thank you just this is grant people for petitioner i'll be using about six minutes of my opening comments from and try to reserve three or four more hopefully it doesn't take all that time it's a pleasure to be able to have argument this case  admitted made a difference if we'd had argument hopefully at the district court level we weren't afforded that opportunity was ruled from early on the papers before this lawsuit began my client was buying databases from the patent office the exact same one we're seeking to get access to now the database is a mountain of database and that's really the analogy i like to use this amount would be let me ask me ask you before we get to the mountains when your client was buying these databases the day exist in the in the in the patent office now was the patent office that compiled the database correct correct and then under the freedom of information act you asked for the database no this was before the freedom to buy but however you got it existed correct the department had already compiled the database and we want that it what we're seeking here is exactly what we were buying before we say so you bought it from the patent office before correct when when did it stop when could you when did it stop did you stop being able to purchase it from us well to this day we could still buy a database but not the same one but up with your question one question i'm focusing on and i think the same when judge what was asking maybe i'm wrong is there existed a database in the patent office at at various at some point in time and you were able to acquire that correct at some subsequent point in time the patent office stopped creating that database  believe there is one because that's not that i think even respondents admit in this case that they're not asserting any sort of privacy defense but that was the reason in the beginning we weren't able to get the information as what we were told so then a lawyer who thought he  license or how to get here i mean how do people how do people find out who patent holders are well in the old days before the privacy rules came into place i thought you could just look on the  on the databases nowadays you can't find out who you are unless you already have a patent number or some other object but the question i'm focusing on for you and i just want to make sure because we're doing here with the freedom of information act request which is i read the statute entitle you to get documents from the agency correct an electronic document and like you do you can get documents in in the us in electronic form or in paper form correct the agency doesn't have this document anymore used to create this document and it used to be there for you to obtain but it doesn't have the document you want anymore it doesn't make it that's not the facts of this case but sure there's no sure it is are you telling me that the agency has the very document you want want you know and then they're there guy goes this computer says given this this this this and this charging so much send it off precisely we're saying the same so the database of all this information existed then and now today that we're seeking you know what we deal with in the freedom of information act and this is the one of my difficulties with the case is to make records available for inspection so what record do you want to be made available for inspection the same one that they were selling us before but they don't have that anymore yes don't have it just so we're clear now they have the information they don't have the documentary fine ok fair enough so that one of them and i'm not trying to attack you i'm trying to find out so your position is that the act requires them to compile information for you rather than simply produce records it's already compiled and the best they have to give it to us but it's not compiled in the form you want that's true so they have in there in their various computers information from which they can compile what you see and it is made available if i may just have a moment that we were talking about this being a mountain of data and when i have that mountain of data i can look at the mountain i can see the ridges in the crevices and the rock formations and where the rocks certain types not but if i may if i mean the police because i need to in your position is that they are required to produce that data for you rather than a record and if i end if you give me just one rock from the mountain at a time that i have to go through a website and answer how many hairs a spider man have is a security question to get in and if you only give me one rock of the mount at a time that's not the same as having the amount of the data the apps absent i accept that if you don't you don't have to convince me that i'm i'm asking for a technical question which is that you view the the requirement that records of the government be produced which is the requirement for you as requiring them to take data that they have and and and give it to you even if it isn't in any record yet well it isn't a record it's in the power system it's they did they admit that they can see that it's there you know it's there i know it's there we don't we don't concede it's there we're talking past each other it's there in their computers it's and it's there for you to log in see is there somebody who kovach and could logon and seek one of the time what is the time in your your argument is that it may be correct but i just need to understand it that they're required to compile that and give it to you rather than simply give you whatever records they chose to make yes and i think that's the law to it i was just looking and i'll grab my authority but i think that the government actually when you look at the the legislative history the government's actually required to enhance and do what it can to help the public have access to the data ok not that i'm sort of interrupt you but that i needed to understand your b s and in a way your honor that's really essentially in a way what i think that the district court didn't appreciate i don't think that they appreciated that there's a difference between a data point and a database so i can have those in now and i need to understand because what i understood from the history of this is that the there they can see it it's there myself but just like to make sure i say the minute i know what i'm thinking and i think it will probably accommodate yeah thank you i've used like your time thank you but the government and put aside the legal question in this case just so that we understand for certain periods of time you could go to the government say i want to buy this document or electronic form and it had all the information you wanted and it at some point in time the government stopped making that that what congress is concerned about is a production of information that discloses how to put it to put it briefly how an agency or the government is being run you don't and i can i and the difference to me is if you had made a request for all of the documents that led them to this decision absolutely would be entitled to it because it would tell you exactly how they agency operated and made a decision but what you want it is not the know how the agency is run you want information so that couldn't conduct the business and try and sell or approach people on patents who may or may not want to hear you about a service that you are prepared to sell them that to my mind has nothing to do with how the u s patent office is being run that kind of use and disclosure and i don't i think this is there as i said the differences between asking them for give me the documents and see how you made this decision and give me this i agree with you recitation of law i disagree with your conclusion when we have this data when we have this big database this mountain of these rocks my clients can do amazing things in terms of looking at just what you're talking not in this case attacking the agency's decision to in effect desegregate this information i mean they may have done it through regulation it may have been illegal it may have been a bad decision your your not your this is it for y case correct so you're not you know like ality or wisdom of their decision to to stop producing this document is not in front of us is it it's not ok in fact i think they can see that their papers and so on and your privacy about moving certain information for privacy concerns yes said that they were going to list the inventors name city and state but not their address and my question is are you getting the inventor name city and state if we are we getting a currently no warrant we're currently out of business i mean we're not we're not marketing to anybody did you get it in response to your previous for two for your request now complaining about no  after the request they send us something with just those items you want if you want street addresses i want you right we need to be able mail if that's what this is all about right absolute ok so you're saying they they would produce everything extend wouldn't produce the street addresses frames and street they will not produce rep with a but they would give you the name and city of explicit i want to if i happen to know the patent number if i know the pad number i can go in the pair system go through the security and then i can get some of that information and that's and that's our position is that it's something that's the position that they rely on that it's available but i can go look at one stone in the mountain at a time it would take us ten thousand keyboard operators working two years around the clock which would be prohibitively expensive and o'byrne some to even come close to being able to if we actually had to technically theoretically rebuild the mountain that this case really is a difference between a database and a data point when i think if you really think about it and we're looking for this unique thing that is the database that we've been sold previously we're not asking them to give us a new format we want to do just what they're doing before and frankly what they're willing to do now but they're just omitting a couple of port variables and i just want to be sure  assume you go through hoops what can you get you can get the you have the patent number you can get one with that all of the there's a bunch of variables that come in this database name type of pat how and who to address services to which you're not contending and then it would take you over but i want to make sure again you're not contending that this information that these that if you got each individual rock you wouldn't have all this information right if you give me all the rocks at once you know i have it and i know what i'm saying if you there it's rock in which the information is embedded is available to you if you can simply identify the rock i believe that's a believe that's their position roxanne well i'm just trying my my wife that i should use the cars and say you know you can have the tire nothing but you can't drive unless they're all together and that's having it all together is really the value and i thank you good morning your honor span please the court my name is caroline prime and i represent the u s patent and trademark office and there are a couple of clarification's i'd like to make and the addresses of the inventors are currently available in the public pair system you do it is true you have to look at each file individually right now but understood the argument to be that his problem is i can get all the information i want but i have to ask i have to look at each path to get it addresses of inventors so help me with that book data should you have to create a product my understanding and again the record i record is so small here it doesn't go into that the patent office does from you that's my understanding is that it doesn't exist and it's a it's a matter of the patent office just not releasing it it's not an existing record so if you are not refusing to release any existing record of th  has the majority of this information except for the street address including patent numbers that sort of thing the patent numbers themselves there's and again if there are several databases that the office provides there is a separate database open to the public called the patent full text and image database i mean that has more than fifty fields of inquiry for example you can do a search of patents issued between january first two thousand and two to janet to december thirty first two thousand and two press enter and you'll get a list of approximately one hundred eighty two thousand patent number could you find the addresses from that so with you would that be addresses are my understanding is that they're not in that database but with that patent number you could go into a public pair and get the appropriate address for that patent let me ask you a question in terms your of your  the agency said that because these files are indexed and open to public inspection pursuant to section five fifty two eighty two they are not available in response to for your requests so i guess my question was like this goes back to like the old reading room requirement could his client go to the patent office and go look at the files and and get all the names and addresses and  from the office i believe they're still there still is a reading room i think again it would be sort of a file by file it wouldn't be at the aggregate information that he's looking for i for sort of data like your understanding when we were  that there is a mechanism to retrieve the particular file or data that you're looking for electronically yes we do if you went to the physical reading room you'd have to get a library or some i do not know how that's organized but i think be that they had to protect the just the physical street address of the individual inventor a lot of these inventors if their home address and lost their patent has been assigned to a company for example their home address is what is being produced in this bill so could that action that there was an agency action that was very right there was just you know the trash through you know the administrative review process with it deal with format in sort of the simplest fashion right p d f as opposed to zipper paper right right right do you think that if we get to that one does that require that you format the information in a way where produce it in a electronic format of the of reasonably available to the other side right well i do believe there is time now and it has it has to be ready to lee of ale of all so so it would have to be something that that the agency could  and again i get there's the prohibition of creating an a record and a four and there's no requirement for agency to compile and create a record for request or it's supposed to be the disclosure of existing records so in terms of formatting i think there is a sense that that the requesters the agency should work with the requester and provide it in whatever readily available format that they can get but actually what what do you read the word format to mean that's my problem i don't know from the case law all i can divine from the word format because our case with but it was a document that already it was they were documents that are existed and they were just being compiled and if what you are talking for is there a broader requirement a format that you format information that the agency has in a certain  publicly of if something is if you deny requests on the grounds that it's publicly available to me it seems that it must be meaningfully available like the public must really actually be able to access it and if you are correct and maybe this isn't that big of a barrier but if you're wrecked it very years that made it impossible for the public to actually have access then that would not be compliance with for you agree with that yes and you're saying this they're saying this is like barriers that make it really i don't know difficult if not impossible and you're saying no it's actually you can actually readily access this and that's what i'm not understanding exactly why it's they can readily access t information that you have well i guess it's sort of it also depends on the intent of of or the desired need of of the request or i think this is as i said to the second concern i have which is i case sort of too tainted by turning on the fact that this is a commercial enterprise who wants to use this for business reasons as opposed to  just having the information publicly available for people who are concerned about the agencies and that you have public interest concerns around around the agency i mean does it is it tainted by the fact it's come are a commercial entity that  wants it i don't think it's tainted at all they're being treated as as any other requester would be and it's their issue is sort of with the way that the information has been presented or formatted the public pair system is a heavily heavily traffic database because of all of the pattern research going on every day and it's for that reason they had to put like a captious system on the database which which prevents data mining because data mining would bring down this this heavily the question that i think in a slightly different way i've always viewed for you as saying in effect you have access to all of our records except the ones that we can exempt and there's no exemption argument here it's yeah i i think had had we gotten into a three debate in this case it the record could have been developed to the amount of hours involved and costs that would be associated with approximately two point eight million files from two thousand and two to present day that's two point eight million approximately patent files so it would be a huge endeavor my understanding so it's not with the address in it and then stripping it out they're building the product without without the street address in it and therefore you have to go to some other electronic available available document to find the record mean aside from the legislative history and it was saying that you should promote greater efficiency in responding to for your request that includes using technology to let requesters obtain information in the form useful to them when you combine that with the requirement in three a it does your honor i would suggest that there is an obligation to create something new because when you read three  says the agency shall provide the record in any form or format requested by the person if the record is readily and that's that's why i was asking your colleague that question i read that is simply saying you should thing i think i've read you have to read it's all right michael so my question is do you have a case that that says a three or three requires them to create a record that didn't exist before it says it right on it's for if i don't let's face it i ok if the record if it's question is do you have a case that says the not not at hand there may be one of my brief but again i def not able to get off the last three words of that which is if the record is readily report reproducible by the agency in that format they've been doing it certainly is readily reproducible network that's why i kept asking your colleague and i'm asking you whether there's anything in the case law that elucidates for me what format and are only cases dealing with it deals with the zip format as opposed to the paper form will certainly my argument is if they've been doing in that format before they can do it now let's read they're readily able to do it and please this is the twentieth first century these are databases these aren't physical things that exist we all want to say what was that record