ok our last piece this morning is number sixteen fifteen sixteen fifteen twenty one america's collectibles network versus the jewelry channel mr john thank your honor and my place of course i hate starting off oral arguments just why but i need to make an apology first there is a mistake in our brief that i didn't find until i was prepared argument because page seventeen in the middle paragraph in the brief under section c every time we indicators to with just the amount being sold i mean like you read a newspaper right now the old gods that they look at preliminary indicators they decide how much wealth to sell and because this is going are and that's exactly the point it's not conventional it's never been done it's unique in the context of or a verse auction we're not saying that these are these components these policemen are indicators internet and that's the key just like this court case pre k excuse me just like this court's previous cases i think is the d d r holding this case which found an internet centric solution to a problem that's exactly what this is here your honor it's a t v and internet centric solution and inventive concept that's confined to reverse options and they  reverse auction that only is conducted over the internet and over television and one of the things that i like actor honors do if one of the most important things here is to understand what a reverse option and particularly to understand what this reverse option this claim in the two eleven pattern is and i would direct your honor's attention if you want to get a really good background on this and see one in action go to the web site a shop l c dot com and click on the watch live t v link that's on that page and you will see this type of reverse auction which our expert witness being to be he calls it a multiple same item reverse auction that's an extremely narrow field and extremely narrow and streaming unique type of of ours option and it's  that there is only a handful of those options that exist in the world at least over the t v and internet as required in the climbs and in its the options that do exist th another one electric power group as well as a recent case that came out after our brief for brinks were filed the if then of the lab versus directv case they all say that the abstract idea that you have maybe more of a doctrinal question i am not sure we've actually said and and part of my question is i'm not sure it actually makes any sense to say that we always have to identify a idea in step one in order to move to step two it seems to me that there are large categories of activities that constitute that fall into the abstract idea category selecting information manipulating information entering into legal contracts and you can define those in any given case at and in from work reliably of levels of generality and i'm not sure what the point is of spending a lot where all those details are themselves abstract you haven't done anything why is this not a case in which everything going on here is formation of terms know you're on that's not what we ultimately that is what is being decided but the effect is not the formation of the contract the effect is minimizing the amount of time the amount of internet time the amount of t v time that it takes that that that the auctioneer has to purchase before they can move on to sell in the next i determining say you start out with one hundred necklaces for site and the auctioneer will set a bidding price a starting price of let's say a hundred dollars each and you get ten people it of clicking in through the internet or calling in on the telephone line who say i'll buy at one hundred dollars i'll buy i'll buy one hundred dollars and you get ten of them well the sale is not completed in tool that person's credit card is charged and this is not like a formal forward option where people walk in they give credit card that to the people running the auction and so they know that if you bid and if you ultimately win the option for the highest bid on something you're going to pay the sales going to be completed in the context of the internet and t v there is no guarantee that when i go clicking in and sow want to buy that necklace or i call in and say i want to buy that necklace that i'm going to actually complete the sale my credit card could be declined i could decide during the whole discussion that i am not really interested in that necklace i could decide to close my web browser my computer could go h and i lose it so those first ten people that colleen and there's no guarantee that they're going to actually go through and complete a sale so what is the option or do the auctioneer has three options the auctioneer can say ok i'm going to take them all in order and i'm going to charge everyone's credit card and that way i know that i've sold tin pot and as soon as i've charged ten credit cards then i can reduce the available t to forty and option continues and ultimately you get down to zero of this goes on in the price drops because the auctioneer is trying to encourage people to buy at lower prices because everyone is going to end up buying at a lower price and that that's another unique problem in this area when i call in and charge my credit card one hundred dollars well if the falling price only option actually ends up at five dollars then then there has to be a refund or a lease on my car new charge on my card at five dollars as opposed to the hundred dollars so that's one option for the auctioneer the auctioneer can wait until i sale is completed before come before before reducing the quantity and so it reduces the quantity one by one as each credit card has charred we are imagine the time that that tags the young meter there are only twenty four hours in a day and the most of these auctions run twenty four hours a day and the auctioneer is desire is to go forward with his many options as possible during the day to put out is many products and if they have to wait on the credit card being charged that's going to slow it down now what the option here could do is the first ten dollars so ok all those are going to be good so i'm going to keep except in bids so let's say ten people cali and the auctioneer said ok i'm going to sell ten products now i'm going to keep taking calls and internet clicks and let's say one hundred people actually click again before they can complete the sale of fifty well all those people who click in or call in are expecting to get a necklace well what's going to happen to the auctioneer's reputation if i happen to be number seventy eight option website any longer because the auctioneer is going to have a reputation that they sell products that they don't have and then finally the third option that the auctioneer could do is they could say ok i'm  only going to camp can i'm going to do it really slowly and some point i'm going to get a zero showing on the available quantity but i really have a bunch of products still left because i never completed the cycles so then they're in an under social situation and they have lots of inventory instead of having one hundred necklaces and i thought they'd sell out of one hundred necklaces now they actually have twenty five or thirty still laying around that they're going to have to resell at a later option that's the inventive concept that's the problem and this your honour's is unique you need to television and internet it and it's also unique and this is where the preemption issue the preemption concern comes into play more your honour's may please the court the patent at issue in this case is an abstract idea with no meaningful limitation on that idea and we would ask that this court affirm the board that are described by this pad and that's the way we've described the abstract idea and we did that because the had says that all of the concepts here can be carried out by a person and during prosecution when they originally course there are a line of cases from from this court and from supreme court affirmed to human mental processes as being an abstract idea and in this case being the only on this point the only  rebuttal that we've gotten from the scene on this point is that the claims literally recited a system for carrying out some of the steps the use of preliminary indicators to document the number of available units and  our position is that the mere recitation of a system doesn't change the fact that the underlying concept is something that can be carried out by human mental steps and the idea that reciting a system would somehow excuse or allow and you know in the opening portion of this argument there was some discussion about the i guess the scope of the abstract idea whether it is just reverse auction or or whether it includes this th claims you supply in there indicators and it was discussed that maybe the scope of this abstract idea isn't the most critical question here but what i would say is that we agree that we agree that it's identify to identify the fundamental concepts that are wrapped up in the claims here but the approach that would that that they see as proposed that would only address let's say the field of the invention or the the invention and sensually ignore the rest of the claim language or ignore the rest of the specification of that approach there's no basis for a rule in that regard and certainly that approach with then exclude  allegedly inventive concepts from a patent from being considered as part of the abstract idea if your only goal of the field of the invention is only to look at the preambles then you know not only has this court not done that and i think  counsel mention the basket case the best common case expressly said that some courts will include the detailed claim limitations in the abstract concept that they find and in that particular case this court said that it was a close call but they weren't going to do it there so i don't think there's any basis for saying there's there some sort of rule that the nuances of the claims can't be considered in the abstract idea here because they can be carried out by human mental steps they are if you agree with us that that is an abstract human mental process then in this particular case that is the inquiry because a c n has not pointed to any other aspect of the claimed invention here that would somehow  some some eligibility so if the you support their indicators it's abstract there really isn't that much more to discuss here so i think in the end if if if for some reason that the abstract idea were not to include that use of prone area decatur's we would agree as as as judge trying to point out that this precise definition of the abstract idea here is not entirely critical because what we're talking about is being able to guess when a customer is going to buy an item and if they see as council just said there is no guarantee that a customer is going to buy and what they've described here i think this customer is going to buy based on what i know about that customer that concept is human the process that is abstract and cannot you know somehow confer eligibility on these claims i do want to touch quickly on ac and mention the d d r case they are trying to draw a comparison between the internet centric claims in that case and what's going on here they mentioned it to this p describes the televised auctions that are communicated by telephone as well as auctions that are performed over the internet there's nothing print the d v r holding is specifically about internet centric problems that was as you know that was that was about website pop up ads and it dealt with problems that specifically relates to the internet age this is this is nothing even more to the physical and programming structure of the particular set of networks that make up the internet it's not just the internet age not just you know this is sort of about the internet but about the actual technical way the internet works whether you can put on a screen information from two different sources on the internet yes that's correct your honor of short handing it a bit but i agree with you it's much more detailed than that and certainly in this situation that's not what some we have here it can be done online that doesn't mean that the d v r holdings case somehow controls the outcome here  d let's see if if the you know the last thing i would say is that iran or mention the affirmative elements in this case what we're talking about here at bottom is a business solution to a business problem can we sell enough items do we know that our customers are going to buy this product in the end those are business decisions that are made guessing as to whether a customer is actually going to buy and that doesn't confer patent eligibility here pat now i understand that there is a push in some sectors to outlaw business method patents all to get but that's a question for congress and not a question for this court but can you give us an example of any cases where a method that was soley performed on the human body has been sustained your honor i would have to go back and look back i can't think of any off the top of my head but that's never been the test that's not that is not mentioned in the alice case which is what male controls section want to want you know obviously the way people used to do it the way this patent was prosecuted because it was pretty alice was whoever prosecuted case added the element of it being conducted the reverse auction being conducted by system that's what the examiner require the exam or even maybe a section one o one rejection but i'm not aware of any case that says every time a process a method can be performed in the human mind it is per se patten an eligible i'm not aware of a case that says that certainly is a consideration but  that were the black letter rule then i submit to you there would not be a single business method that would be pale as patent eligible and i think the court here has an opportunity to do two me quickly say this one make it clear that you have to choose the right abstract idea first i think you have to do that and secondly i think this is a perfect opportunity for this