place we have for you cases this morning the first of these is number fifteen there's thirteen seventy two t l i communications versus a v automotive mr a communication system that requires a telephone having an integrated image with the device and a component for allocating classification information to those digital images where you view client doesn't claim to have a li images and having a way to classified information to those i mean a digital camera attached to a phone or qualify as an integrated  you start talking about the telephone and the telephone features it sounds to me like you're saying you and get to the telephone care but i don't see anywhere in this patent that's if you get it if you're trying to say did i don't see how would remotely be enable weight it works in combination i don't think that it could i'm not sure that it's considered to be really her it's a system that includes all of these elements that work together along with the server on the back so the server isn't every independent claims well so you need a phone the communication with the server in such a way i know but i mean this is i struggle with this here because you have all it's very hard for me when you read your claims with all these very concrete tangible things to say that it it's directed to an abstract idea except for the way that alice has told us to look at it in a way we've looked at in other cases which is to look for is at the heart of this an abstract idea and is there anything that  the first is that alice does say and step two is there technology improvement is this a technical and if so what's the improvement of there's there's at least a few here the first was discussed during the original prosecution when prior came up with a digital camera and the patent he was explaining back then in one thousand nine hundred six that memory was very expensive and very limited even the digital cameras at the time could only take a couple images and that was a problem that  with was discussed during the original prosecution back and forth between the examiner and it actually distinguish that reference which was a digital camera so what else was invented another inventive stuff is if we look at depending claims ten and eleven this goes bring the  so it's not just an ordinary server back in one thousand nine hundred six transmissions were very slow and very costly so actually transmitting a digital image from a phone would take time and cost money claims ten eleven describe a system where the server receives these images analyzes the images and says ok you just sent one that's just very big it took a long time because a lot of money the server communicate back to the telephone and says p the an image of the lesser resolution so that we can save time and an expense and again that was not a conventional feature there's forget what else was there it's it where does it say in images of high quality it's a large image so the server in ten figures out the quality the size of the image in a lot of and the servers ok there's a control unit i can control the resolution digital images in the telephone so the servers communicating back to the telephone saying to send me a lower quality or a higher quality image you can actually increase the size of the image at the time and that work those were doctored actual features through the to keep that and say these your images are from the beach or something like that it's typed on the recording device which is the phone and then transmitted to the server the classification information class creation information on the recording device itself also do we have anything else for those the three things i think those are the three most important things to mr you're not saying that the camera was an inventive concept it the camera itself is not an event a concept a combination in th claim using the camera on the telephone along with class cation information what was new about using the camera with the phone it was the the ability to now offload images didn't say well that the camera phone was something that was inventive the qualifier that the second step about why i think that just incorporating a camera into a telephone itself would have meant that the telephone could only take a couple images before the memory was filled out that really wouldn't have been at the time a file device it wasn't it wasn't this invention so the idea of transmitting these digital images wirelessly through the cell phone service or whatever is part of your claim but that's part of the communication aspect of part of the communications aspect it's if you're not claiming the wireless network obviously not not at all it really the claims are primarily directed to the improved telephone telephone it was known to have to take a memory card from a camera take the memory core plug it into a computer and then that would then i thought it was on the speed of there was it was known to transmit images from a camera to  to an offsite server i don't think it was well known or generic and there's a citation to that if it is lacking at the moment it doesn't come t that the device and you're not claiming the server i i don't honestly don't know the answer to that because the invention is much more than that that is definitely one aspect of the claim claims are very detail that's one aspect and i think it's one conventional feature of the claims among others could we turn to the indefiniteness issue i'm not see so here i think it is reported here was asked the court found that the phones keypad was not linked to the means for allocating classification information but if we look at column six line forty five a special occasion states with reference to an alternative embodied that quote in terms of the function the allocation beans may be integrated into the keypad for example by using a key combination so when the  allocation keep according expert to our decoration thoughts and it's again if i'm at a computer and i'm operating and work i'm typing in letters my letters appear in the word doc and if i switch to a different boat for example say three or maybe four things that they thought were inventive invention here is directed to a classification system for photos the i suppose that idea is the idea of classifying photos on the server that classification is selected by people not by the computer itself as the claims seventeen makes clear notably the claims aren't limited to any particular means of classification any particular algorithm for classification they publish any possible classification scheme date order taken subject matter tags and i can carry redirection a little bit i don't i don't find the classification stuff particularly eligible but it does seem to me that if it's the idea you have camera and because it can't store a lot of stuff and you can't write to your computer in between you know strike two or three pictures the notion of being able to wirelessly transmit them without plugging it in if you were the first person to think of it may have been patton eligible i think your honor i think that might well be true we didn't we don't need to worry about it here because it's absolutely clear that that is not the intention well so it's clear from column one of the patent in the background section of the invention where the where the patent he tells us so called cellular telephones maybe used for image transmission as is known for example from u s patent one hundred nineteen titled method and system for enhanced data transmission in a cell to cell uber telephone system digital image cameras immediately before the that they say are are already known in the prior art the invention here is not the idea of transmitting photos over is the images or being transmitted to somewhere in the background section of the invention we know you can transmit images from a cellular phone we know that digital image cameras are already available video conferencing systems are used to transmit spoken data television camera and a telephone which provides for audiotape and image data to be transmitted in common through a telephone line are known compression is known so the only thing that is not specifically listed there is a server now i can imagine again that a patent he might have invented a specific server design or optimized to achieve this but this server is not that sort of  to the contrary t l i before the p tab proposed and got adopted a definition of server in this claim as quote a computer or system of computers that makes resources available to other computers unquote that is an utterly generic server and the server functions defined in claim seventeen are precisely the functions that any server performs trance were receiving data were extracted what you're saying is that it was known to the store digital images on servers yes you are and i think that i think this court has has twice made clear that these perform functions of a server or well known and not sufficient to overcome out categorical data storage the idea of collecting information in classified form then separating and transmitting that information according to its classification is an abstract idea that is not patentable so let me ask you that the alice step t alice mayo requires that we look to see if there's an inventive concept correct and in the deer case the court said that novelty is not relevant in determining whether subject matter is patentable under one hundred one what what is the line between in other words that seems to say that you can have an event of concept for purposes of our want to one analysis without having something that is necessary not hand to support it or non obvious where outlast the line it's an excellent question and i think part of the problem is that the supreme court's cases since dear have moved in a somewhat different direction as this court said which there was actually a new physical hardware element attached here when you go back and read dear i think one can be reasonably question whether that's actually true but it is certainly how the supreme court seems to view here today and it's how this court says we need to read the earlier saying if you what you would be saying is you're saying where the law is now is based on the supreme court post dear and our court is that if something that is in the be what you're dealing with anticipation obviousness you may be dealing with a single reference or two references were the theory of alice's that something was well known well known concept which isn't shown by finding a single rifle i so i think that's a fair i think that's a fair amendment your honor i guess i would also say that there may be circumstances in which a particular combination of well known technology image cameras are currently available on the market as known for example from the publication of particular discussion of a camera and again on column six lines one into the digital image pick up unit which is what they are claiming they have in please put into the telephone operates as a digital photo camera of the type which is know now that's not just as we only have a telephone with a camera to well your honor we have an arrangement with a television camera and a telephone which provides for audio data an image data to be transmitted in common through a telephone line is known as the patent again this is column one lines thirty five to forty two and they cite a patent a five eight seven patent intitled transmission system for still picture t v telephone now i think what's notable here is the patent doesn't claim that it is inventing a camera phone when you begin with the summary of the invention with the patent says it is the present invention addresses the problem of communicating it admi digital images by providing for reporting administration and archiving of digital images simply fast and in such a way that the information therefore may be easily tracked the camera phone police court has to have does seem to be an important part of the way the the alleged invention we invented a classification system they forthrightly say on page seven of their brief we didn't invent a camera phone camera phones were invented until two thousand they had their own inventors declaration says well i came up with this idea and then after i came up with this idea siemens launched on a project to try to develop a camera phone none of that suggests that he invented the camera phone and i think even if they were to try to make that argument now it was waved in the district court where they took exactly the opposite tack and even today  i don't i did not understand learned counsel to be saying that they invented a camera phone yet when it comes back to alice i think the but i asked you this if the camera would if the camera phone is an important part of the operation of the system and it wasn't in the prior art at the time would it be even if they're not claiming it an inventive concept well the camera phone itself i think would not be the inventive concept under alice for the simple to the patent specifically talked about telephone unit being operated via a telephone line or may alternatively be operated wirelessly as a mobile telephone so anything anything that communicates information thought they were him and they describe those as all elements in the background prior art what the inventor thought they were inventing was a classification system but that classification system has claimed isn't a specific new algorithm a specific new way of classifying images  any classification whatsoever it can make tell you what troubles me about this case because i think i get your argument it seems to me you're asking us to take alice and cases one stuff by that i mean a lot of those cases are you have some kind of abstract idea or a business method and you say do it on a computer and we routinely found those to be one hundred one ineligible and so you have that in part here but then you're adding in a photo and that seems to make it different and what worries me is that if a phone can be added in and still make it an eligible can and harvey at can all kinds of very tangible products and then how do we divide what's a system which we have to look at as a whole from an abstract idea i understood i think this is a significant problem this court confronts your honor but i honestly do not think it is a problem in this case  because the technology here is in fact expressly designed to be generic it is expressly listed as identified in the prior art as stuff we already knew and because there is no discussion whatsoever in the pattern of how one worked when we design thought that this was a new idea we put a camera into a phone no one's ever done this before where's the technology that shows us how it's possible which we've never done before no discussion of that in the past so i believe your honor that it is it will be at some to a pattern that required a generic computer plus a scanner separate physical hardware technology that were integrated together nonetheless the court said those scanner was well known the computer was well known that's not anything i'd like to court i came up for the first time it whirl argument in the district court the district court nonetheless considered the issue but it was not raised for a brief but in any event i don't think you need to worry about claims ten and eleven it is true that they say things about controlling the image analysis unit for determining quality of control unit for controlling resolution but that's all they say and he allies own expert and made it that these things were in the prior art he li expert on eight twenty five zero nine to ten admits that quote imagery analyzers in the image processing were terms and devices well known to a person of ordinary skill in the art similarly on eight twenty five zero five to zero six it was well known in the art to compress to encrypt scale to digital contact so the idea that somehow these claims have fitted in responding to memory limitations things that are otherwise not mentioned in the claims i think it's belied by t allies an expert who says all that's well know  finally i would note that claims ten and eleven are dependent on a claim when the server claims so they are subject to the indefiniteness analysis even where this court not to to find them invalid under alice they still run into the same a lot of cases have said that we've said the generic scanner doesn't render pat pat knowledgeable why should the same thing be true of a generic phone or a generic digital camera because here it i not a generic phone so in cyber phone and cooperate let's assume we conclude that it is then i think you may be correct there but we strenuously disagree with that because it's the issue isn't whether we invented the camera phone here really the issue is whether the camera phone was conventional there is not a single reference anywhere in the record that a camera phone existed or was conventional in one thousand nine hundred six every reference in the background of the  itself talks about telephones i could transmit data of the new conferencing systems but those are not camera phones there's no reference to a camera phone it was not conventional it was not theirs if there is absolutely no citation anywhere that such a thing is conventional and in fact in the cyber phone case there's a mention and i think the appellant there try to argue but our phone is not conventional it has these data up caning parameters and things that make it not conventional and this court mentioned that's not claimed the elements of the phone claim that cyber phone was just a traditional telephone but that's not what's happening here the telephone is far from conventional