matter of law at the pleading stage for any discovery had been taken a district court ignored the specific technological problem that the patent was directed to as well as the specific technological solution to that problem disclosed in the past and in doing so it ignored the teachings of this court in cases like d d r holdings that when a claim solution is necessarily really like it or technology in order to overcome a problem specifically  arising in the realm of computer networks it passes muster under section one of one and i want to start out by talking about what the problem is the district court's decision characterize the issue of the six of six published directive two as filtering content in the abstract now even just a cursory review you have the patent shows that it was not directed to that abstract concept but rather was specifically directed to a limitation of the technology of the day and specifically how can you have individual ised internet content filtering that you didn't have to implement on the local client machine that essentially you could do in the cloud and so that was a limitation of the computer network itself and the patentee endeavored to say how can we make the network better let me ask this question do you believe that you could have an initial computerization of a concept that would be unpatentable but have a later pad and that improves on that computerization be patentable well i don't know but that question in the abstract i mean here we're dealing let's not use the word abstraction yeah no i don't mean issue here is one that grows in the profit in the computer networks fear specifically and it's arises first pacific reason you have a network of disparate users you have millions of users potentially all over the country and everyone may want to have a particular type of internet content filtering at the time of this patent however if you want to do it to the july solution it was only implemented on a local client machine you had software out there like net net and safe search at that time you have to believe it watch your computer and that's in fact with this patent talks about it talks about the specific disadvantages of that type of approach it can be circumvented you had to have software that could interface with your particular platform on your computer well i had to ha questioning you know specific i've got a call what if in one thousand nine hundred ninety five before your application someone filed an application with claims to the system for filtering content on the internet in which you know the local computer has certain filtering elements you know white listing certain addresses blacklisting other address do you think that would be  i think that would present a closer question than the patents it in the claims in this case do i mean obviously what about a claim that was a claim for filtering content on the internet in which search results are filtered with white lists and blacklist do you think that claim that i just decided it would be about knowledgeable i think that there's it could be if you look at the specific logic of the claims and that's an important it's a claim just said that what i just said that i mean if you're just saying i mean what you are proposing your honor is something that's very close to the concept of filtering content do it on the internet and i think this court in several cases and the supreme court in alice and other decisions have said that when you just take something that i common well understood practice and say do it on the internet that poses section what a lot of problems oh ok so we have a baseline agreement that we have a baseline to give it but then and i think that that underscores the point here because when you look at the claims of this patent and what it was trying to achieve that filters the search results using white lists and black lists do you think that would be patentable i think it maybe and i think it's because when what we're dealing with in cases such as alice or even going back as far back as parker v fluke i mean these were cases where you were talking about just generic natural phenomena you loads and it was just like can we do in a computer but what you're proposing in your hypothetical i think is something very close or to like it almost gets to an out against you than you want to because the problem is is that a friend from alice or bill's gave the very simple concepts all the way through say alter marshall or others where there's actually a lot more computerization that is still that they're determining how to use a computer to to carry out a basic concept so my question is and i think that it's probably a better argument is that what r holding's was teaching is that even if that nischelle computerization might not be pat knowledgeable if you then create problems with that computerization that need some inventive one of the prime reasons why the patent there was five was found to pass one to one muster was because it wasn't just using the internet in a routine in a conventional way it was disclosing a very specific way to use the internet that was different than what was being done before in a word it was trying to improve the technology that was existing at the time to make it work in a slightly different way and that's exactly what's happening here and does it matter then what problem you're trying to solve  like in other words whether the problem is with the the fact that you want to have a simpler way to to filter content or versus the problem of we want a more sophisticated computer or we want to fix something that the computerization a problem the computerization cost yes i think that it's a i think that the question is only relevant because under this court's cases in the supreme court's cases they and the way that this is been done in the past that you're not even talking you're not even in the ballpark of what alice i think it is and this is directed to you and alice in other cases the real issue is are you taking some sort of well no business method or economic practice and then trying to quit trying to monopolize that by saying well let's do it on the internet or let's do it with a computer that's precisely what the court and d d r holding said was going on in cases like hershel that there was an economic practice there i think it was selling advertisements in exchange for copyrighted material with the general instruction to do that on the internet and d d r holdings distinguished that case and said well here as we're saying we're not just saying if you use the internet in your teenage conventional way we're saying use it in this very some conceivably abstract idea you know i have that i have another case that involves a final implants and you could say well the abstract idea there is fixin's finds and you can't just you know in your head the actual implant that you're disclosing is just  do it with implants i mean you could always do that but what the supreme court said is a patent is not rendered ineligible simply because it involves an abstract concept and the court in earth traversal went further and said of course you can go hunting for an abstract idea yeah but that was your first well there was a first there were three and i fortunately i think that that's right but i think that the principle is sound and i think it's well represented by what happened here where the district court really didn't look at the specifics of what the patent was trying to address and then what the solution was but once it latched onto the idea that there was potentially an abstract concept at play it sort of overgeneralized that and said well it's filtering concept and just to buttress the district court's analysis it use these real world analogies for instance a librarian who has certain books away from children or parents who have magazines that they don't let their kids look at and i think the it really shows that misfit between those analog and what's going on here i think is telling because the problem that was trying to be addressed here was specifically when you have a network of disparate users and you're trying to achieve individualized internet contract content filtering from a remote centralized area how do you do that that's not even of a problem that is addressed by any of the real world that analogies that we're talking about what about a school board that's trying to figure out you know what kind of lesson plans to give to elementary schools and then in  sense they're filtering content by using certain textbooks for the first graders versus textbooks for the fifth graders in a sense that's a remote server you know filtering content to all these disparate local user well i guess two responses to that first of all i don't know that that would qualify as the individualized customisable type of content filtering that the pattern was trying to get to but secondly that the whole thing that we're talking about here and i think  is the content filtering that is built into the communications infrastructure itself that is something that's very unique to the internet space and something that's not presented really in the real world examples that we're talking about and i think it gets to that ultimate point that what we're dealing with here is far different than some of the other cases where the idea of the concept that's being addressed is something that really is a real world non computerized issue that's just being computerized and that's the only innovation that the patent is claiming that if you look at them again in the abstract could very well read on the school kindergarten filtration and yet they were presented as typical as representative will ask us to review why the more detailed claims were not considered by by the court it doesn't look from the record as if that was presented in that case i really didn't see any basis for criticizing the trial judge's concentration on the two claims that you presented as representative and yet there we have almost has a master exclusive list coupled with the plurality of sets of two types of lists inclusive an exclusive list if you consider the dependent claim twenty three and in terms of what the district court did in dealing with that claim the district court did not consider all the elements as a combination to determine whether on the inventive step inquiry there was an attempt to limit the invention to something so that it wasn't just covering all of filtering content but if you look at the claim that specifically what it does it talks about a one way of orienting and i a speech server that didn't exist in a prior art that would be able to accomplish individualized content filtering for all of the local flying machines that it was servicing but the port didn't consider it as a combination the court just looked at every pelham in isolation but that's the opposite of what you're supposed to do it cases like dime in the year all the way through alice which say you have to look at the claims as a combination and i would just add one point which is this is that this is a patent and especially claim twenty to the district court reviewed that that is a claim that was found valid and infringed in a trust the case that went to trial against a well a jury looked at these patents after there was full discovery and after there was expert you know experts on both sides to talk about what was new in the article it was not obvious and that jury determined that the patents were valid here we don't have any discovery and one of the things that the other side does and that the district court did here is to say well of these elements are really well known in the art but we're at the pleading stage and the facts have to be construed in our favor so on the issue of novelty there is a presumption that these patents are new and novel and non obvious and not anticipated but the district court appears to have taken those presumptions and thrown them out the window we don't think that was proper especially when there's no effort to look at the elements of the claims ordered combination is it as i understood your claim  the face of the prior art there it was known and it had been done before to put filters on local computers individualized filters correct well they're individualized as a matter of record just the fact that there are and then there was also  put a filtering scheme on the grim o't iris piece server and but then it would be a one size fits all and so each of those was a solution to filtering content on the internet but they both had respective disadvantages the first one local users could hack through it on the local computer the second one it was a one size fits all scheme you wouldn't he wouldn't be able to individualize or customize the filtering for particular disparate users that's correct and then your claim to eventually is directed towards having the filtered physically located at the remote server but at the same time having the feature of being able to customize using individual filtering elements the filtering done for all the different local just print users and peace server is able to do that because due to the t c p ip protocol you're able the server is able to recognize the address of the particular user's requesting information from the internet is that right that's correct and so therefore you're saying that this is some kind of technical solution overcoming the problems of priority filters well that's right and i would point out two things that i just wan make sure clear in the prior are a local clam machine we say that it was doing individualized individuals filtering but it wasn't really doing individualized filtering it's just that since it was loaded on the person's machine it just had to filter for one user so that's not exactly what's implemented here and you mention that the iris piece server is able to do this i think through the t c p ip connection but it's able to do this because of the specific the logic that's disclosed in the claims i mean if if there's another way to do it that isn't this what we've disclosed here then that's fair game in the case and i'm sure eighteen she will have a strong you know they'll have a broker and not infringement report that they submit later in the case we just don't have that now because we're dealing with this at the pleading stage trying to figure out if this is something that is really new but of course we're at the pleading stage again and it would be improper and that's what the court said and i may be dear you must presume that this is a novel invention because we're not dealing with the question of obvious it is to make sure that you're not trying to monopolize the whole idea and the idea of the district court says here is filtering content writ large there's no question when you look at these claims that there's no it there's no intent to monopolize the entire field of filtering specific way of doing things something that was different than what was done before right and then the judge blow dried lint i think said that everything here is non routine and conventional right so where where do you think  what are these innovations really new if there really is something that is not obvious or that not anticipated by the prior are the proper course would be to have discovery of the case and actually see where we where we end up because we're at a stage right now that no discoveries in the record that normal procedures on a trial of the six motion would apply to this case in which he would presume all of the facts and take all inferences in the plaintiff's favor i really don't think that that's been done here and i do think that there is a disconnect disconnect between the question of novelty which is informed by facts you have to actually look and see what was in the prior art what was really known and conventional you can't just make assumptions about the reason why the district judge and the  are able to say that certain things in isolation are well known in the art because some of the different elements are but the same thing goes for good your holdings i mean if we look at some of the the aspects of the trades there i mean they were all conventional if you look at the elements i mean i think a lot of the claims talk about things like receiving a signal generating a web page if you broke out all of those elements out you would find that they were all conventional people that the court said when you put them together this was something more than just the routine and conventional use of the internet and in the prior cases that where there's been an old want to one problem found that's been the issue is that you really have something from the real world with an instruction to use it on energy do it on the internet patent content filtering was done at the local client machine level if you wanted to have any chance of individualisation and that ran into four technological issues which is one you could have circumvention to you could have it was hard to c the features three you'd have to have specific software that interface with your local client platform and for that you have to have the cloud database that you have to update it yourself and so obviously in a in a world where you have a york that actually made it and sold the solutions to clients you know it's putting schools in new york because there was a perceived need for this type of solution for someone to do this on a nice piece or group but again there are a lot of and the idea of filtering internet content adds nothing to that this court has been very clear with respect to that i believe in the ultra mercial case the court referred to the internet as a ubiquitous information transmission medium so the question as i understand it as it's been posed by the opponent in this case is whether filtering here is different from filtering there is different from filtering anywhere else that question is no because in each of the three instances the first instance being the computer on the desk the second being the computer that is in a local area network the third being the computer that is the i s p server itself the arguments that your friend on the other side has made with respect to the problems posed by you just doing filtering at the local level there is there are different ways or different i guess benefits of filtering in and in each location there's no question about that the question is whether right the recognition of those differences is inventive that's really the question of how do we how do we make that determination o twelve b sec and that also sounds like an obviousness inquiry it isn't an obviousness inquiry in fact in this particular case what the specification of this pattern tells us is that we can do filtering here talks about the local computer we can do filtering there it talks about the computer in the local area network and we can do filtering anywhere in this project that you're in description of the prior act it is in the description of the prior art but it also tells us what's inventive and what's not and  this court has pointed out there is some overlap between those two issues and between those far as we know there's no anticipatory section one two reference that teaches locating physically locating  filter over at the ice peace server in which that filter as the feature of being able to provide individualized filtering for all the different local disparate users requesting information as far as we know there is no one or two reference about that is that fair to say yes there is no such reference and it also fair to say that a filter located there with those kind of features overcomes disadvantages of described prior art forms of filtering in the as described in the past i would i would disagree with that don't you have to agree with that for purposes of the motion to dismiss i don't think so because in this particular case what we're looking at is we're looking at the execution of statements on a regular general purpose computer and if i can step back a little bit and separate the abstract idea part of the task from the implementation part of the test the abstract idea includes multi level filtering the abstract idea includes filtering that is customized to the particular individual  opinion multi level filtering filtering that is customized to a particular individual is all over the real world judge lynn talks about different children in the same family whether they would have access to a particular book or  since it could be but the obviousness inquiry is a fairly structuring query that deals with whether a particular combination of references can invalidate or make obvious a particular claim in this case the question is not the rigorous obviousness analysis it is rather whether what is disclosed in the claims contains an inventive concept that takes the claim out of the realm of the abstract idea to which the pat itself is addressing so let's pose the question why sure of the district court found that filtering content is the abstract idea underlying these coins and that is in fact something that your side agreed to the next question then becomes is there an inventive concept here and why isn't the inventive concept here the invention as her side in the claims of a tool of locating the filter not at the local router at the eyes server where this tool has as far as we know neat feature at that location for the tool the ability to do individual ised filtering thanks to the fact that the peace server by virtue of how communication networks work knows the particular address of each user requesting information across the network i do think that the court's opinion and the intellectual ventures case really  does solve that problem takes care of the problem and talking about the customisation of of responses to inquiries the intellectual ventures case deals with that i judge mayors concurring opinion in the the ip case also addresses that but in connection with this particular issue here let's look at what's being added when you move the  of if then statements that are really exchangeable with one another for example what is the difference between an inclusive list and an exclusive list what is the difference between a master inclusive list and a master xclusive list if you have let's say there are three doors a b and c and a particular individual is to be denied access to sit you can write a retain that simply says that person gets into a and b or you can write a routine that says that person is excluded from c that's an inclusive list it's an explanation of list but what it really is is a very well known  often implemented well understood computer concept of how to define when a data gets retrieved in that sense it is very much like although less complicated than the database cases such  exclusive lists inclusive list maybe let's just put that aside for a second i keep wondering why this isn't like just looking at an overall communication network and the invention is locating a tool in a particular location over that overall communication network and then giving it some specific features and that those features are into individual ais filtering like let somebody comes up later with residing in invention where the filters are located on the faucet so now the filter is located between the fosset and the distal end of the garden hose right is that an abstract idea that not an inventive concert it's not an inventive concept in the context of this case and i'll tell you why this invention is not the idea to move filtering from the local computer to the highest peak server because this patent itself tells us that that is there that already exists that america online does so the benefit of where the control is that's more in the in the nature of a discovery if you think about the scientific principle case as it turns out if you do what america online did what everybody knows america online did it has an added advantage of allowing central administration that's true just as picking the computer up and moving it into a locked room and locking the door has the advantage of unhinging the security for that computer so why isn't your it is certainly true that each one of these cases stands on its own and the first thing that that we did i'm sure appellant did when trying to decide where this case is is it more like beauty or holdings or is it more like intellectual ventures for example so every case is certainly different but it is certainly also true that when deciding whether a patent or whether claims in the patent go to  requirements and criteria that don't exist when determining whether something is an inventive concept remember we never get to inventive concept unless we've already determine well there there i mean going back to where i started with your friend on the other side do you agree that the initial computerization with a general purpose computer of a concept could be nine pattern eligible but an improvement on that type of computer race computerization that is that is directed to the mechanisms of the computer itself or to that or to how the internet's use that that could be pat now it that presumably wouldn't be patent how much from right but you that sell product from a series of manufacturers and you use a one click to allow the purchase to occur now that's a totally different approach it's still plays on the original concept of selling product but it is but it improves the system the computerized system now why would stop things going down that road why wouldn't  knowledgeable i think some things could be i can't really comment on the actual example that the court has given but again you have to look at first you look at the concept and then you look at whether the implementation implementation of the concept or the implementation of the abstract idea supply is an inventive concept and what this court has held on increasingly on many occasions is that running these very kinds of software routines on a generalized computer is something that does not supply an inventive concept i guess that's really the question you know is this an idea that's being run on the internet work network or is this invention something about doing something to the internet or network in a specific way find stalling a tool in a specific location it's definitely the first it is  programming logic on an existing general purpose computer which is the highest piece or the logic that's being supplied is logic not only are we able from looking at the other cases of this co to ascertain that that logic is not inventive we know that logic is not inventive because the specification of this very pattern tells us well stop right there ye r holdings i mean one could say there's nothing more there inventive than programming logic code display visual elements from two different websites and create a hybrid web page really is different and while d v r holding certainly does involve programming logic it does not involve well known routines the way this has and to me the vivid example can look at the other opinions of this court one can look at the language in these claims and one can determine that in fact these are the same kinds of concepts that were found not to be inventive in those other cases for example in intellectual ventures but here tells us that content filtering on the local server is now on the pan he tells us the content filtering on the i ask piece server is now and then the patentee tells us that a person of ordinary still in the art would recognise that hybrid filtering schemes that combine a number of the schemes are now are possible so we have within the specifications pattern itself all of the tools we need to make that determination to me my reaction to your observations are maybe you've got a compelling case for section one of three that all of these individual elements were known in the art and mayberry maybe due to the nature of the problem to be solved because all those different known ways at their own individual disadvantages would lead one given the nature of communication with networks that a remote server knows who it's talking to would centralize the filter and create individual filters at that remote as piece server that's what has been claimed that particular reported combination of all of the elements as far as i know  been known nor did the judge below analyze that as an ordered combination but nevertheless that seems more like a question for obviousness rather than a question of overall pa we're not talking about obviousness in this case and that and it it is it's important to recognize that once we begin with an abstract idea you know your ordinary obviousness case doesn't necessarily begin with an abstract idea and it doesn't require an abstract idea in order to go to that it's only where we've already found that these claims are directed to an abstract idea that we look at the inventive concept and that creates a inquiry and i would submit to the court in some ways a less rigorous inquiry than the obviousness inquiry would be because you have to look at those claims where you've decided this goes to filtering content it goes to filtering internet content is there anything in this claim language either individually or as an ordered series of statements that removes this this patent these claims from the realm of an abstract idea our i don't think that you know just listening to my friend on the other side's argument i don't think you can really call that anything other than an obviousness challenge that's being made at the pleading stage and we really don't have any record at all if it no discovery of the case and as i said on a twelve b six challenge which is what this is all of those facts concerning obviousness should be construed in our favor and i think that presumption is especially strong here given that there's been actually a jury verdict in another case where a jury who did see the evidence found that each of these patents they were planning to assert in this case was valid over the prior art we're not even talking i think at this point about whether we're trying to cases like d d r holdings and look at what the what the elements of the claims were i mean they look pretty conventional to me i mean you're talking about the steps individually receiving a signal identify when retrieve ing data and generating and tr web page well that's all you know those are individual steps are conventional but the way that was put together was an improved way of using the network not the routine in conventional use of the work and that's the same thing here as judge chance you put pointed out this is a tool by moving filtering to the eyes of the server level and having particular features with that we were able to improve upon the functioning of the networking self and potential now really i think there is a hypothetical at the beginning and i sort of ran away from it but it was the question of if you had an abstract idea that could be initially computerized and maybe that's that poses section one of one problems could you have an improvement on that that wouldn't raise the same problems and i think that's exactly what the supreme court said and diamond be here in that case there was an equation that i think would probably qualify as an abstract idea and the question was what do the other elements of the claim add anything to that and the court said well you know i'm sure of that case if it was just to use it on a computer it would probably run into one to one problems but what the cour that what was being disclosed was an improved process in that case for moving rubber by solving a practical problem which had arisen in the molding of rubber products and because if you looked at the process as a whole it provided something that showed that where i think if you actually look at the claims at issue there was a specific technological solution to a specific technological problem and h p and he's going to have full opportunity to make arguments such as anticipation obviousness on infringement as the case goes and where the filtering occurs doesn't make a difference right and i'm and i'm glad you're my debate because i think that the hell he started his argument by saying that we're in agreement in agreement on step one as to what the abstract idea here we don't agree at all because the as the idea here was not just filtering content it was specifically how to address the problem that arose in this networking networking space which is yet many different users you want to have individualized content filtering but not performed on every remote and every particular client machine so i don't think we agree on that threshold step of all we're trying to do here is filtering content but to answer your question if we then have to look at the claims as ultra mercial in other cases say w actual claims we're not just saying move it to this particular location which i think was a novel step i think people weren't doing that at that time it's moving in there with those particular features that provide a novel combination that answers a problem in the prior art that problem which is talked about in columns one and two was that having this filtering done at the local flying machine level was causing all sorts of problems so why don't we not only move it to the i c c server level but then we have to be able to have the type of logic that would be able to service many different users and filter content in an individualized way and that was a novel solution at the time it's one that my client actually incorporated into its products and sold to customers and i think it's improper for the district court to see no factual record whatsoever essentially making obviousness determination to drop this patent i want to one and just so i understand the reason why this invention can work the way it does is because it somehow takes advantage of the inherent nature of communication networks such that a remote server knows who it's talking to when it's dealing with all these remote users i think that's one aspect of the invention but then it has to couple that that the fact that it can communicate with a