and alert store personnel when the registers are about to get overcrowded now this is a remarkable invention because if anyone knows who stood in line to cash register this is a problem that still plague most stores and there's not been a solution readily available yet the claim system solves this problem and it does so little way that is totally unconventional human beings never tried to solve this problem in this way before and this particular solution would not even be possible for a human being to carry out in his or her mind  collecting shopper data looking at the number of people entering the store to this result of the learned store personnel when was the cash registers are going to be overcrowded is explained in detail in a way that shows that  calculations that go on in this claim involving three sets of shop are dated to historic sets of data to determine a calibration coefficients and the way of figuring out how many people are in the store a nd set  data to figure out how much shopping is going on and then applying the results of the analysis of that data to a rd set of data in real time to figure out based on the actual shoppers coming into the store the number of people that are in been deemed abstract when there is no advance as it relates to the actual computer processes employed yes or i think cases like the electric power group are on that point but the difference between those cases and in the case before us today in this claim is that this isn't merely collecting and analyzing data it's it's collecting data that something about the physical world is analyzing  for something important about the data and then if using the results of that analysis to inform the user about something that can then be translated into a practical benefit so here you have you have unconventional  analytics techniques being applied to this shopper data and from that you're able to derive a more effective and more accurate way to determine when the cash registers are going to be overcrowded and that's communicated to the user as a which can be put into practice in the store itself i think rather than a case like electric power group or s a p v investec where you had barely collecting and analyzing data this case is much closer to the not abstract as long as the analysis has a practical benefit for the user collecting and analyzing the data and using the results of the analysis in a practical way in the real world would not be abstract particularly in the context of a technological device like we have here but there's nothing i'm not each individual elements of for example well i mean i think the starter are there are specific limitations in the claims of the how the sensor system needs to be used where it has to be positioned and the kind of data selects that are more specific than just any off the shelf generic sensor system but i think the greater point is that it's the combination of the elements running this particular kind of data analysis that really constitute a technological advance over the existing technology prior to this invention as we discussed in the breeze the the prior methods of doing this sort of determining when the cash registers in a store where we're going to become overcrowded really  more efficiently or more quickly with a computer does it doesn't render what you're doing less abstract does it it does if you're doing it in a completely unconventional way for example your honor if the claim was merely to detect with a sensor system the people entering the store and all the data analytic element said was you know determine whether help is needed then that would be abstract but here we have a step by step analyze a device are not the steps that a human being would have or could of gone through in their head in the prior technology there's no there's no evidence on the record or even any any argument that the way in which th oh well no judge newman there's there's quite a bit going on in the middle portion of these claims where the data is being analyzed and i can bike and walk through briefly just to get an idea of the total depth of what's happening so you start with because the actual people being detected coming into the store are detected based on an electronic signal from for example a cell phone in their pocket so the system doesn't protect everybody coming into the store and only detect certain people for the st thing that has to happen is you have to look beyond cameras or something at the actual inference and some sort of technician would have to count the people coming into the store and then calibrate the device to create a coefficient to determine the actual number of people entering the store based on the number of signals that you then have to look at transaction log data determine how many items are being purchased at any given time in the store and also at the number of people entering the store at that same time and by doing that you can figure out a relationship between the number of people in the store and the number of items that are going to be purchased a day at any given time and in doing so you create two metrics that can then be used to applied in real time there's a huge influx of people coming into the store the system doesn't start alerting the user right away waits until those people are about to get to the cash basis and so in that way it's quite a bit more than just calculating the number of people that were coming into the store and that's actually a very important point because as is as mentioned in the prosecution history there were existing systems that could just count the number of people coming into the store so to  to judge o'malley's point a moment ago this this claim is really a technological advance over those prior systems as well this is a better method of doing something that was done in the past a better and different method that goes beyond just doing it on  computer it's doing it in an unconventional way to create a more accurate and more useful result claim that's counting the number of people in the store it would be counting the number of people who would be calibrated based on the difference between the number of people who come in with the cellphone in their pocket versus in order to sort of round up to the total number of people in the store but then it's also calculating the average trip length of those people from the time they enter to the time they leave so that it knows not only how many people are in the store but how long the people tend to stay in the store and that's also in addition to all of that there's also the purchasing aspect of this where the system automated automatically calculates the amount of purchasing that's going on at any given time the number of items that are going to be purchased and from that it can also derive the volume of shopping that's happening which also helps in accurately predict when more store personnel are needed at the check information was not previously collected so i'm thinking in particular and time and again dear it was rather important or at least it was important as later viewed by the supreme that there was constant monitoring of the temperature in the mold that had not previously been done before at least assertively was not had not previously done before and that was a new kind of information co one might say what if any new information is being collected here in light of the written descriptions acknowledgement that tracking customer entry into a retail environment and transaction of determining how busy the cash registers were getting that that's a new advance for the system none of the prior art systems of the existing technology used transaction log data for that purpose the other aspect of it that's a new kind of selection would be the counting of the trip plan which helps the systems then determine the the time delay to put on the alert that was not something that was done in the prior art or the existing technology  before no your honor there's nothing in the actual prior art or in the written description that the customer tripped blank was actually being determined in order to calculate this volume that is i i guess i would have assumed that it's but it's just an assumption on my part that it's rather old to know how long on average customers  stay in the way that web sites are very very interested in how long the viewers stay on the site putting aside the purpose for which that information is used as the record tell us anything about whether  the information about average or some kind of information about customer lingering time is was collected in the prior ar straightforward alice to step analysis under alice stuff one of the claims here are directed to an abstract idea of organizing human activity specifically assists and a method for collecting and analyzing upper data to determine if extra help is required in a store and a key inquiry under out of step one is whether the claimed invention as a whole is directed to improving the functioning of the claim computer components or what we have here whether they're just being used as basically tools to carry out the abstract idea and here we've got four fairly basic computer components we've got a sensor that can sense in wireless signals  customer we've got a data analyzer that can take that data and perform some fairly basic functions to calculate the number of shoppers in the store and the number of projected items to be purchased there are some cameras that can detect images of customers as they enter and exit the store and then there's an alert device which if it's triggered can give her a fairly basic alert either an audio or a visual type of alert so i think  patentable well if rd if it's directed to to organizing human activity to claims to be compatible you've got to have something else in your claim like under alice step two for example you could have something some additional elements that's basically amount to something significantly more that can transform the abstract you know method of organizing human activity into something patent a little so you have to have some additional limitations you know for example with the specific claims if there were some improvements in the underlying computer components it's if there is some something specific to the sensor or the data analyzer or the cameras or the alert device there's something specific as to how each of those components operated either individually or if you looked at you know how they operated as a whole busy if there's something being done that was you know unconventional and it was rooted in computer technology some type of improvement in the actual technology and not just an improvement in the abstract idea itself that could be patent eligible even if it did have some recitation of something that could be characterized as organizing human activity but that's just not and i don't know the exact reason why they withdrew that rejection but i presume it's because upon quote you know closer reflection it may be an argument that story's been made they were persuaded that that rejection wasn't found for some reason well i think it's just a simple matter of section one hundred and one is another statutory basis the office has to make sure the claims pass muster and we've got to follow the supreme court precedence under under allison and this court's precedents and there's you know we do our to to apply those cases and do a rigorous analysis under section one hundred and one and i think that's what was done here i think if you look at the i was step one in the step two analysis that the claims just you know don't pass muster under under either step i think i believe sorenson's counsel you know conceded that they didn't really invents any of these basic components either the sensor or the data analyzer or the cameras or the alert device and they're you know they're disclosed in the specification at a very high level if you look at paragraph twenty three through thirty of the specification they're just basically you know you referred to you know without any specific detail as to how they're actually working combinations like well well it's a little different i think what i'm saying here is that these these components the way they're described in the specification and in the way they're they're they're they're used to be used in a matter that's well understood routine and conventional we're not making any any prior arts rejection we're not saying they're anticipated or obvious but the manner in which they're being used for the for these determining and calculating steps they're they're they're being used in a manner that appears to be well address cardio on that and in particular whether why you think carty and that is properly distinguished here and i guess filmore particularly whether you understand  authority its analysis step one decision the technology in that case was an improved medical device that used a series of kind of noodling conventional steps such as detect having the device actually detect the heartbeats and determining whether they were in some rhythmic fashion and it resulted in a technological improvement so that she'd like a faster more accurate and clinically significant detection of two specific metal could medical conditions using steps that were not done conventionally in the prior arts and so that very specifically was the step not done in the prior i believe let me check to determine the variability variability in the beat to be timing of a collection of beats and then it uses that information to determine whether there is to what to detect to specific medical conditions yeah it's doing some type of event generation and you know in response to the variability in the b to b timing so that those claims clearly seem very different from the claims we have here because they're there they're really improving  director to like a technical technological improvement in this cardiac device whereas here at the claims are really devoted to kind of organizing the interactions between customers you know shopping in a store and how many staff you  deploy to service those customers either on the store floor or opening up a new cash register and it's using basic components to just do kind of basic computer functions like you know detect wireless signal wells or some basic analysis of the data to determine the number of shoppers in the store or the projected number of items to be purchased there's no improvements in any of the underlying computer components that are being used  best pick and synopsis the mentor graphics discoursing clear that just because you have a new and improved or not abstract idea doesn't make your claim patent eligible you need something more some additional you know obviousness and while there you know sometimes there could be you know a prior art rejections in combination with a one on one rejection you know there's there's often times it's just a stand alone one on one and we just look at the the merits of that rejection and see if it's you know if it stands up under the alice two step framework and the president of the supreme court and this court and i think here the claims just don't pass muster under how step one or two can i just have to confess i'm not sure i apologize i am not familiar with the basis for the one hundred and twelve rejection and why it was deemed moot sorry i can't answer that question for you feature that was being collected in that case so i think there is still an analogy to deer in that regard but moving on to a few points that i counsel for the director made in his  organizing human activity can never be paten eligible at alland step one and that doesn't really seem to comport supreme court precedents the way alice interpreted methods of organizing human activity concretely their claim and that really gets to the kind of the heart of this issue because these claims are very concrete in the steps they recite and as we discussed in our briefing this really isn't a method of organizing human activity at all because it doesn't  case is really controlled closely by the cardio and as counsel for the director discuss the the advances in that claim in cardio that was not to