[00:00:00] Speaker 04:
We have four cases for argument today.

[00:00:01] Speaker 04:
But before we get started, I'd like to thank Judge Burroughs, who's here from Massachusetts, sitting with us this week.

[00:00:07] Speaker 04:
She sat yesterday and today.

[00:00:09] Speaker 04:
And I look forward to sitting with her.

[00:00:11] Speaker 04:
And we appreciate her assistance in helping us with our caseload.

[00:00:18] Speaker 04:
The first case is Google versus Valtros, number 24-1945.

[00:00:22] Speaker 04:
Mr. Speed, when you're ready.

[00:00:25] Speaker 04:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:00:30] Speaker 03:
like to reserve four minutes for a rebuttal puzzle.

[00:00:34] Speaker 03:
May I please support Nathan Speed on the behalf of the appellant, Google?

[00:00:37] Speaker 03:
Before the board, Google demonstrated that the claims of Valtros's patent would have been obvious over the prior Art Bushey patent.

[00:00:44] Speaker 03:
The board, however, did not address the merits of our argument because they found that the Bushey reference was not prior Art.

[00:00:49] Speaker 03:
They found that the Valtros inventors had conceived their invention prior to Mr. Bushey filing his patent application and that they were exercised reasonably continuous diligence in constructively reducing their invention to practice via the filing of their application.

[00:01:02] Speaker 03:
the board's conception and reduction of practice findings are flawed and their decision should be vacated.

[00:01:08] Speaker 01:
Just as a housekeeping matter, what in terms of confidentiality are we allowed and maybe shouldn't say in open court?

[00:01:14] Speaker 01:
I want to just touch on that.

[00:01:15] Speaker 03:
So my understanding is that Valtros submitted the declaration from the named inventor on the issue of conception under CL.

[00:01:23] Speaker 03:
We didn't oppose the motion to CL.

[00:01:25] Speaker 03:
I have no objection.

[00:01:27] Speaker 03:
We don't take a position on whether or not it is confidential or not.

[00:01:30] Speaker 03:
But I think we can probably avoid saying the exact date.

[00:01:34] Speaker 03:
Ironically, if I could, I'd like to start with a reduction to practice, however, where I don't think that issue comes up.

[00:01:40] Speaker 03:
As the party's seeking to affirmably establish an earlier priority date, Valtros had the burden to demonstrate that its inventors exercised reasonably continuous diligence.

[00:01:49] Speaker 03:
And that burden is for me.

[00:01:50] Speaker 04:
And that's the only issue, right?

[00:01:51] Speaker 04:
The date is prior, and you agree that it was eventually reduced to practice.

[00:01:56] Speaker 04:
It's just the period between those two where there was reasonable diligence.

[00:02:01] Speaker 03:
I dispute whether there if the date the first date is the conception date where there is a dispute on the conception date, but there they did They had an application ready to be filed by July 30th and mr. Bush he filed his application a week earlier So they have to get diligence back to the conception date, which I'll address second but so the period is from July 24th 2001 to August 27 2001 and

[00:02:25] Speaker 03:
The mayor by which vultures attempted to demonstrate... Say that again, that's about a month, right?

[00:02:29] Speaker 03:
It's about a month, correct.

[00:02:30] Speaker 03:
That's the critical period that we're talking about here.

[00:02:32] Speaker 03:
But the key is that they have a burden to demonstrate diligence for that entire period, and they need evidence to demonstrate that diligence.

[00:02:39] Speaker 01:
And the period you're actually taking issue with is August 8th.

[00:02:43] Speaker 01:
2001 to August 27, 2001?

[00:02:45] Speaker 03:
Correct.

[00:02:46] Speaker 03:
That's the main issue that we're taking.

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What they did in this case to demonstrate diligence is fairly remarkable.

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They didn't introduce any testimony from a named inventor on the diligence that they took or that their attorneys took during prosecuting the patent.

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They didn't submit a declaration from the prosecuting attorney.

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They didn't submit billing records.

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Nothing of that sort.

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What they did is they went to the publicly available file history and saw some dates there.

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And they cobbled together this story that the application was done by the 30th.

[00:03:13] Speaker 03:
Was signed by the inventors up to the eighth and then was filed sometime after the eighth or it was filed by the 27th So there's about 11 business days in which we have no idea of what happened there The only evidence in the record is their technical experts speculation that in his experience It's reasonable to take a few weeks to go from an invention disclosure to a ready to be filed application Do you have to do something every day?

[00:03:37] Speaker 03:
You don't have to do something every day.

[00:03:39] Speaker 03:
But what you need to do is have an evidence-based explanation.

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This is the Monsanto case.

[00:03:42] Speaker 03:
It's clear you need to have an evidence-based explanation for any gaps in that activity.

[00:03:48] Speaker 03:
It's 11 business days.

[00:03:51] Speaker 03:
It's three weeks of the four-week critical period.

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the bulk of the critical period where we have no evidence as to what was going on.

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Based on this record, it's equally plausible that the attorneys had it ready to be filed and they just let it sit on their desk for two weeks.

[00:04:05] Speaker 03:
And whether that's reasonable or not, there's just no evidence on that issue.

[00:04:08] Speaker 03:
And as the party bearing the initial burden of production to introduce evidence, legally sufficient evidence on that issue, they needed to do something other than just point at some dates and say, speculate that's probably reasonable in the grand scheme of things.

[00:04:20] Speaker 01:
Professor, do you at least agree that the purpose of the diligence requirement is to show

[00:04:24] Speaker 01:
that the invention was not abandoned or unreasonably delayed?

[00:04:28] Speaker 03:
Correct.

[00:04:28] Speaker 03:
Unreasonably delayed is the key.

[00:04:30] Speaker 03:
And so they needed to introduce evidence that an 11-week gap where their attorney's had the application ready to be filed, but they didn't file it.

[00:04:41] Speaker 03:
They needed to provide some type of evidence that that's reasonable.

[00:04:46] Speaker 03:
The D Amico case from the CCPA that they cited in their response brief and that we talked about in our reply brief I think is that highlights the issue here in that case You had an appellant who said look we had an application is basically done And then we had a final application that was filed something clearly happened in that period of time, but the D Amico the CCPA case Says that the gist of the appellant's argument is just that something had to happen But they didn't have any evidence of of anything actually happening and because of that the inferences that could be drawn were

[00:05:16] Speaker 03:
It could be that the attorney was diligent and was working on the application for the entire critical period.

[00:05:21] Speaker 03:
Could be that the attorney finished it.

[00:05:22] Speaker 04:
Wait, does the attorney have to work on the application for the entire period, or he just has to work on it?

[00:05:28] Speaker 04:
I mean, attorneys have a lot of different things to do, as you know.

[00:05:30] Speaker 04:
Right.

[00:05:33] Speaker 04:
This is all just a rule of reason, right?

[00:05:35] Speaker 04:
It is a rule.

[00:05:36] Speaker 04:
So if the inventor has all of his or her materials ready,

[00:05:40] Speaker 04:
to submit to his patent attorney.

[00:05:42] Speaker 04:
Yes.

[00:05:43] Speaker 04:
And turn it over to the patent attorney.

[00:05:46] Speaker 04:
And the patent attorney takes a couple of weeks to put together the application and then submits it to the PTO.

[00:05:52] Speaker 04:
Why isn't that inherently reasonable?

[00:05:55] Speaker 04:
Because the whole point of this is not to document every single hour as you agreed.

[00:06:00] Speaker 04:
It's just to show whether it was abandoned or unreasonably delayed.

[00:06:04] Speaker 03:
And so that's the key, is what is a two-week period unreasonable delay

[00:06:10] Speaker 03:
I think on this record, Your Honor, we have no basis to conclude that that is reasonable or unreasonable.

[00:06:17] Speaker 03:
I think there's a word where they could get a prosecuting attorney to say, it's not unreasonable to take two weeks.

[00:06:23] Speaker 03:
We do a first-in, first-out system, and we had a lot of applications.

[00:06:26] Speaker 03:
It takes a little while.

[00:06:28] Speaker 03:
It's equally plausible that you could get a patent attorney who says, no, when we have a final application, we file it immediately because delay, it can only hurt our clients.

[00:06:37] Speaker 03:
They had the burden of production to come forward with some evidence.

[00:06:39] Speaker 03:
All they did was speculation.

[00:06:40] Speaker 03:
We can surmise, as this court said in Inray Meyer, we may surmise that they were diligent, but mere surmise is not substantial evidence.

[00:06:46] Speaker 03:
Even under the rule of reason, we need substantial evidence.

[00:06:48] Speaker 02:
But isn't there argument that they didn't go back and find any of those things because their argument is basically that even if we did nothing, 11 days or three weeks is not unreasonable?

[00:07:00] Speaker 03:
But they have no evidence to establish that that would be reasonable, that they're doing nothing.

[00:07:07] Speaker 03:
They need to have some form of evidence.

[00:07:09] Speaker 03:
with someone with personal knowledge or with practical knowledge of what attorneys do on a day-to-day basis prosecuting patents, that we need to have some evidence that that is reasonable.

[00:07:17] Speaker 03:
If it's just a gap, then that would be fatal.

[00:07:20] Speaker 03:
Like, in Ray Molder had a two-day gap, where you had an application that was ready to be filed, and it took two days for it to be filed, and that was sufficient to find that there was no diligence in that case.

[00:07:29] Speaker 04:
Was it based solely on the gap, or were there other facts for the abandonment?

[00:07:34] Speaker 03:
There were other facts where they found no diligence in the pre-critical period time as well.

[00:07:39] Speaker 03:
Here, there's no evidence as to what happened in the pre-critical period because the focus was on that.

[00:07:43] Speaker 04:
I mean, I find it hard to believe this court would find a mere two-day delay abandonment, even without any evidence suggesting what happens during that two-day period.

[00:07:55] Speaker 03:
I mean, in Ray Mulder did say focusing on the even though it's short, it's not sufficient.

[00:08:00] Speaker 03:
But I'm going to move on to conception, if that's OK with your honors.

[00:08:05] Speaker 03:
On conception, the board found that the inventors conceived the invention prior to Mr. Bush's filing application.

[00:08:13] Speaker 03:
And they did so on three pieces of evidence.

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One is a declaration from the named inventor.

[00:08:17] Speaker 03:
Second, it's two documents that the named inventor says that he and only he had access to for the last 20 years on some email server at his University of Toronto account.

[00:08:28] Speaker 03:
And then screenshots of metadata that Dr. Tesperis, the named inventor, he and only he says connects that metadata.

[00:08:37] Speaker 01:
So are you familiar with the Global Health Solutions case from our court?

[00:08:40] Speaker 03:
I did see that case, yes.

[00:08:43] Speaker 01:
OK, so what is your response to that case in particular?

[00:08:46] Speaker 03:
I think that that case involved a very different type of metadata.

[00:08:49] Speaker 03:
It was email metadata, where the court was referencing the fact that you write an email and send it.

[00:08:54] Speaker 03:
There's a to, from, and a time stamp on it, right?

[00:08:57] Speaker 03:
So that metadata.

[00:08:59] Speaker 03:
in a sense, is independent because you've sent it out to the world.

[00:09:02] Speaker 03:
If I wrote you an email, I've sent it, you could verify that you received it.

[00:09:06] Speaker 03:
If I sent it at 12, you received it at 1201.

[00:09:08] Speaker 03:
That corroborates my testimony that I sent it at noon.

[00:09:11] Speaker 03:
Here we have metadata that's embedded in the document that unless you have the native files, you have no way of verifying that.

[00:09:17] Speaker 01:
Did you ask during discovery for any native files?

[00:09:20] Speaker 03:
We did not seek permission from the board to serve a document request on them.

[00:09:25] Speaker 03:
My two responses on that point, though.

[00:09:27] Speaker 03:
One is it's their burden.

[00:09:28] Speaker 03:
Again, they have a burden of coming forth with legally sufficient evidence if they want to affirmatively establish an earlier priority date.

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And they produce documents that were completely dependent on their inventor's testimony, which is not legally sufficient under this court's case law.

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And second, we did object to the failure to produce the metadata.

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That's appendix 2902 and 2903.

[00:09:49] Speaker 03:
We objected on authenticity grounds and best evidence rules.

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And under the board's rules, once we made that objection, Vultress had the right, without even seeking any authorization from the board, to serve on us, the native files, to moot our objections.

[00:10:02] Speaker 03:
So they had the opportunity to provide the metadata, the native files, when they filed the patented response, and in response to our objections.

[00:10:10] Speaker 03:
And they didn't do that.

[00:10:13] Speaker 03:
And so I would also point to, I think the parallels between this case and the Aperture case that was highlighted in the briefing is stark.

[00:10:20] Speaker 03:
In Aperture, you had an email that was dated.

[00:10:23] Speaker 03:
And then it referenced in the body of the email an attachment.

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And then you had the inventor come in and say, this is the attachment to that email.

[00:10:30] Speaker 03:
And that attachment shows my conception.

[00:10:32] Speaker 03:
But the only thing connecting the metadata or the email metadata to that document was his testimony.

[00:10:38] Speaker 03:
It's the same thing here.

[00:10:40] Speaker 03:
The only thing connecting the metadata screenshots

[00:10:42] Speaker 03:
to any of the documents is Dr. Tesparis' testimony.

[00:10:45] Speaker 03:
That's insufficient as a matter of law.

[00:10:47] Speaker 03:
The aptitude cases.

[00:10:48] Speaker 04:
But is there a dispute that it's the metadata for the documents?

[00:10:53] Speaker 03:
There's no independent evidence that it is the metadata for the documents.

[00:10:56] Speaker 04:
We can't know.

[00:10:57] Speaker 04:
No, no.

[00:10:57] Speaker 04:
I mean, you can look at the document and the metadata.

[00:11:01] Speaker 04:
And if it's, I mean, are you challenging it on or saying that they've created false metadata?

[00:11:09] Speaker 03:
What we're even the most credible inventor has to have their testimony corroborated by independent evidence and what our metadata if you're saying that Word perfect or whatever metadata is not independent.

[00:11:21] Speaker 04:
I don't think you're gonna win that argument with me

[00:11:23] Speaker 04:
So why as substantial evidence?

[00:11:27] Speaker 04:
Right.

[00:11:28] Speaker 04:
So if somehow you're suggesting that the metadata they gave you is actually not metadata for the specific document they're talking about, then that's a different question.

[00:11:36] Speaker 04:
But that's not the way I understood your argument.

[00:11:39] Speaker 03:
The argument is that the screenshot of metadata, the only thing that tells us, tells the court that is for that document,

[00:11:47] Speaker 03:
is the inventor's testimony, which makes that metadata.

[00:11:50] Speaker 03:
Well, I might agree with you that in the abstract, the metadata could be independent.

[00:11:54] Speaker 03:
The problem here is that the only person connecting it to the document is the inventor.

[00:11:58] Speaker 01:
It's no different than the... But counsel, during the deposition, you never questioned the authenticity of the metadata, right?

[00:12:05] Speaker 03:
We asked him his recollection of events, and he said everything that he was recalling was based on the metadata.

[00:12:10] Speaker 03:
We didn't have the native file to cross-examine him on that.

[00:12:13] Speaker 01:
So it sounds like the answer to my question is, yes, you never questioned the authenticity of the metadata during the deposition.

[00:12:18] Speaker 03:
We did not question the inventor on whether or not he forged it or anything along those lines, Your Honor.

[00:12:33] Speaker 04:
Mr. Warwick?

[00:12:35] Speaker 00:
Good morning, Your Honors.

[00:12:36] Speaker 00:
May it please the Court, the Warwick, on behalf of Balthus.

[00:12:39] Speaker 00:
I'd like to start with the conception issue and just address a few points.

[00:12:44] Speaker 00:
One thing that was not mentioned by my friends was that there was a motion to exclude the inventor Soparis declaration, as well as the attachments and the metadata that was denied by the board.

[00:12:58] Speaker 00:
And Google did not appeal that in this case.

[00:13:02] Speaker 00:
So we would submit that issue as waived in terms of authentication.

[00:13:06] Speaker 00:
In terms of the metadata being linked to the documents, if you look in the appendix, appendix 6259 to 6274, you'll see that the metadata has the file names that match the files that are attached to Soparis' declaration.

[00:13:21] Speaker 00:
Soparis also testified that he did not alter the metadata, and again, there was an opportunity to question him.

[00:13:29] Speaker 00:
Moreover, the alleged author of these invention disclosures is, to the best of my knowledge, a current executive-level Google employee.

[00:13:41] Speaker 00:
But this brings me to a point about burden shifting.

[00:13:44] Speaker 00:
This is under the Dynamic Drinkware burden shifting framework.

[00:13:48] Speaker 00:
We had an initial burden of production on conception.

[00:13:51] Speaker 00:
We did that with the SAPARS documents, as well as Dr. Cole, explaining – and this isn't disputed – that the invention disclosure does, in fact, show conception in terms of substance.

[00:14:02] Speaker 00:
And then the burden shifted back to Google, ultimately.

[00:14:05] Speaker 00:
They could have brought forward their own adventure.

[00:14:07] Speaker 00:
They could have brought forward a number of evidence.

[00:14:10] Speaker 00:
And they did not do that.

[00:14:11] Speaker 00:
Instead, they're relying on attorney speculation and attorney argument.

[00:14:16] Speaker 00:
Now, also I'd point out, in denying the motion to exclude, the board cited a Fourth Circuit case for the proposition that metadata is not a statement of the inventor or a declarant.

[00:14:28] Speaker 00:
It is computer generated.

[00:14:30] Speaker 00:
And Google's own expert agreed with that.

[00:14:32] Speaker 00:
I don't think there's any dispute.

[00:14:35] Speaker 00:
Unless John has had questions, I can turn to the diligence issue.

[00:14:38] Speaker 01:
Do you want to talk at all about global health solutions?

[00:14:40] Speaker 01:
Are you familiar with that case?

[00:14:41] Speaker 00:
I will admit, Your Honor, I'm not internally familiar with the details of that case.

[00:14:47] Speaker 00:
But I will say here, there is no evidence of any alteration or malicious intent with regard to the metadata.

[00:14:56] Speaker 00:
That's an issue.

[00:14:57] Speaker 00:
And again, we think it was linked.

[00:14:58] Speaker 04:
It seemed to me that the argument was more along the lines of because the document was created by the inventor, the metadata

[00:15:06] Speaker 04:
is along those same lines as the inventor's testimony about his own invention, and therefore it can't corroborate.

[00:15:15] Speaker 04:
And the board rejected that because it found even though the document itself may not corroborate, the metadata is independently generated by the computer, and that's sufficient.

[00:15:26] Speaker 04:
And I think they're trying to say anything created by the inventor, including the corresponding metadata, is not sufficient to corroborate.

[00:15:36] Speaker 00:
So I would agree with Your Honor's characterization of what the board found in terms of Google's arguments.

[00:15:42] Speaker 00:
I think they're trying to argue that.

[00:15:43] Speaker 00:
The problem, again, is that the board determined that the metadata is created by the compiler.

[00:15:47] Speaker 04:
Well, sure.

[00:15:48] Speaker 04:
It doesn't seem, I mean, whatever they were arguing today, it didn't seem the focus in the briefs was on the authenticity of the metadata, just that it was legally insufficient to corroborate, and that that's the question we have to decide.

[00:16:02] Speaker 04:
And the board decided that against them.

[00:16:04] Speaker 00:
Sure, and I apologize, Your Honor.

[00:16:06] Speaker 00:
They don't cite, Google does not cite any case, any binding authority that says you cannot rely on the metadata.

[00:16:11] Speaker 00:
And we would submit that the approach in the PTAP's decision in the unified patents versus FlexiWorld case is the proper approach.

[00:16:22] Speaker 00:
Turning to diligence, if I may, Your Honors are correct.

[00:16:25] Speaker 00:
We're talking about 11 business days.

[00:16:28] Speaker 00:
And respectfully, I disagree.

[00:16:31] Speaker 00:
with my friend from Google about this, that there is no evidence.

[00:16:35] Speaker 00:
The evidence in the record related to the transmittal, the signature of the oaths, that is evidence.

[00:16:41] Speaker 00:
And there's no dispute about certain activities that had to take place.

[00:16:45] Speaker 00:
Within those 11 business days, one of those activities is inventor Soparis, who is

[00:16:51] Speaker 00:
at least living in Canada at the time, had to get his signed oath to the Cooley law firm in California to be filed.

[00:17:01] Speaker 00:
And candidly, we don't know how long that took, but we do know it had to take place.

[00:17:06] Speaker 00:
We do know it took some time.

[00:17:08] Speaker 00:
We know that there were various papers that had to be prepared.

[00:17:11] Speaker 00:
Those were at

[00:17:12] Speaker 00:
376 to 378, a check that had to be cut.

[00:17:16] Speaker 00:
Various things had to be done, and all of those appeared to have been done by the 24th, which was a Friday.

[00:17:21] Speaker 00:
So the time even shrank shorter than that, because on Monday, the 27th of August, 2001, we know that the application was in fact filed.

[00:17:31] Speaker 00:
Now, in terms of diligence, there's a lot of discussion of different cases that have different facts.

[00:17:38] Speaker 00:
I think the takeaway for me is that this is just a very fact-specific, case-specific inquiry.

[00:17:45] Speaker 00:
And it's worth noting that we're here on substantial evidence review.

[00:17:48] Speaker 00:
Google effectively just wants this court to reweigh the evidence.

[00:17:52] Speaker 00:
But to be clear, there is evidence.

[00:17:54] Speaker 00:
This all happened in a matter of weeks.

[00:17:56] Speaker 00:
And we do have the Cole Declaration.

[00:17:58] Speaker 00:
Now, Dr. Cole is not an attorney.

[00:18:01] Speaker 00:
But he was someone who, at the time, in 2001, was a CTO overseeing a robust patent portfolio.

[00:18:07] Speaker 00:
Testified he was familiar with how long it typically took.

[00:18:10] Speaker 00:
for an application to go all the way from a disclosure to actually being filed.

[00:18:15] Speaker 00:
And this was within that period.

[00:18:16] Speaker 00:
So again, the burden shifted back to Google.

[00:18:19] Speaker 00:
We more than met our burden of production.

[00:18:22] Speaker 00:
Google could have itself sought to depose Cooley or other attorneys.

[00:18:26] Speaker 00:
It could have presented one of its own prosecution experts.

[00:18:30] Speaker 00:
It did not do any of those things.

[00:18:33] Speaker 00:
And your honors, respectfully, unless there are any other questions, we'll rest on that.

[00:18:38] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:18:46] Speaker 03:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:18:47] Speaker 03:
I'd like to focus on conception.

[00:18:49] Speaker 03:
The issue is a legal issue for conception.

[00:18:52] Speaker 03:
This court in Appator, and it's not an outlier, has made clear that it is well established that when a party seeks to prove conception through an inventor's testimony, the party must proffer evidence in addition to the inventor's own statements and documents corroborating the inventor's testimony.

[00:19:06] Speaker 03:
The Procter & Gamble case said the same thing with regards to an unwitnessed lab notebook that the inventor has.

[00:19:12] Speaker 03:
These documents and the metadata, it's no different than if Dr. Tesperis had ran up to his attic and came down with an unwitnessed lab notebook and said, oh... Wasn't it entirely different?

[00:19:21] Speaker 04:
Because there's an independent metadata that's generated by the computer, not by

[00:19:27] Speaker 04:
the inventor himself.

[00:19:28] Speaker 04:
But I think the critical... Let me ask you this, hypothetically.

[00:19:31] Speaker 04:
Instead of an unsigned, unwitnessed lab notebook, you had a lab notebook that has a signature by his officemate saying, this was created on this date.

[00:19:46] Speaker 04:
Would that be

[00:19:47] Speaker 04:
than sufficient?

[00:19:49] Speaker 03:
That would be because you have an independent witness for that.

[00:19:53] Speaker 04:
So you're suggesting that it has to somehow be a person instead of a computer program?

[00:19:59] Speaker 03:
No, I'm not suggesting that at all.

[00:20:00] Speaker 03:
What I'm suggesting, Your Honor, is that this is the metadata, and this is a document that they produce.

[00:20:06] Speaker 03:
Connecting this metadata to this document, you have to rely on the Inventor's testimony.

[00:20:10] Speaker 03:
If they produce the native file.

[00:20:11] Speaker 04:
Who says the file names are on the document?

[00:20:15] Speaker 03:
There's no file name on the actual Word document.

[00:20:20] Speaker 03:
There's just a vector testimony that this metadata says patents spelled incorrectly at the top and that that document is this document.

[00:20:29] Speaker 03:
That's the problem is that it's all dependent on the expert.

[00:20:31] Speaker 03:
Are you challenging?

[00:20:33] Speaker 04:
I mean, this is the problem.

[00:20:34] Speaker 04:
I didn't understand your argument to be that that metadata document wasn't the document that goes with the actual document.

[00:20:43] Speaker 04:
Your challenge is that that's legally insufficient.

[00:20:46] Speaker 03:
That is my position.

[00:20:48] Speaker 04:
Well, if that metadata document goes to that document, which you seem not to be challenging, then it is sufficient.

[00:20:57] Speaker 03:
If it was, if the connection between the metadata and the document was a third party, like your hypothetical supervisor who signed it, I would agree, but you don't have that here.

[00:21:07] Speaker 03:
It's that, the Co-Crop case was the exact same thing.

[00:21:09] Speaker 03:
Co-Crop, there were exhibits A through H that were produced.

[00:21:12] Speaker 03:
The only evidence as to the date of those exhibits was a declaration from the inventor who said, I looked at the metadata.

[00:21:20] Speaker 03:
That was insufficient.

[00:21:21] Speaker 03:
That's Co-Crop, Aperture.

[00:21:23] Speaker 03:
These are cases, this is all,

[00:21:24] Speaker 03:
Inventor-dependent testimony that connects the documents.

[00:21:27] Speaker 03:
It's just legally insufficient to sustain.

[00:21:32] Speaker 03:
Unless there's any more hypotheticals for questions, I'm happy to.

[00:21:35] Speaker 03:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:21:36] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:21:36] Speaker 04:
The case is submitted.