Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_13-cv-04910/USCOURTS-cand-3_13-cv-04910-17/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 830
Nature of Suit: Patent
Cause of Action: 35:271 Patent Infringement

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

OPEN TEXT S.A.,

Plaintiff,

v.

BOX, INC., et al.,

Defendants.

Case No. 13-cv-04910-JD 

ORDER GRANTING RULE 12(C) 

MOTION FOR JUDGMENT OF 

INVALIDITY OF GROUPWARE 

PATENTS

Re: Dkt. No. 295

Defendant Box moves for judgment of invalidity on the pleadings on the grounds that 

plaintiff Open Text’s “Groupware” patents1claim patent-ineligible subject matter. See Dkt. No. 

295. The common specification of the five Groupware patents describes the unremarkable 

concept of people working together on a project:

Recently, the need for collaborative computing environments has 

been receiving increasing attention. People are finding that it is 

more and more important to share information and work together to 

meet common goals. With increasing specialization in the 

marketplace, there is frequent need to work together with people 

from different offices, different organizations and even different 

countries to satisfy the requirements of a particular project or goal.

’177 patent, 1:11-20. As the specification suggests, this concept existed well before the invention 

of the Groupware patents. The Groupware patents’ alleged innovation is to facilitate workplace 

collaboration through the Internet or an intranet without specialized software or calling on a 

system administrator or IT person for help. Id. 1:5-8. The problem with the asserted claims is that 

their core concept is inherently abstract, and their implementation, which consists of standard 

 

1 U.S. Patent Nos. 6,223,177, 6,917,962, 7,287,055, 7,299,258, and 7,320,018. The asserted 

claims of the Groupware patents are claims 5, 7 and 11 of the ’177 patent, claim 5 of the ’018 

patent, claim 22 of the ’055 patent, claim 27 of the ’258 patent, and claims 6 and 15 of the ’962 

patent.

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technology like browsers, servers, and networks, has nothing inventive whatsoever about it. The 

result is that the asserted claims of the Groupware patents are invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. 

Consequently, the motion is granted.

LEGAL STANDARD

The patent statute provides protection for “any new and useful process, machine, 

manufacture, or composition of matter.” 35 U.S.C. § 101. The Supreme Court has interpreted 

section 101 as containing “an important implicit exception: Laws of nature, natural phenomena, 

and abstract ideas are not patentable.” Alice Corp. Pty Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S. Ct 2347, 

2354 (2014).

In Alice and Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 132 S. Ct. 

1289, 1296-97 (2012), the Supreme Court established a two-part test for determining whether a 

claim falls into one of the exceptions, and is therefore patent-ineligible. The Court first 

“determine[s] whether the claims at issue are directed to one of those patent-ineligible concepts.” 

Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2355 (citing Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1296-97). If they are, the Court then 

considers the elements of the claim -- both individually and as an ordered combination -- to 

determine whether the additional elements transform the nature of the claim into a patent-eligible 

application of the abstract idea. Id. The Supreme Court has described the second inquiry as “a 

search for an inventive concept -- i.e., an element or combination of elements that is sufficient to 

ensure that the patent in practice amounts to significantly more than a patent upon the [ineligible 

concept] itself.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted, alteration in original).

Challenges to patentability under section 101 may be brought based solely on the 

pleadings, including on a Rule 12(c) motion for judgment on the pleadings. See buySAFE, Inc. v. 

Google, Inc., 765 F.3d 1350, 1352 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (affirming a Rule 12(c) judgment on the 

pleadings); Loyalty Conversion Sys. Co. v. American Airlines, Inc., No. 2:13-CV-655, 2014 WL 

4364848, at *4 (E.D. Tex. Sept. 3, 2014) (Bryson, J., sitting by designation) (granting judgment on 

the pleadings of invalidity under section 101).

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DISCUSSION

The parties’ briefing focuses on claim 1 of the ’177 patent, from which asserted claims 5, 

7, and 11 depend, and the Court will follow suit. See Content Extraction & Transmission LLC v. 

Wells Fargo Bank, Nat’l Ass’n, Nos. 2013-1588, 2013-1589, 2014-1112, 2014-1687, 2014 WL 

7272219, at *4-5 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 23, 2014) (approving use of representative claims in deciding 

section 101 motions).2 Claim 1 reads:

A system for providing a collaborative workspace, comprising:

(i) a network-connected server having input and access capabilities;

(ii) a workgroup creator on the server for receiving instructions from 

a primary user and for creating a dedicated network site in response 

to the received instructions, the instructions including a list of 

secondary users and a working relationship defined between the 

users;

(iii) a messaging system for communicating existence of the 

dedicated network site to a selected ones of the list of secondary 

users;

(iv) a network for accessing contents of the dedicated network site 

by the primary and secondary users via a web-browser; and

(v) memory associated with the dedicated network site for storing 

information submitted by the primary and the secondary users, 

wherein the stored information is accessible to the users in 

accordance with the predefined working relationship.

’177 patent, claim 1. Like the other Groupware patents, the ’177 patent claims priority through a 

series of continuations and continuations-in-part to an application filed on October 22, 1997.

At oral argument, Open Text’s counsel conceded what the patent specifications themselves 

make clear: network-based collaborative systems were known at the time the Groupware patents 

were invented. See id. 1:21-22. The patents claim that their advance over what came before is 

that they “obviate and mitigate at least one of the disadvantages of the prior art,” namely that prior 

art systems “depend[ed] on Information Technology specialists or a system administrator to 

administer control of the system” and that many of them “require[d] each user to have specialized 

 

2

In fact, Open Text does not provide any arguments with respect to any claims other than claim 1 

of the ’177 patent, beyond simply listing some of their elements. See Open Text’s Opposition at 

8, 12, Dkt. No. 343. Nevertheless, the Court has reviewed the asserted claims and finds that the 

reasoning in this order applies to all of them.

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software installed on their computer.” Id. 1:37-47. In the preferred embodiment, the necessity of 

specialized software is dispensed with by using a “standard internet browser,” which is reflected in 

element (iv) of claim 1 of the ’177 patent. Id. 3:39-60.

A. Is the Claim Directed at an Abstract Idea?

In evaluating the first prong of the Mayo/Alice test, which looks to see if the claim in 

question is directed at an abstract idea, the Court distills the gist of the claim. See, e.g., Bilski v. 

Kappos, 561 U.S. 593, 611-12 (2010) (characterizing abstract idea as “the concept of hedging” 

where claim limitations described initiating transactions and identifying market participants); 

Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2356 (characterizing abstract concept as “intermediated settlement” despite 

claim elements reciting use of shadow credit records and debit records); buySAFE, 765 F.3d at

1354-55 (holding that “[t]he claims are squarely about creating a contractual relationship” despite 

presence of more specific claim limitations); Ultramercial, Inc. v. Hulu, LLC, 772 F.3d 709, 715 

(Fed. Cir. 2014) (holding that “the concept embodied by the majority of the limitations describes 

only the abstract idea of showing an advertisement before delivering free content” despite 

presence of other limitations); Content Extraction, 2014 WL 7272219, at *3 (characterizing 

abstract idea as “1) collecting data, 2) recognizing certain data within the collected data set, and 3) 

storing that recognized data in a memory” despite claim’s recitation of specific limitations, like 

scanner); see also Accenture Global Servs., GmbH v. Guidewire Software, Inc., 728 F.3d 1336, 

1347-48 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (Rader, C.J., dissenting) (describing majority opinion as “strip[ping] 

away” claim limitations to arrive at abstract idea); Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 2:12-cv-07360-

MRP-MRW, 2014 WL 5661456, at *4 (C.D. Cal. Nov. 3, 2014) (“Courts should recite a claim’s 

purpose at a reasonably high level of generality. Step one is a sort of ‘quick look’ test, the purpose 

of which is to identify a risk of preemption and ineligibility.”).

Box contends that the abstract idea behind this claim is “sharing information among 

collaborators,” while Open Text says that the idea (which it denies is abstract) is “a system for 

providing a collaborative workspace on a network server.” Open Text’s proposal, which appears 

to be a mishmash of the claim’s preamble and the first claim limitation, smuggles in a reference to 

a “network server,” which is exactly the sort of limitation that is characteristic of the claim’s 

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implementation, rather than its general idea. Cf. buySAFE, 765 F.3d at 1354-55 (describing the 

claim’s abstract idea without including the claim’s “computer network” limitation). Shorn of its 

implementation-specific fleece, the claim is directed at providing a method for people to 

collaborate and share information without the need for specialized software or expertise. See ’177 

patent, 1:37-47. It may be, as Open Text insists, that this idea was new at the time of invention,

but it is still an abstract idea, and therefore meets the first part of the Mayo/Alice test. See

Ultramercial, 772 F.3d at 715 (“[A]ny novelty in implementation of the idea is a factor to be 

considered only in the second step of the Alice analysis.”).

To escape this conclusion, Open Text tries to draw a rather philosophical distinction 

between abstract and other (presumably concrete) ideas. But Open Text does not point to any 

authority in support of this theory, and it is highly doubtful that the precedents on patentable 

subject matter recognize a class of non-abstract ideas. The Federal Circuit in Ultramercial, for 

example, equates an “abstraction” with “an idea, having no particular concrete or tangible form.” 

Id. But even if some class of concrete ideas were divinable, the idea here is unquestionably 

abstract. Although the Supreme Court has not “delimit[ed] the precise contours of the ‘abstract 

ideas’ category,” Alice, 134 S. Ct at 2357, a “method of organizing human activity” is an abstract 

idea. See id. at 2356-57; see also Planet Bingo, LLC v. VKGS LLC, 576 Fed. App’x 1005, 1008 

(Fed. Cir. 2014) (nonprecedential) (holding that methods and systems for “managing a game of 

Bingo” were similar to “organizing human activity” and therefore directed to an abstract idea). A 

system for groups of people to collaborate and share information without specialized software or 

expertise is clearly a “method of organizing human activity,” and thus an unpatentable abstract 

idea.

B. Does the Claim Include an Inventive Concept?

An invention is not rendered ineligible for a patent simply because it involves an abstract 

concept. Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2354; Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 187 (1981). When a patent is 

directed at an abstract idea, the Court must evaluate the second prong of the Mayo/Alice test, 

which asks “whether the additional [claim] elements [beyond the abstract idea] ‘transform the 

nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.” Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2355 (citation omitted). 

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If the additional elements “supply an ‘inventive concept’ in the physical realm of things and acts --

a ‘new and useful application’ of the ineligible matter in the physical realm,” the claim may be 

said to cover something “‘significantly more than’ the ineligible matter itself.” buySAFE, 765 

F.3d at 1353 (quoting Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2355, 2357). 

Open Text points to four claim limitations as inventive: (1) the use of a server-based 

system (as opposed to a peer-to-peer system); (2) the workgroup creator; (3) the use of a web 

browser for accessing the site; and (4) security controls. But it is apparent from the patent itself 

that these implementation-specific elements were known prior to the invention of the Groupware 

patents. The specification describes an earlier patent, U.S. Patent No. 5,548,506, as “disclos[ing] 

an automated, electronic network based, project management server system for managing multiple 

work groups.” ’177 patent, 1:21-25 (emphasis added). The term “workgroup creator” is not even 

found in the specification, which indicates that it needed no explanation to be understood to a 

person of ordinary skill in the art in the context of the claims. And what can be gleaned from the 

patent makes clear that the workgroup creator is not new. The specification describes a 

“workgroup creation template” as being that “which permits the primary user to define parameters 

of the workgroup, such as the name of the workgroup and the site to be created, the scope of the 

project being undertaken, the number of team members, etc.” Id. 4:55-60. Open Text itself 

admits that the workgroup creator is simply what creates the dedicated site on the server that 

enables collaboration. See Open Text’s Opposition at 7, Dkt. No. 343. Open Text does not 

contend that any of this is novel. All of it could be done using a web page. That web pages were 

known in 1997 needs no citation and is apparent from the patent’s explanation-free discussion of 

web pages. See ’177 patent, 3:46-49. The fact that the Groupware patents refer to “standard 

internet browser[s]” makes clear that web browsers were not new or inventive as of the invention 

of the Groupware patents -- a conclusion reaffirmed by the patents’ mention of common web 

browsers by name. See id. 3:38-42 (referring to Netscape Navigator and “Microsoft Explorer”). 

Finally, the Groupware patents’ discussion of security features, like passwords, is couched in 

terms that indicate discussion of preexisting technology, and Open Text does not claim otherwise. 

See id. 5:55-6:7.

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Rather than standing on inventiveness as a saving grace, Open Text spends substantial 

effort arguing that these limitations satisfy the Mayo/Alice test because they purportedly 

circumscribe the claims to avoid total preemption of the idea and leave room for future 

innovations. To the extent Open text believes this saves the claims under section 101, it is wrong. 

The Supreme Court has described the “pre-emption concern” as “undergird[ing] our § 101 

jurisprudence.” Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2358. But while preemption concerns may be the root of the 

Supreme Court’s section 101 test, it does not follow that the Court determines patentability by 

guessing at the probability of preemption. There is no non-speculative way for a court to 

determine whether and to what extent future innovation might be curtailed. The Supreme Court 

and Federal Circuit have recognized this point in the context of distinguishing between different 

laws of nature, and the insight applies with equal force to supposedly preemption-limiting claim 

limitations. See, e.g., Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1303 (“[O]ur cases have not distinguished among 

different laws of nature according to whether or not the principles they embody are sufficiently 

narrow. ... And this is understandable. Courts and judges are not institutionally well suited to

making the kinds of judgments needed to distinguish among different laws of nature.”); buySAFE, 

765 F.3d at 1353 (“In defining the excluded categories, the Court has ruled that the exclusion 

applies if a claim involves a natural law or phenomenon or abstract idea, even if the particular 

natural law or phenomenon or abstract idea at issue is narrow.”).

To be clear, the Court has in fact considered the preemption concern because it is already 

baked into the Mayo/Alice test. After all, every patent “forecloses ... future invention” to some 

extent, Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1292, and conversely, every claim limitation beyond those that recite 

the abstract idea limits the scope of the preemption. Even if it were possible to do in a nonspeculative way, which is not the case, the Court is not required to anticipate the number, 

feasibility, or adequacy of non-infringing alternatives to gauge a patented invention’s preemptive 

effect in order to determine whether a claim is patent-eligible under section 101. The relevant 

precedents simply direct it to ask whether the claim involves one of the patent-ineligible 

categories, and if so, whether additional limitations contain an “inventive concept” that is 

“sufficient to ensure that the claim in practice amounts to ‘significantly more’ than a patent on an 

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ineligible concept.” DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com L.P., No. 2013-1505, 2014 WL 6845152, 

at *8 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 5, 2014). This is the basis for the rule that the unpatentability of abstract 

ideas “cannot be circumvented by attempting to limit the use of the formula to a particular 

technological environment,” despite the fact that doing so reduces the amount of innovation that 

would be preempted. Diehr, 450 U.S. at 191; see also Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2358; Mayo, 132 S. Ct. 

at 1303; Bilski, 561 U.S. at 612; Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584, 593 (1978).

These holdings gut Open Text's argument. For example, Open Text argues that the 

requirement of a server in the claims satisfies part two of the Mayo/Alice test because it would not 

preclude the use of a peer-to-peer based system. But the claims at issue in Ultramercial also had 

fairly specific requirements -- like the use of an “activity log” -- that could presumably have been 

avoided by those wishing to design around the patent. See Ultramercial, 772 F.3d at 712. That 

was not sufficient to save the claims there.

The Federal Circuit generally has not found limitations similar to the supposed inventive 

concepts that Open Text points to sufficient to preserve patentability under the section 101 test. 

Indeed, contrary to Open Text’s insistence that a server suffices, the Federal Circuit has found a 

claim reciting a “server component” invalid under section 101. See Accenture, 728 F.3d at 1344-

45. Furthermore, it is not clear why, as Open Text claims, the use of a server-based system would 

render an abstract idea patentable when the use of a “content provider” or a “safe transactions 

service provider computer” have been found not to do so. Ultramercial, 772 F.3d at 712; 

buySAFE, 765 F.3d at 1352. Nor is it clear why a “workgroup creator” would render an abstract 

idea patentable when “a request [from the consumer] to view the sponsor message” or “a request 

from a first party for obtaining a transaction performance guaranty service with respect to an 

online commercial transaction” do not. Ultramercial, 772 F.3d at 712; buySAFE, 765 F.3d at 

1352. Or why the use of “security controls” would be an inventive concept when Ultramercial

found the fact “that the system ... restricts public access ... represents only insignificant ‘[pre]-

solution activity.’” Ultramercial, 772 F.3d at 716 (alteration in original).

Open Text suggests that the claims’ recitation of a “web browser” makes this case similar 

to DDR Holdings, where the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s denial of judgment as a 

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matter of law of invalidity under section 101. See DDR Holdings, 2014 WL 6845152, at *12. The 

patent in that case was prompted by the worry that a visitor to a host website would be lured away 

to another website when they clicked on a merchant advertiser’s link. See id. at *1. It addressed 

that issue, which the court emphasized is unique to the Internet, by specifying that when a visitor 

clicked on a hyperlink on the host website (like a third-party merchant’s ad), “instead of taking the 

visitor to the merchant’s website, the system generates and directs the visitor to a composite web 

page that displays product information from the third-party merchant, but retains the host 

website’s ‘look and feel.’” Id.

As Open Text points out, the Groupware patents specified the use of web browsers as an 

improvement on prior art systems that used specialized client software instead. See ’177 patent, 

3:38-49. Open Text’s reading of DDR Holdings is that “otherwise generic-sounding elements” 

can support patent eligibility when they “are used to overcome a problem specifically arising in a 

technological field,” like the limitations associated with specialized software. Open Text’s 

Opposition at 8, Dkt. No. 343.

But DDR Holdings specifically cautioned that “not all claims purporting to address 

Internet-centric challenges are eligible for patent.” DDR Holdings, 2014 WL 6845152, at *11. 

Indeed, it noted that claiming “‘use of the Internet’ to perform an abstract business practice” 

would be insufficient. Id. at *12. What made the patent at issue in DDR Holdings different, the 

court held, was that it “specif[ied] how interactions with the Internet are manipulated to yield a 

desired result -- a result that overrides the routine and conventional sequence of events ordinarily 

triggered by the click of a hyperlink.” Id. To the extent Open Text claims the role of a web 

browser in the Groupware patents is similar to the role of the Internet in the patents at issue in 

DDR Holdings, the Court disagrees. There is no indication in the claims or the specification that 

the claimed web browser is used in any non-routine and unconventional way. It is not deployed to 

solve a specific Internet-centric problem. On the contrary, the patents just claim using it. That 

does not satisfy part two of the Mayo/Alice test.

Certainly, “a new combination of steps in a process may be patentable even though all the 

constituents of the combination were well known and in common use before the combination was 

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made.” See Diehr, 450 U.S. at 188; Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2355 (“[W]e consider the elements of each 

claim both individually and ‘as an ordered combination’ to determine whether the additional 

elements ‘transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application”). Open Text argues 

that, in combination, the four elements it points to help overcome the prior art’s reliance on 

specialized software or IT professionals. But Open Text provides no reason to find that lumping 

these additional limitations together somehow creates a synergistic result that is more than the sum 

of its parts. All Open text does is assert in a brief that the Court should accept that unsupported 

argument as true. It offers nothing beyond the conclusory statement that it is the combination of 

security controls, the server-side setup, the workgroup creator, and the dedicated site that 

“address[es] the IT specialist problem.” Open Text’s Opposition at 8, Dkt. No. 343. How these 

features interact to avoid the need for IT specialists, or why removing one of them (say the 

security controls) would require bringing the IT specialist back in, is never explained by Open 

Text.

CONCLUSION

The challenged claims purport to patent an abstract idea and lack an inventive concept. 

Consequently, the Court finds that the asserted claims in the Groupware patents are invalid 

because they claim non-patentable subject matter. Judgment of invalidity on the pleadings is 

granted with respect to them. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: January 20, 2015

______________________________________

JAMES DONATO

United States District Judge

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