05:
And then separate and apart from that sensed defect is the fact that the diagnostic station additionally learns that there's bad weather conditions.

[00:04:25] Speaker 05:
and then can combine those two things to send a warning to the driver about dangerous driving conditions.

[00:04:35] Speaker 05:
But the dangerous driving conditions term could be read to be something different from the way this passage uses defective operating conditions.

[00:04:45] Speaker 05:
There's first the defective operating conditions.

[00:04:48] Speaker 05:
That's based on the data that was sensed by the sensors.

[00:04:52] Speaker 05:
then there's the dangerous driving conditions which is based either on that sense data by itself

[00:04:59] Speaker 05:
or the sense data in combination with other separate data.

[00:05:04] Speaker 05:
The point is that your dangerous driving condition example in the patent isn't necessarily the same thing, the same species as the defective operating conditions.

[00:05:17] Speaker 00:
Well, we would submit, Your Honor, that the dangerous aspect of these conditions is a subset of a defective condition.

[00:05:24] Speaker 00:
That, I think, is clear.

[00:05:26] Speaker 00:
throughout right on my point is it very well could be that the separate species it's not a subset well we would submit respectfully your honor as we did in our briefing that column two lines twenty eight to thirty five makes clear in specification that the interest is a subset and taken together this example of the diminished traction

[00:05:45] Speaker 00:
would clearly be, in our view, and I think in any reasonable view, a defective operating condition of the vehicle that would not necessarily need to be redressed or fixed in a repair shop.

[00:05:58] Speaker 00:
In fact, it wouldn't make any sense to do that.

[00:06:00] Speaker 00:
This would be redressed on the spot.

[00:06:02] Speaker 00:
And if I might move to the 215 patent just to stay on track here, this is the patent involving the terms alert and event.

[00:06:13] Speaker 00:
And here, too,

[00:06:15] Speaker 00:
Courts contends that both the claim language and the specifications support a broad construction and that the district court improperly limited the scope of the claims.

[00:06:26] Speaker 00:
Now, once again, we agree partially with the district court on Appendix 28.

[00:06:32] Speaker 00:
It held that nothing in the language of the asserted claims requires an alert to indicate a problem with or in an IT device.

[00:06:39] Speaker 00:
That's absolutely right.

[00:06:40] Speaker 05:
Have you read the abstract of the 215?

[00:06:42] Speaker 05:
I have your answer.

[00:06:44] Speaker 05:
It's short.

[00:06:45] Speaker 05:
But the one message of the short abstract is it really quite tightly treats these terms, IT problems, problems, alerts, events,

[00:06:57] Speaker 05:
It's all interchangeable thoughts.

[00:07:00] Speaker 05:
And then once you get there, we have a principle in claim construction that when terms are being used interchangeably, then you can understand the claim terms in the same way that

[00:07:15] Speaker 05:
as meaning the same thing as those other terms.

[00:07:18] Speaker 05:
So if the claim says events and alerts, we can understand that to also be about problems with the IT device itself if the spec clearly enough treats these terms as interchangeable.

[00:07:32] Speaker 00:
And again, Your Honor, we agree with the principle.

[00:07:35] Speaker 00:
We agree that there are certainly examples, including in the abstract, where

[00:07:39] Speaker 00:
those terms may be used interchangeably.

[00:07:41] Speaker 00:
All right.

[00:07:41] Speaker 00:
There's other examples in the spec, of course.

[00:07:44] Speaker 00:
Exactly.

[00:07:44] Speaker 00:
And that's what we would direct the court to, that throughout the spec, it's several conditions.

[00:07:49] Speaker 05:
Well, you wouldn't want to direct me to those examples.

[00:07:51] Speaker 05:
Those examples hurt your case.

[00:07:53] Speaker 00:
No, I'm sorry.

[00:07:54] Speaker 00:
The examples on the contrary examples where

[00:07:57] Speaker 00:
there are alerts and events that are discussed not limited, not described as problems or fault conditions in or with a device.

[00:08:06] Speaker 00:
And specifically, as throughout our briefing column, two lines 13 to 21, another aspect of the present invention is a method of managing an information technology device, one embodiment of which comprises receiving an alert, et cetera, et cetera, with no reference whatsoever to problems or fault conditions.

[00:08:27] Speaker 00:
We'd also point the court to column four, lines 49 through 60 in figure three, which also describe this in a different way from faults and fault conditions and problems.

[00:08:39] Speaker 00:
And this is not what the district court point to is not, in our view, a consistent or a uniform use of alert or event to mean a problem condition.

[00:08:50] Speaker 00:
And in fact, in its red brief, Lyft cites some of the portions that

[00:08:55] Speaker 00:
I just cited to your honors that the court actually courts his position.

[00:09:00] Speaker 00:
And I'll just note that the district court

[00:09:03] Speaker 00:
in its justification for its ruling at Appendix 30 in the conclusion of this section, stated it's basing its ruling on the fact that no embodiment contemplates an alert unrelated to the management of an IT device.

[00:09:17] Speaker 00:
And we don't disagree with that.

[00:09:18] Speaker 00:
That may well be true.

[00:09:20] Speaker 00:
But that doesn't mean that the claim should be restricted not just to a management of an IT device, but to a fault or a condition or a problem in or with

[00:09:30] Speaker 00:
an IT device.

[00:09:32] Speaker 05:
My understanding of the patent was the point of this is to try to find some IT expert to help with a problem with your IT device.

[00:09:42] Speaker 05:
And sometimes it can be hard to timely find IT help or the right specific kind of IT expert.

[00:09:51] Speaker 05:
What is it that you're looking to try to get these claims to encompass, just curious, outside of that context of trying to find IT helper man?

[00:10:00] Speaker 00:
We would accept your honor's premise, Judge Jenin, of IT help to address an alert or an event.

[00:10:08] Speaker 00:
We wouldn't define it necessarily as a problem.

[00:10:10] Speaker 05:
I'm just trying to understand.

[00:10:12] Speaker 05:
What are you trying to encompass beyond what I just described?

[00:10:16] Speaker 00:
Of course.

[00:10:16] Speaker 00:
So for instance, there could be, let's say, someone writes into IT because they need additional resources for their computer.

[00:10:26] Speaker 00:
They need a link to complete the cybersecurity training.

[00:10:29] Speaker 00:
They need someone to point them in that direction.

[00:10:32] Speaker 00:
Or it could be, oh, I heard there's an outage in Xfinity or Verizon right now.

[00:10:38] Speaker 00:
Is that maybe affecting the network?

[00:10:41] Speaker 00:
could be any number of different issues or alerts or events that you would need an IT professional to address that isn't necessarily a problem with or in a managed IT device.

[00:10:55] Speaker 00:
That's the key issue here, Your Honors.

[00:10:58] Speaker 00:
And with that, maybe I'll reserve for rebuttal.

[00:11:00] Speaker 04:
Very good.

[00:11:02] Speaker 04:
OK, Ms.

[00:11:02] Speaker 04:
Trier.

[00:11:09] Speaker 01:
Good morning, Your Honors, and may it please the court

[00:11:11] Speaker 01:
As Court's counsels made clear during its opening argument, Court seeks a construction here for all three terms at issue that is broader than anything the applicant could have ever intended to have invented.

[00:11:22] Speaker 01:
The district court was correct in issuing its three constructions, all of which comport with how the applicant repeatedly described its invention in the specification.

[00:11:31] Speaker 01:
Turning first to the A71 patent.

[00:11:35] Speaker 01:
The district court rightly resolved the dispute presented by the parties as to whether the defective operational condition of the automobile could be something that is completely unrelated to the vehicle, such as the driver's attentiveness, the passenger behavior, things that don't actually affect how the vehicle itself is operated.

[00:11:55] Speaker 04:
That's the only issue that you think we need to resolve in order to find in your favor here on this claim term, because I

[00:12:03] Speaker 04:
I didn't love the court's construction, right?

[00:12:05] Speaker 04:
I agree with you on this point that you're making.

[00:12:07] Speaker 04:
I think there's a distinction between passenger issues and car issues.

[00:12:12] Speaker 04:
And I think that this patent is addressing car issues, not passenger issues.

[00:12:18] Speaker 04:
But the district court's incorporation of address at a diagnostic and repair center seemed like a strange addition to its construction.

[00:12:29] Speaker 01:
I think there could have been different ways to resolve the dispute.

[00:12:32] Speaker 01:
And this isn't a construction that was presented by either party.

[00:12:34] Speaker 01:
So it really crystallized in the briefing presented to the court.

[00:12:38] Speaker 01:
And then at the marketing hearing, when the court's counsel was describing how a crying baby could throw something in the vehicle, and then a driver would swerve.

[00:12:46] Speaker 01:
And that helped crystallize the dispute.

[00:12:49] Speaker 01:
And the court came up with this construction on its own.

[00:12:52] Speaker 01:
It wasn't advocated by the parties.

[00:12:53] Speaker 01:
There may be another way to reach the same

[00:12:56] Speaker 01:
the thrust of the same construction or at least resolve the dispute in the same way?

[00:13:01] Speaker 04:
Well, I mean, couldn't we simply construe it as an operational condition of the vehicle as opposed to a passenger in the vehicle?

[00:13:14] Speaker 01:
I don't know that that would give enough specificity to resolve how courts is reading these claims on the accused products.

[00:13:23] Speaker 01:
They're reading the claims, and this is reflected in the record, Your Honor, around Appendix 360,

[00:13:37] Speaker 01:
365, 366, they're reading it on an application on a phone and whether a driver is far away from the destination that he was intended to be at.

[00:13:46] Speaker 01:
And so that might relate to the vehicle.

[00:13:49] Speaker 01:
It might be of the automobile.

[00:13:51] Speaker 01:
But nothing's wrong with the vehicle in that scenario.

[00:13:53] Speaker 01:
And that's really what the court was asking below.

[00:13:55] Speaker 01:
The argument it was presented with is the driver swerves, but the car is fine.

[00:14:01] Speaker 01:
And courts admitted in the Markman hearing, hello, yes, when the driver swerves,

[00:14:07] Speaker 01:
So the car is moving across that line, but the car is otherwise fine.

[00:14:12] Speaker 01:
That's embodied within the scope of this invention.

[00:14:15] Speaker 01:
And we would disagree.

[00:14:16] Speaker 01:
That might be of the automobile, but nothing is wrong with the vehicle.

[00:14:19] Speaker 01:
That's bad driving.

[00:14:20] Speaker 04:
But how is that an operational condition of the automobile though?

[00:14:26] Speaker 04:
I mean, that's not, I don't, you're right.

[00:14:28] Speaker 04:
I guess I see a difference between operator and vehicle.

[00:14:33] Speaker 04:
As do we, your honor.

[00:14:34] Speaker 04:
And I'm just figuring out how to give

[00:14:36] Speaker 04:
how to put that in the right words.

[00:14:39] Speaker 04:
Yes.

[00:14:40] Speaker 04:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:14:41] Speaker 04:
I just didn't love the address to the diagnostic and repair center.

[00:14:44] Speaker 04:
I mean, you danced carefully around the idea that says, well, it says address.

[00:14:48] Speaker 04:
It doesn't say they have to actually repair it.

[00:14:50] Speaker 04:
You're saddled with this claim construction, which wasn't exactly.

[00:14:54] Speaker 04:
I think you said no construction, right?

[00:14:56] Speaker 04:
Plain, ordinary meaning.

[00:14:57] Speaker 01:
Oh, we didn't, Your Honor.

[00:14:58] Speaker 01:
We proposed two alternative constructions.

[00:15:01] Speaker 01:
But the court, in narrowing the dispute about whether it had to be of the automobile or in the automobile, that's the crux of what the court was trying to resolve.

[00:15:10] Speaker 05:
So would something like an automobile-based defect not be clear enough?

[00:15:18] Speaker 01:
I think using the word defect or fault is consistent with the specification and would provide the type of clarity that the district court here was trying to give to the construction.

[00:15:28] Speaker 01:
That's supported by column one, lines 52 through 54, where it talks about the automobile's mechanical, physical, or electrical system.

[00:15:36] Speaker 01:
Something that reflects that it's defects or faults with those parts of the automobile, and not something that reflects where the automobile is completely fine.

[00:15:46] Speaker 01:
It operates completely normally, but there's bad driving behavior.

[00:15:51] Speaker 01:
User error.

[00:15:52] Speaker 01:
Yeah, user error.

[00:15:52] Speaker 03:
What do you think is the best intrinsic evidence support for the district court's construction?

[00:15:58] Speaker 03:
And also, do you think the present invention language in this particular patent supports that construction?

[00:16:04] Speaker 01:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:16:04] Speaker 01:
To answer the second part of your question,

[00:16:06] Speaker 01:
Yes, the present invention language is used repeatedly in this specification and lends support to the district court's construction.

[00:16:15] Speaker 01:
I would say the best examples in the specification would be reflected at column one, lines 32 through 33, where it refers to the present invention, and then it refers to continuous monitoring and correction of automobile operating systems.

[00:16:30] Speaker 01:
As well as column four, line 60 through 63, it talks there about the sensed parameters are diagnosed by the computer and then it goes on to say to thereby adjust simple defective automobile operating conditions within the automobile.

[00:16:47] Speaker 01:
And so there, it's supporting the district court's construction that these are defects that are sensed, as we know from element 1A of the claim.

[00:16:56] Speaker 01:
They're relating to the operation of the automobile itself and not to other conditions.

[00:17:02] Speaker 01:
And it supports the court's construction.

[00:17:04] Speaker 05:
When you say operation of the automobile itself, that's just where the language starts getting a little slippery.

[00:17:12] Speaker 05:
One way of understanding that is how the car is being operated by the driver, by the user, or by occupants in the car versus something that's more just intrinsic about the status of the car itself and whether that car by itself, regardless of a user or any occupant, has a problem.

[00:17:40] Speaker 05:
And so I think that's the point you're trying to capture.

[00:17:43] Speaker 05:
I think that's the point the district court's trying to capture.

[00:17:45] Speaker 05:
And I think if we were to try to adopt the thrust of that but aren't completely satisfied with the district court's conception of this thought, I think we're struggling a little bit to try to figure out what would be the different language.

[00:18:05] Speaker 01:
Yes, Your Honor, I understand.

[00:18:07] Speaker 01:
Adopting a construction that distinguishes between bad driving behavior or user operation when the car is otherwise fine.

[00:18:14] Speaker 01:
And the reason why I doubled down on that language, Your Honor, is that's the language that courts agreed to in the Markman hearing.

[00:18:21] Speaker 01:
When the court asked, it is the operation of the vehicle itself.

[00:18:25] Speaker 01:
That's defective.

[00:18:26] Speaker 01:
That's what you're talking about.

[00:18:27] Speaker 01:
The car is fine.

[00:18:28] Speaker 01:
That's at appendix 3957.

[00:18:29] Speaker 01:
And the court says, yes, that's what we're talking about here.

[00:18:33] Speaker 01:
So the construction has to embody how the applicant here described its invention as being something about the automobile operating.

[00:18:42] Speaker 01:
And I think that that's, again, that's reflected where it talks about the mechanical, physical, or electrical parts of the automobile itself.

[00:18:51] Speaker 01:
I think that's where you get to that it's

[00:18:54] Speaker 01:
That clarifies the operational language that I think the court is struggling with.

[00:18:59] Speaker 01:
It's otherwise defined in the summary of the present invention as within the automobile operations or the automobile operating conditions or system.

[00:19:09] Speaker 01:
Reading the claims in light of the specification, it becomes clear that that's what the applicant intended to invent, is when something's wrong with the car.

[00:19:17] Speaker 05:
The claim doesn't call for this particular limitation, but the patent specification talks about the idea that once a defective operating condition is determined, that the car has some kind of apparatus that fixes the operating condition.

[00:19:40] Speaker 05:
I'm just trying to understand, what would that look like?

[00:19:42] Speaker 05:
What kind of apparatus could do that?

[00:19:47] Speaker 05:
My brakes are faulty.

[00:19:48] Speaker 05:
There's no apparatus that I know of that you could stick into a car that then just goes down into the brakes and starts fixing the brakes.

[00:19:56] Speaker 01:
Right.

[00:19:57] Speaker 01:
There may not be an apparatus that would fix that problem, at least not in modern times, Your Honor.

[00:20:02] Speaker 01:
But the specification does describe that the types of problems that may be

[00:20:07] Speaker 01:
adjusted have things to do with valves and gauges.

[00:20:11] Speaker 01:
That's at column three, lines 21 through 22.

[00:20:15] Speaker 01:
It also might reflect things that have to do with emissions.

[00:20:20] Speaker 01:
And so I could envision a situation that a person of ordinary skill in the art would understand that there may be sensors or, as one of the dependent claims says, embedded microprocessors that could make adjustments to correct for

[00:20:34] Speaker 01:
Any number of things that may be happening that's wrong with the vehicle itself, I think that would be embodied by the scope of the claims.

[00:20:41] Speaker 01:
But there may be instances, and this is described in the specification, where the apparatus can't address the type of thing that would normally be addressed by a diagnostic and repair shop.

[00:20:51] Speaker 01:
It can't be done remotely.

[00:20:52] Speaker 01:
And so in that instance, you still might have to take it into the repair shop, but at least there's

[00:20:57] Speaker 01:
The thrust of the invention is a two-way communication system between the vehicle and that repair shop so that these things can be facilitated, detected automatically, adjusted remotely if you can, or referred to the operator to bring it into the vehicle.

[00:21:12] Speaker 01:
And another example is it talks about in that situation it might flash a light to the user if it can't bring it into the vehicle.

[00:21:20] Speaker 04:
Could I ask you to move to the event language in the 215 patent?

[00:21:23] Speaker 01:
Yes.

[00:21:26] Speaker 01:
So turning to the 215 patent, courts' proposed construction of an alert and event simply deprives the claims of any meaning other than the word notice.

[00:21:36] Speaker 01:
Courts wants event to be the thing that triggers the notice and alert to be that notice that was triggered by the event.

[00:21:42] Speaker 01:
And they collapse in on one another, and then all the claim then requires is a notice.

[00:21:48] Speaker 01:
And a notice about anything, as long as it was sent from a managed IT device,

[00:21:53] Speaker 01:
according to courses reading, would be encompassed by the scope of the claim.

[00:21:57] Speaker 01:
That's simply not what the applicant here intended to invent.

[00:22:01] Speaker 01:
Conventional IT management systems, which are described in the specification of the 215 patent, they sent notices.

[00:22:08] Speaker 01:
They had email communication systems.

[00:22:10] Speaker 05:
The patent has that one paragraph in the summary of the invention that your opposing counsel cited to.

[00:22:18] Speaker 05:
that describes an embodiment that's not restricted on its face to anything about problems or IT problems.

[00:22:28] Speaker 05:
It just talks more broadly and simply about events and alerts.

[00:22:33] Speaker 05:
I agree with you, events and alerts, they seem to be

[00:22:38] Speaker 05:
very interrelated to maybe even be just referring to the same thing.

[00:22:43] Speaker 05:
But nevertheless, that passage is not constrained to problems or IT problems.

[00:22:49] Speaker 05:
And so can you speak to that?

[00:22:51] Speaker 01:
Yeah, I have two responses to that.

[00:22:53] Speaker 01:
I do think that that passage is limited to IT problems for two reasons.

[00:22:57] Speaker 01:
The first is the passage just repeats the plain language.

[00:22:59] Speaker 01:
So giving it any further or trying to determine any further meaning

[00:23:06] Speaker 01:
from it on its face alone in isolation is difficult.

[00:23:10] Speaker 01:
But that passage begins online

[00:23:12] Speaker 01:
13 with another aspect of the present invention.

[00:23:16] Speaker 01:
Column 2.

[00:23:17] Speaker 01:
Column 2, line 13.

[00:23:17] Speaker 01:
It begins, another aspect of the present invention.

[00:23:20] Speaker 01:
That present invention language is preceded by the summary of the invention, which is the bottom of Column 1.

[00:23:27] Speaker 01:
And the bottom of Column 1, the summary of the invention says, the present invention provides a method of improving response time to IT problems and ensuring that someone will respond to a problem.

[00:23:40] Speaker 01:
And then it lists all the different embodiments that are encompassed within that present invention, including referring back to the present invention language in the embodiment in which courts of counsel identified in column two.

[00:23:52] Speaker 01:
So it's preceded by that language.

[00:23:54] Speaker 01:
That language is used repeatedly.

[00:23:56] Speaker 01:
It's repeated verbatim in the abstract.

[00:23:59] Speaker 04:
The abstract refers to... Am I correctly understanding your argument as follows?

[00:24:04] Speaker 04:
The summary of the invention begins by saying we're constricting our universe to IT problems.

[00:24:09] Speaker 04:
That's what this is about.

[00:24:11] Speaker 04:
Then when it talks in the next paragraph about another aspect of the present invention, we have to accept as a given that we've already constricted the world to IT problems.

[00:24:21] Speaker 01:
I think based, yes, Your Honor, based on the repeated usage in the specification and how it describes the present invention repeatedly and that there's no embodiment described in the way that courts would like it to be.

[00:24:33] Speaker 01:
That's further supported by other places in the specification where it talks about column three in the detailed description, where it talks about monitoring the IT device for events and triggers indicating a problem or fault condition.

[00:24:46] Speaker 01:
That's lines 32 through 34.

[00:24:52] Speaker 05:
I'm sorry.

[00:24:53] Speaker 05:
Keep going.

[00:24:54] Speaker 01:
Sorry.

[00:24:55] Speaker 01:
I was just going to respond to your question, Judge Chen, in the opening argument about what courts envisions the event to be.

[00:25:03] Speaker 01:
Courts is, in this case below, it's reading this claim on a ride request.

[00:25:08] Speaker 01:
So when you open your phone and you open the Lyft app and you say, hey,

[00:25:13] Speaker 01:
I'd like a ride.

[00:25:14] Speaker 01:
I'd like someone to pick me up.

[00:25:15] Speaker 01:
That's what courts imagine to be the event.

[00:25:18] Speaker 01:
That's shown in Appendix 385.

[00:25:21] Speaker 01:
They actually call it, in the infringement contentions below, a ride request event.

[00:25:27] Speaker 01:
And that's simply not something that the applicant here intended to invent.

[00:25:31] Speaker 01:
That's not encompassed within the scope of the claims as understood by the specification.

[00:25:36] Speaker 01:
And for that reason, we believe that the district court's construction should be affirmed.

[00:25:40] Speaker 01:
Thank you, Ms.

[00:25:41] Speaker 01:
Dreier.

[00:25:49] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:25:49] Speaker 00:
So I'll just begin by answering a question that Judge Chen had for Lyft about where in the specification there is support, I'm sorry, of the 871 vehicle patent, where there is a description of what can be done to redress a problem short of sending the vehicle to a repair shop.

[00:26:12] Speaker 00:
And that would be a column five, lines 18 to 21.

[00:26:16] Speaker 00:
This, again, is in the

[00:26:18] Speaker 00:
context of the diminished traction.

[00:26:22] Speaker 00:
And there, the patent describes how the remote diagnostic center can block or otherwise limit the operation of the automobile.

[00:26:31] Speaker 00:
And in fact, in today's cars, I think there are the possibility.

[00:26:35] Speaker 00:
This patent is a lot older, but there are ways to slow down the car or to throttle the speed, let's say, of a car.

[00:26:43] Speaker 00:
That is, I think, a possibility.

[00:26:45] Speaker 00:
And what that goes to, just more broadly, Your Honors, is the notion that this defective operational condition, it doesn't matter if it's a driver behaving badly, whatever that means, or it's a baby in the car that's being distracting to the driver.

[00:27:03] Speaker 00:
The key question is the claim language, which is defective operational conditions in said automobile.

[00:27:12] Speaker 00:
Now, Council for Lyft described the claims as conditions of said automobile.

[00:27:17] Speaker 00:
In the spirit of President Lincoln, maybe of and in isn't necessarily the same thing.

[00:27:22] Speaker 00:
The language is defective operational conditions in said vehicle.

[00:27:26] Speaker 00:
Now, if that means that a baby throws a bottle of water, as was described and debated at the Markman hearing, and that distracts the driver so that the driver drives off into the middle of the road,

[00:27:38] Speaker 00:
That's a defective condition the minute that the driver goes off into the side of the road.

[00:27:42] Speaker 00:
And that is exactly the kind of thing that the patent would want to redress.

[00:27:47] Speaker 05:
So what if we were to modify the clamp construction and say something about this is when it talks about a defective operating condition in the car, it's talking about a defect as to the car itself.

[00:28:03] Speaker 00:
So

[00:28:04] Speaker 00:
That construction, Your Honor, in our view, would still be unwarranted and unnecessarily limiting.

[00:28:12] Speaker 05:
I'm just trying to ask, would there be any dispute that needs to be further evaluated on remand, or would we be in the same place?

[00:28:24] Speaker 00:
Well, I suppose the question could be in that situation, Your Honor, that it arguably could still read out the embodiment of the diminished traction.

[00:28:33] Speaker 05:
I understand that you maybe wouldn't want that construction.

[00:28:38] Speaker 05:
My question is a different question, which is to say, let's say what we're trying to do is essentially capture

[00:28:47] Speaker 05:
the import of the district court's claim construction, but slightly modify it in a way that we think is just a little more consistent with the overall patent.

[00:28:58] Speaker 05:
And it's expressed in the way that I just expressed it.

[00:29:02] Speaker 05:
Would there be nothing left to do but to affirm the case?

[00:29:06] Speaker 00:
uh... that that i don't think what would be correct your honor i think that they're that that would change the the calculus of infringement issues potentially and i think we'd have to understand that's what i'm trying to figure out from you which is what what about that construction would still make you think uh... there's still more uh... that could be done on remand for you the patent owner oh in that situation well because then if if uh... a car

[00:29:35] Speaker 00:
is in the wrong, let's say, is in the wrong location or has not dropped off a passenger in the right spot, that could signify some problem.

[00:29:44] Speaker 05:
OK, but I guess my proposed unthought bubble of the claim construction would exclude those sorts of things, because we're talking about something that's very car-centric, about a defect inside that car.

[00:30:01] Speaker 05:
has nothing to do with how the car is being used.

[00:30:04] Speaker 05:
It has something to do with the car itself.

[00:30:08] Speaker 00:
That could be, Your Honor.

[00:30:09] Speaker 00:
I think we'd have to see exactly how the language came out to determine it.

[00:30:13] Speaker 00:
But for that reason, we would submit that that would still be unduly limiting.

[00:30:19] Speaker 00:
But if I just find an amount of time, if I might just briefly address the 215 in 30 seconds.

[00:30:24] Speaker 02:
We disagree with- I have a question for you on the other thing.

[00:30:27] Speaker 02:
In particular, do you agree that you raise no separate challenge for the event versus alert?

[00:30:34] Speaker 00:
That's right, Your Honor.

[00:30:35] Speaker 00:
In our view, the event and alert issues rise and fall together.

[00:30:39] Speaker 00:
There was an argument made that our construction is circular because the alert references the event.

[00:30:46] Speaker 00:
In fact, the district court's construction, if ours is circular, then the district court's construction is equally circular because there's the same kind of language going on there.

[00:30:55] Speaker 05:
But that's a claim is circular.

[00:30:58] Speaker 00:
I wouldn't know if I would go that far, Your Honor, but we do think that alert and event, that's not the issue.

[00:31:05] Speaker 00:
The question is whether alert and event are tied to problem or not.

[00:31:08] Speaker 00:
And just to conclude, we disagree that the present invention language limits it to IT problems and that the embodiment listed in claim two is limited to IT problems, problems in or with an IT device.

[00:31:24] Speaker 00:
That's not good enough.

[00:31:25] Speaker 00:
We would also, again, direct the court to Figure 3 in Column 4, Lines 49 through 60, which is not part of that, the present invention summary.

[00:31:34] Speaker 00:
And that also is not tied to problems with an IT device.

[00:31:38] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:31:39] Speaker 04:
OK.

[00:31:39] Speaker 04:
I thank both counsel, especially for how well-prepared they both were.

[00:31:42] Speaker 04:
Thank you for that.