Opinion ID: 820394
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: “Creating” and “Processing”

Text: Claim 1 of the ’025 Patent recites an interface through which a seller is “prompted to input information to create an electronic advertisement.” ’025 Patent col. 65 ll. 4-7. The parties stipulated that the “create” term means to “create an electronic advertisement for publication in a form customized to each of the selected internet media venue’s presentation rules.” The system of claim 1 also includes a controller that processes the advertisement in compliance with the media venues’ presentation rules: FUNCTION MEDIA v. GOOGLE 13 a computer controller of the computer system pro- cessing and publishing the electronic advertisement to one or more of the selected internet media venues in compliance with the presentation rules of the internet media venue, whereby the electronic advertisement is displayed on each of the one or more of the selected internet media venues in compliance with the presentation rules of the in- ternet media venue. ’025 Patent col. 65 ll. 10-17 (emphases added). The parties disagreed on whether this claim requires the system to take previously created ads and process them in order to make them comply with the publishers’ rules, or whether the system processes raw information entered by the seller in order to create compliant ads in the first instance. FM proposed that processing meant operating “upon the inputted information to create an electronic advertisement customized for each selected internet media venue in a form that complies with the presentation rules set by that media venue.” Markman Order, slip op. at 17 (emphasis added). Google proposed that it meant operating “upon the electronic advertisement to process it in compliance with the presentation rules of the internet media venues.” Id. (emphasis added). The district court ruled that the processing term means “executing a systematic sequence of mathematical and/or logical operations upon the customized electronic advertisement to make it comply with the presentation rules of the internet media venues.” Id. (emphasis added). FM now argues that the district court’s interpretations of “creating” and “processing” are internally inconsistent. According to FM, the central computer has the final role in the creation and formatting of ads so that they comply with the publisher’s requirements. FM argues that by stating that the system processes a “customized . . . advertisement,” the court has said, in essence, 14 FUNCTION MEDIA v. GOOGLE that “processing” means to take an ad that already complies with the publisher’s rules and change it so that it complies with the publisher’s rules. Google responds that the district court’s construction properly reflects that the “processing” is performed on the “electronic advertisement” rather than the “inputted information” because, as the court pointed out, the “inputted information” language from the creation element does not reappear in the computer controller limitation. Id. 44-45. We begin our analysis with the language of the claim. See Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1314 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc) (“[T]he claims themselves provide substantial guidance as to the meaning of particular claim terms.”). “The words of a claim ‘are generally given their ordinary and customary meaning,’” which “is the meaning that the term would have to a person of ordinary skill in the art in question at the time of the invention.” Id. at 1312-13 (internal citations omitted). “The claims, of course, do not stand alone. Rather, they are part of ‘a fully integrated written instrument,’ consisting principally of a specification that concludes with the claims. For that reason, claims ‘must be read in view of the specification, of which they are a part.’” Id. at 1315 (quoting Markman, 52 F.3d at 978, 979). The claim clearly states that the “processing” is done to the “electronic advertisement,” not the inputted information. It follows that the creation of the ad must happen before the processing begins. If “processing” included “creating,” the act of processing would have been performed on the inputted information, which would then lead to the creation of the rule-compliant ad. The claim terms themselves rule out the possibility that “processing” is done to the inputted information because a custom ad is created before the processing step. Thus, we find that the court’s construction of taking the “customized” ad and then “processing” it to make it comply with the presentation rules was correct. FUNCTION MEDIA v. GOOGLE 15 This construction is consistent with the parties’ stipulated definition for the term “create.” The parties agreed that the “creation” limitation prompts the seller to “input information to create an electronic advertisement for publication to the selected internet media venues.” Markman Order, slip op. at 8 (emphasis added). The claims do not explicitly state whether it is the seller or central computer that actually creates the ad. On one hand, entering information to create the ad could mean the seller creates the ad herself by entering the information. On the other, the seller could simply be required to enter information which is then used by the central computer to create the ad itself. We conclude that the district court correctly declined to interpret the claim as requiring either, and that creation by either the seller or the central computer would satisfy the claim terms. What matters for our purposes is that either way, the ad is created before it is processed. FM’s citations to the portions of the specification dealing with the PGP do not persuade us otherwise. The specification says that the PGP, which is part of the central controller and presentation processor, “utilizes the information submitted by the Sellers and held in [various databases] . . . to create the requested presentations for the various . . . media . . . using the Presentation Rules Database 1650 for style and control guidelines.” ’025 Patent col. 19 ll. 46-55 (emphasis added). FM argues that this shows that the PGP is the entity that creates the ads. However, the specification goes on to refer to the Seller Interface described in Figure 2c, stating: It should be noted that in the preferred embodi- ment of the present invention, the same rules and guidelines contained in the Presentation Rules Database 1650 are also held in the Presentation Rules Database 4650 Fig. 2c, which is part of the Seller Interface 4000 Fig. 2c. With the same rules and guidelines as those in the Presentation Rules 16 FUNCTION MEDIA v. GOOGLE Database 1650 applied and enforced during data input at the Seller Interface . . . no modification or editing should be necessary at the Central Controller and Presentation Processor 1000 Module. Id. col. 19 ll. 55-65 (emphases added). The specification then states that although the same rules are applied at both the seller interface and central controller, “both processes should be utilized to ensure consistency.” Id. col. 19 l. 65 to col. 20 l. 2. Thus, at least in the preferred embodiment, the same rules are applied twice to ensure compliant ads are created; no changes to the original ad should be necessary when it reaches the point of processing. These portions of the specification further support the district court’s interpretation, which requires the ad to be created before it is “processed,” and illustrate why it would be improper to read FM’s proposed limitation into the claim. See Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1324 (cautioning against “strictly limiting the scope of the claims to the embodiments disclosed in the specification or divorcing the claim language from the specification”). We therefore affirm the district court’s construction of these terms.