morning please the court i think that the path to the correct outcome of this case was pretty well paved last month by this court in the area and fish opinion what the court said there seems to me to apply that's ok i do want to hear what you have to say about anything like you we're not faced with a situation where general purpose computer components are added post hoc to a fundamental economic practice for mathematical equations rather the claims are directed to a specific implementation a solution to a problem in the software arts i don't know the court didn't have this case in mind when i wrote those words but i don't know that you could describe exactly what we have in this case more clearly than the  organizers bingle table rather than having to use a whole string of tables for each individual data type so i guess the concern i have about trying to make a connection and this year is that this claim as i understand it there's nothing it's not limited to something physical right as not it's a process quite it's a process claim but it's a process a claim that is broad enough on its face to be performed by an individual for you to make a statement in response to josh and about software is not listening to his question his question i think pretty clearly indicated that this may not be construed as a software claim and in fact maybe wasn't construed as a software claim by the district court below since it obviously according to the district court is capable of you can buy pen and paper and the inventor seemed to have admitted as much so tell me why i should even view this as a software claim where are the computer limitations in this claim well the claim itself just as direct as the district court said it's it's directed primarily to a computer and the testimony is under sputum that no human would follow the process that's outlined in this in this simplest one it's not like there's a simple form of this claim in a complex form is only one form of this claim it's the language the inventor chose to claim protection for right but in order to create what is the what is the true novelty in this particular claim which is the  assignment conditions whether there are two hundred pages of code i don't try to disagree with you that the specification contains in it a lot more detail and many references to computer code but the problem is the claim doesn't and this district court was not taxed with construing the patent or deciding whether there is any invention disclosed in the pattern that would have been eligible for patentability he's taxed with looking at don't claim that you actually filed for protection for and deciding whether that happens where he lives but i think you have to read the claim in the context of the specification and i'm not trying to limit the claim based on the specification i'm reading it as it as it states which is a series of steps that are clearly aimed at operating the computer because no human would follow those particular would follow these steps this is really that when you're talking about steps that can only be used on a computer the only way to read that is that this isn't exactly a software else statements you know if you just almost collapse me across the face of thinking klatsch automatically if a condition is met then you passed the input into becoming the op you know that's a definition of a latch you know it's like i don't know like when i'm watching t v a football game from and i see the defense lined up in a certain way the linebackers and the defensive backs in the safeties under certain position i think some synthesizer tool on a computer for carrying out the steps but right now as i understand it this claim was not construed that way you aren't challenging the lack of a construction for that in fact if if were just left with a claim that broadly covers on its face the performance of these steps either either internally in a person's mind or by an individual with pen and paper then is that the end of the case for you we're going to have a back up argument for why even if this clamor could be categorized as a mental process never the last this is a pattern eligible mental process right and the reason it is is because no human would perform this mental process maybe they could perform but no human would perform the testimony and that is absolutely unquestioned all the testimony says no human would go through these steps these are steps that only make sense if you're trying to get a computer and it's going to deal with a mental process that you're because computer can't think right so you have to set out exactly how to make the computer think you're going to have to go through that mental process and as i said before the genius in this was the assignment conditions that's the mechanism by which you can convert this you know human to computer language that a lot of the people who want new chips and what new manufacturing to create can then convert into a system  i mean i try to understand this is i mean conditions it didn't look like your briefing devoted much time to you know grinding us down to help us understand what these signs of conditions truly are but can you  about that but i have to say that you know if you look at the prior art there is nothing like the use of these conditions anywhere in the prior art so yes he said to me in the undertaking that it was very clear in his testimony about this he said look i've got to find a way to take what people try to do like human pen and pencil and explain it to a computer so that the computer can do these massive inputs and then convert them into the equally massive outputs of all our chips to become what they are today right and we went through that process very specifically in order to allow the computer going to better then further back to claim one though again this is pretty simple logic advice and latch and when i look at the simon conditions here and i'm trying to think what is nifty about characterizing the functional description in this alternative but equivalent functional description i'm trying to understand what was what was the twist here that made this such an interesting way of describing the functions because prior to this it was no way for the computer to figure out how to create a latch or to create a flip flop or to create and impedes they did there was just simply no way and those are fundamental elements in chip design and so until you could actually get the computer to look at those and and and you know claim one it's the latch but the obviously the other two are better than the other claims as well but until you can get the computer to actually implement that through the logical sequencing of a computer then you couldn't you  fundamental error here is sort of focusing on this as a quote mental process rather than going back to the kind of core notion of what alice is all about because what alice is all about is taking ordinary human endeavors and nobody knows alice better than i do i suppose i should say with some confidence and then just adding a computer to it and this is to my mind at least the polar opposite of that this is recognizing that in a very complicated technological field you need to devise a method of allowing that computer to process information and a unique way that no one else has ever seen and to do it in a way that allows you with an outcome that no one else could have ever anticipated i haven't looked at all the other patent claims that  your client has to do some of those claims recites this invention in the context of a computer you know loaded with this software tool carrying out and executing all these different but not enough not that as much as the specification it seems to me it's ok speaks in those terms again the district court recognized herself specifically that this is designed for a computer and the testimony as i say it is undisputed that no human would follow this conditions and then speak best to the prior art whether that was novel or not on the issue of whether the claims require a computer we submit synopsis waive that point we submitted twenty nine pages of expert declaration these named inventors we also conceded that as an benson the in the commercial world of one is making an actual integrated circuit you're not going to do that on the whiteboard you're going to use computer software in fact both of our clients depend on that for their livelihoods so i was it possible that one of ordinary skill we are reading these claims would look at these steps and think this would only be performed in the context of a software the claim construction is that two three seven five synopsis took the position that the preamble is not limiting and for every claim turn that was construed they did not in nor did we read in anything tangible do not seek anything tangible again in our summary judgment we identified one fact as being material namely that the person of skill could do this mentally that is undisputed in fact when the judge asked counsel for synopsis after the summary judgment hearing what about mentors point that these claims do not require a computer she responded that they do not require a computer twenty eighty they agreed no computer in their brief in the summary judgement ob just curious you know this is a sixty five compact and when you read it it feels like there's something technical going on is it your view that what has happened here is that there is perhaps something patton eligible going on with with what mr gregory invented but it just didn't come through and get fully realized in the claims i think not i think i got another way of putting it is if these claims are no good how could these claims be redrafted so that they would be passing when online it is conceivable that had one written the specifications differently and the claims differently one could have gotten to the point of an end fish type claim work d d r holding claim where you indeed had a better computer where you had an invention that made the computer operate in a better way this however is quite fluke or benson it is a general matter computers operation and made the computer process better or as an end fish the fish claimed configuring it was in the claim computer memory so it was a better computer memory one way of distinguishing is when you ran the process and  you ran that process and you put the self referential table and you stood back you now had a better computer for the next application you ran whether it was browsing or anything else you had a better computer you know how to computer they could store faster it could be more efficient when you run this is no different than running calculating equals mc squared it could be it could be i guess but what if one could say that the synthesis tool you know has if it's claimed in it's carrying around the steps when you have now is a way of drafting h t m l that doesn't require you to expressly describe the the logic device you can just stick with  the signals will lead to answers that one is the next with respect as to the point that it relates or a technology that was true invention to the whole point invented was you were converting from binary data small to binary the court said the primary purpose of this is for using computers however the court said one could do it by hand and therefore it was a mental process as well as very very summer but you know if you take benson to it's potential logical extension one interpretation of events and then what you're really saying is almost any kind of coding is a mental process and therefore any kind of software is a mental process and therefore all software loaded on a computer and eligible i mean there has to be a breaking point somewhere even in your position and fish and d d r holdings are perfectly consistent with that sort of distinction is that invents isn't there was a value in a thought process that value existed whether or not it was run on the computer yes it was well suited and intended for running on a computer but running that process in the computer didn't improve the computer and fish running that process configuring the memory to be a self referential tail that's a better computer d d r was a better web server those are the distinctions sleuth clearly was a technical environment trying to catalytic conversion updating alarm limits the court said that's intended to be run on a computer of course you're not going to have people buy handfuls of the explode the conversion process to blow up while you're doing your math can't you seem to be thinking that only software that improves the quality of the operation of the computer vision or transformation test was sort of like a pro met in a virtual way where you had virtual it was it was a cat scan type of thing and you displayed there all sorts of instances that's what i'm wondering are you living into a computer for say a cat scan or i don't know any basically any kind of machine if the operation of that machine is significantly improved by virtue of a software program with that fall into the end fish  r category according to you or is it literally only improving the operation of a computer in particular improving operation any other machine would be around to know it would be the former such as dear was an improvement of another machine and it really goes to whether is a functional relationship as a claim the name of the game of the claim so one s to look at the claim this is a claim that is purely intangible and again that was undisputed and i'm not aware of any supreme court or i guess what i'm trying to explore with you is is something that was truly a computerized version of this perhaps with potentially changed character of the claim so that one could see and therefore argue that your honor at all or clients patents are patent of course they are buying them but in a bit the distinction again is too focused there's two points about this one is the claim and it was waived and it was undisputed that this can be done mental process again we put in the expert declaration thought process nothing a point on that and get to the second part is even in the blue brief synopsis quoted with approval of the district court's reference to this claim as being directed to a thought clearly and unequivocally limited to performing these steps on a computer would it have militia i don't know if it would depend if there was record evidence to show that somehow that either created an improved data structure it had some physical improvement if they claim downstream steps that lead to place and route of circuits etc it would all depend but it is conceivable certainly we have a lot of  claim with computer limitations and not by digital downstream stats not moving away from anything other than the steps of this claim but suppose at the end of every single step it said performed on a computer that no that would not be pat eligible and if i may respond to that and also the judge chancellor question about assign a condition by inviting the court to read brief page nine which has the example in so i can explain the what this thought process is and why bullion logic equation the judge and reference and basically it deals with three variables q deef and content all it says is that q is given the value of d if and only if is true so q is given a value if the condition concept is true for the table not mine simply a different way of thinking about that and that's what assignment conditions are to different way of thinking of that equation and specifically what the assignment conditions are record there is no evidence that someone else previously had thought of logic equations using assignment conditions in response your question so we did not argue this was an old idea but all this is the think about it look at the equations that when and what value when it is q given a new value and what is that new value and then the math of the thought process applies a rule that tells people people who don't recognize the latch when they see it that if those two values  now knows automatically generate of lifting up my action on that list i would say that's correct but missing one element the computer understands it only because it's programmed with the rule will have a set of rules and it will say if your sign conditions are both non constant have a latch if this other thing is constant you output a wire so if you tell you simply tell the computer what to do now computers could have gotten lot of space with all these different formulas is advantageously very similar events in benson people knew how to convert from binary decimal of binary they looked it up in a table but and the computer could have been loaded with that table so  peter could have done it in a quick way but it would have taken up more space so in benson they took a one step manual process and they turned it in the seven steps well suited for a computer computer knows how to move zeros and ones and shift register so now the computer c emulate what humans could already do that's exactly this case a computer could now emulate what experts are skilled artist sims could already do the you're basically again why side there's an improvement of the way computers work which is a subset of d or proven to the way a machine works on the other side it's simply a thought process which is conceded in the middle in this case a thought process that is well suited for use on a of mental process there is no tangible element and also that they did not appeal the finding that the machine or transformation test was fail to or they did not appeal that given those concessions we asked the court to affirm judgment  three minutes if your are appreciated first of all it seems to me that the the notion that this could be done by hand doesn't tell you anything about the nature of this particular invention just shannon i think i think you actually nailed it right on the head when you said the computer can't read table eight computer can read table nine that is conversion into that table mind that is the invention that was the basis for this it works on a computer it only works on a computer no human would go through that operation and and and my friend i did concede there was no prior ability to do this there is no prior art in this regard and it seems to me what he said about benson is exactly the distinction that the court jester draw here in benson everybody knew how to convert from by mary to other numbers right everybody knew how to do that and then you just add a computer in order to make it happen castor that was not the purpose of this exercise the purpose of this exercise that i did in the long run it clearly will make the computers work better just as it does every other but but entish and alice both say you can do that subject matter eligibility is if it improves the computer  improves the field of technology and the field of technology here is electronic design automation or synthesis issue as you quite rightly identify it that's the technology and this is an extraordinary advance on that technology and it falls squarely into what the court said that in alice and i think what in fish said this kind of software has to be protected under these circumstances and if you're going to go back to the core principles and just look at what you know what is it that section one of the old one is designed to prevent it's designed to prevent preemption of broad concepts and whatever else you could say about this this is a very specific precise way of dealing with a problem on a computer in a technology that will have virtually zero preemptive effect and none beyond the preemptive effect you whatever the otherwise get in any case where you get a patent because the monopoly obviously allows that much preemption that's all we're asking for in this case and for that reason the judgment should be