morning you know please of course j not on behalf of american axle appellant we're here today to discuss the district court decision finding claims directed to a method of manufacturing prop shaft with liners to that determines the frequency of an object the claims in this case as construed by the court require liners that are specifically designed to not only match but to damp multiple different types of vibration and the claims require that those liners damped those different modes in different ways prior to the inventions problem is it really doesn't tell you have it right it  do tuning but it doesn't have it well both the claims on the spec talk about controlling the characteristics of the liner and that the specification tells you here's what you control and you control the diameter of the line or the thickness of it where you place the line or location is important and it tells you to tune the liner within about twenty percent or more of the prop shaft mollett it also tells you how they're looking at this has to not only mask but it has to damp these different vibrations and those skilled in the art know what bending modes are and show modes are and they know that when you put a damper in and you can tell if that damper actually reduces vibration at those modes and that's exactly what happened in this case yep though prior to this invention was not using tune liners at all and they studied the nine eleven pattern and they were able to come up with two liners from exactly that disclosure so i do think that the pattern teaches one of skill in the art how to make a tune line or to not only match the relevant frequency but also damped of different all claimed twenty two as i limitations on the type of liner that could even be used in this process that's correct your honor in addition to that that it teaches exactly how the liner is going to damp those different modes and most skilled understand that to damp bendy mold you need to have a reactive damper that's going to oscillate in opposition to that new ended up with a very broad claim construction here from the lower court and in particular i'm talking about the tuning limitation you had a very broad name construction and you might be up against problems on one of the two one of the three or one twelve with that problem like what a skilled artist and what i understand or mabel meant how is it that though turns into a one one issue in this well i think and that was one of the critical issues i want to talk about with the court today the district court completely eliminated the wear and clause from claim twenty two and didn't talk about any of the limitations in claim one that does not include where in cause it specifically talks about these different stops of damp in the different modes and how it's accomplished so if you just look at claim two after the court removed the wear and clause which requires  said i'm not going to give the wear and card any any weight and therefore all that was left was this broad tuning term so we think that's inappropriate those claim terms were construed that the court gave those terms meaning to not reactive absorber requires be used by virtue of the wearing clause that therefore otherwise narrows the tune cause of the wearing cause not being there tuning could be very very very broad i agree or not it's exactly right and i think that's where the district court went wrong here and you know we're in it i mean when you look at the specification that it says you have all these variables in your expert said you know basically do it by trial and error if you change this variable change that variable change the other variable and that doesn't tell you how to change the variable right two quick responses your honor i think the patent does disclose that it tells you how to tune  the line or to a certain percentage it tells you which variables to change and there's not that many tells you where to place the line or depending on where the bending mode is the issue in the argument that me outgo has made is that there's not a specific none of that is new i mean there were liners there all the war changes to the liners to make them damp and right that was not one of the liners have never been used to dampen the mold which requires that they be tuned to have a certain frequency and  bending mode by oscillating in opposition to them prior to this invention people would shove cardboard into the prop shaft to try to keep the shell mode from to damp the shell mode vibrations but nobody had ever tuned a liner to have it specifically damp and bending maul it or be able to damp multiple different modes these props shafts each project is different they're different lengths they're different that's so they have bending mode vibrations of different frequencies you can't say  one specific liner and it will fit for every prop shaft but what is was easy to do is easy for napco to do was to take this disclosure and say here's the prop shaft we know the bending mode frequency is a three hundred hertz i'm going to build a liner that the amps beni motor three hundred hertz with the specific characteristics i'm going to put it in the location so it will be amp that benny mode and so the claims do require that the claims as construed require controlling characteristics so what has that properties has those properties you substitute control character control the characteristics you're saying controlling the characteristics so that dual damping result follows why is that different from the kind of result only no means specified claim that has been troubling for one hundred fifty ger to one quick point claim won and has the tuning requirement was construed to be controlling the characteristics to configure the line or to match relevant frequency to reduce three types of vibrations it is a little bit different than the claim twenty two construction but says do something with material to produce either of two different or both of two results one to soak up a kind of frequency and the other is to counteract that like noise cancelling headphones it tells you which has become a one a one line even if it was originally a one a one line between saying i want something that has a certain property and i claim anything that has that property and on the which is a bad kind of claim and a claim that says here is something about how i get that power why is this the right side of that match with the frequency but is also going to damp those different modes and in order to do that you have to build a specific liner to accomplish that so it's not a broad concept of you know any sign or some of the older cases th talk about the general concept this is a claim more like cells director x or gen where even if you assume that hoax law has some application to the claims the claims have a method of producing a  it results in a new and different result that has been achieved and uses characteristics other than mass and stiffness which are the only factors and votes to decide how to make that work for example location right correct  all that in a string so i don't want to get lost in this discussion which is this this could very well employ hoax law but it also employs other characteristics in the choice of liner and location within the system to operate properly none of which are months this is great this one works best because we've got the right thickness we have the right diameter and we picked the right characteristics that are disclosed in this have those characteristics turman by trial and error use of a computer program what is the record tell us about the record tells us th and didn't get the results that they wanted they looked at the patent they changed the characteristics to get the exact physical characteristics that they needed to damp the relevant modes and the claims to talk about that in the books law does not inform all those other elements like line or shape and mold location of the liner fitness interference fit things like that so with that unless there's other questions now i like to reserve a little time for  morning may please the court tennis have dinner on behalf of apple e the ethical parties i want to start to pick up where you left off this is a claim to a goal the result and that is in it's  fined in the spec background of the invention which is the idea of tuning a line or to dampen two different modes of vibration the wearing clause is what american  experts pointed to as the inventive concept in other words tuning to two different vibrational but that as the district court correctly recognized that is simply the result that is what happens once the methodology is fully performed  achieved and so when you do look at the methodology what you're left with is taking a line or taking a prop shaft and putting the liner inside the prop shaft and above that you have the direction to tune it an ng has receded in the claimed is the idea of changing mass an object mass or it stiffness in order to alter its its frequency that is nothing more than a hoax law with the with the direction to apply matters since the specification throughout the location matters well well positioning without any other information about how you do and it simply says well just shooting a line when you know all the criteria matters right i mean you know your mass matter your height matters your with matters you know everything matters that mean this is it this result is achieved not just by varying two variables which happen to appear in a particular formula result is achieved by specifically limiting a lot of different characteristics but in those characteristics may have been recited in the specification there are a lot of them and in the claim the characteristics are not present in the claims other than mass and stiffness the at least one line you claim one that's not a location limitation it's a method it doesn't tell you where inside the prop shaft to place it simply says position it with inside and the two and i personally think it provides physical limitations for the claim and don't think it can be disregarded but if you know yeah i take out that wearing clothes and claim twenty two currently it is a heck of a lot broader and you've got it much easier gates well in respectfully the question of of how broad the wearing clause is i think the district court was correct in saying it is nothing more than the result and if you look at claim eight of the patent i think i think this is characterizes how broad the warin clause is claim at eight i'm sorry column eight of the patent that's a thirty three at about winds twenty four tuning this is this is the discussion of how you tune and it's as uncertain in certain situations it may not be possible to exactly tune the liner to two or more relevant frequencies next sentence it says as such it will be understood that a liner will be considered to be tuned to a relevant frequency if it is effective in attenuating vibration  relevant frequency down below around line forty four as another example the liner can be considered to be tuned to a relevant shell mode frequency if it damps show mode vibration by an amount that is greater than or equal him about two percent and so the tuning is defined effectively as how is the result that you're hoping to achieve that's that's the goal judge more that as it does that  positioning is part of what it means to you to be at the at the top of column eight of the patent to get it a thirty three it does refer to the location of the miners within the shaft member and that entire paragraph within the patent is a discussion of what it is to tune it's not a discussion of what the positioning limitation the claims of so so location the liner is is something that is within this concept of tuning  sense it is it does go back to trial and error may but it also may not you can tune a line or in this case to achieve the result of the claim simply by relocating it can't you well i respectfully disagree because the claim construction is change a characteristic of that of the liner you start with a you start with a line or the claim say to annette and then you would then you have a result within the claim so you have the goal you know what you're trying to achieve but you don't know how to do it and if you take any number of these different characteristics there's nearly a dozen of them what you have is trial and error and the only two of those characteristics of which there's nearly a dozen are mass and stiffness that are included within hoax law see my problem with this ree or one twelve my problem with this is that the district court put all his eggs in the hoax law basket books law only involves two variables there's a lot more in these claims in those two variables which control the ability to have it perform consistent with the result part of the claim that you articulate in the wearing clause or in claim one is in maybe the last element so there's more than just mass and stiffness there's more than just looks a lot at stake here so i'm not positive this kind of claim for me with all these other criteria fits neatly into the one zero one box this feels more like the inverse is dear to me the use of a formal as one component in a manufacturing process right and you're out of your question the record shows that these other characteristics and put positioning to the side of these other characteristics go to mass and stiffness it goes a hoax law would be even if that i'm not here even if you use all these different variables it doesn't really tell you how to use the variables or and that's the problem of it it's just it's it's a patent on a result rather than  a description of a method of how to do it that's exactly right and so the result is in the bratz in which the result is claimed is of any effective vibration and show mode and if and i say that is exactly right just to be clear to take articulated a completely different rationale for getting to the same result than to judge stark and he started by saying the beginning of his question was i'm not sure judge stark got this right into your answer was that's exactly right judge to take i just want to point that out to you for the record you're going to understand if i cut and paste portions of this oral argument his question began just start didn't get it right when you said that's exactly right because that's so then i'm you know i want to give you a chance to rehabilitate yourself so that i don't do that because it's and i don't want you to do that to me so i think what you're trying to stake your articulation is a second half of just starts opinion where he goes through electric power and he says and he looks at the where clause and he says truly this claim is to a result  we're here and we're defending judge starks opinion on the front end as well when you look at the methodology it does not tell you how to get to the result of this truly is with an electric power it's like claimed eight in the morse case and you have a result that is broadly stated and you have a direction to tune it at an abstract high level of generality and without anything more other then because this conventional methodology of taking a line or taking a prop shaft and inserting the liner into the prop shaft which background of the pad and specifications it's masson stiffness of the liner both go to manufacture of the liner during the on page one six ny the appendix and you agree with that your read brief that tuning can be achieved through through any of those modifications and the responses that truly illustrates how broad these claims are if it could be the design have agreed in your brief that tuning can be achieved through installation which has nothing to do with an impact or alteration of mass or stiffness of the liner which means it's only positioning i don't see how a claim that is a manufacturing claim which can be achieved through a variable not included in the hoax law equation boils down to an application of books law and again i think that the methodology there is is it conventional what was done tuning can be achieved simply through positioning which has nothing to do with folks so it's kind of hard for me to reconcile well again we go back to the idea that tuning is show broad that you don't know how to achieve the result so what it boils down to is is that relation more variables there are the more difficult it is to know how to do it the more volumes that's needed and there's no as to the use of all these variables other than just use a lot of variables and figure it out those that kill a lot like  preempt it is so broad like claiming just the result in saying to me in the liner it preempts the use front of any automotive engineer from taking a liner and doing any sort of trial and error analysis or any or even accidentally taking a liner and putting it inside a prop shaft because if i chance by happenstance it reduces vibration more than one mode american axle's claims would say we're covered we have the whole solution and it does not matter how you get there whether or not you position it correctly whether or not you whether or not you change characteristics a b or c the mass or the stiffness you're still getting to a result which is abstract in and of itself it's not sufficient to say that some application of books law work complicated that but it seems to me perhaps no less abstract it you know it gives you love it doesn't tell you even if it doesn't the claims themselves don't even provide you with a list of hurdles and or a lot of different variables is done by trial and error and all the points are telling you it is to get here's a desirable result and use trial and error to get the well i think the patent don't talk about the different characteristics you control the claims talk about not only specific locations you put at answering no it's for specific modes the dependent kinds also include that they have to be directed to psych and bending mode or the second show mode there are a lot of specific elements in the flames as well that this whole intersection so i understand some some of the procedure and if we go over it i will and for my presiding judge to give you extra time but was there an agreement as representative claims in this case there was no agreement your honor in fact the court ordered specific briefing for both claim one and claim twenty two and so there was definitely no beyond claim want to claim twenty two you don't feel like even if i blue brief separate argument about features of the of the dependent clients when we certainly talked about the location of the liner notes in our briefs and talked about at length we talked about that just because you have of whiners frequency that matches   provide even more detail of it let me ask you a question if you don't mind that this case has at all times been about natural law has it not yes your honor and no point did the district court suggest this was an abstract idea that's correct if we were suddenly going to in the different arguments with regard to the claims here in front of us and the pending claims that you would really like an opportunity below to be able to express should judge take want to change the entire rationale for the decision yes you're on it can i just ask you can you address yourself to page forty six zero four of the appendix in which nico says he asserted claims attempt to claim the abstract idea of a solution to the problem in general as opposed to a particular solution which i think is  this an abstract idea case but i'm not sure whether there's a substantive difference between what he said results versus means  and what was said here which appears to be an assertion of the abstract idea category though admittedly this is in the second part of the analysis right and instead of through i mean clearly the briefs and their this something that started featuring more this idea about this is result all i respectfully don't we've ever argued that this is an abstract idea relating to matching this isn't the second step of the what kinds of arguments you might make if the theory of analysis were starting with lower oil and o'reilly and children then through about ten cases now here that one might summarize as using the electric power that this is results only and you haven't specified the means right and we still believe the claims are patentable but obviously that issue hasn't talking about the idea of let's just talk about the mid one nine hundred century supreme court cases if you want there are now about a dozen cases in this court that focus on results versus you know a lot of different time to have i mean one thousand century cases are in physical product cases right and i believe this case is more like the are some of the rock than oxygen where they've said even if the claims you some kind of abstract idea or natural law they're using that as part of a method and stops to actually everything every everything in that nothing of cases turns on whether there is some allegedly new and different in advance that is a concrete way of doing something and at least what i'm asking and listening for and that and focused on throughout this is there something like that here or is it only make and place a line or so that to damping effect occur you figure out half that seems to me kind of the question that where we're struggling with well this specific solution in this case are whiners that are disclosed in the past and they just told you that how you  make the liner so there is a specific solution it's not just you put something in the project and you get a result you have to actually design the weiners with these different characteristics and to be clear governor defendant claims actually explain a lot of that in what's he claimed thirteen one that says that material has to be selected from certain types of carbon fiber there are i mean it just seems to me that you have a lot of deep i don't planes that are great degree of specificity to characteristics of the physical characteristics of the liner in the system is that fair that is correct your honor and i think it's different in some way i get it did you assert that any of that was something other than in the prayer all of that stuff well i think all of those things in the context of these is different than the prior because liners have never been able never been tuned to dampen the mode vibrations before the emperors couldn't dance multiple different vibrations before in the prior art they would have to use different dampers to the to use for a bending motor in a different