Court Opinion

ID: 9383892
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-03-31 15:01:10.161912+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:17:48.877534
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-1390    Document: 44    Page: 1   Filed: 03/20/2023

        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                  ______________________

                HANTZ SOFTWARE, LLC,
                   Plaintiff-Appellant

                            v.

                 SAGE INTACCT, INC.,
                   Defendant-Appellee
                 ______________________

                        2022-1390
                  ______________________

    Appeal from the United States District Court for the
 Northern District of California in No. 4:21-cv-01987-HSG,
 Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr.
                  ______________________

                 Decided: March 20, 2023
                 ______________________

    LEWIS EMERY HUDNELL, III, Hudnell Law Group PC,
 Mountain View, CA, argued for plaintiff-appellant.

      ROBERT COURTNEY, Fish & Richardson P.C., Minneap-
 olis, MN, argued for defendant-appellee. Also represented
 by LAUREN ANN DEGNAN, LAURA E. POWELL, Washington,
 DC.
                  ______________________
Case: 22-1390     Document: 44     Page: 2    Filed: 03/20/2023

 2                  HANTZ SOFTWARE, LLC   v. SAGE INTACCT, INC.

     Before MOORE, Chief Judge, PROST and HUGHES, Circuit
                           Judges.
 PROST, Circuit Judge.
      Hantz Software, LLC (“Hantz”) sued Sage Intacct, Inc.
 (“Sage”) in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District
 of California alleging that Sage infringed U.S. Patent
 Nos. 8,055,559 and 8,055,560 (the “asserted patents”).
 Hantz’s first amended complaint (the operative complaint)
 alleged that Sage infringed claims 1 and 31–33 of each as-
 serted patent. Sage moved to dismiss the complaint under
 Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), arguing that the
 complaint asserted patent-ineligible claims under
 35 U.S.C. § 101. Hantz opposed and also moved for leave
 to file a second amended complaint. The district court
 (1) concluded that the asserted patents are ineligible under
 § 101 and, on that basis, dismissed the operative com-
 plaint; (2) denied Hantz leave to file a second amended
 complaint; and (3) entered final judgment. Hantz appeals.
 We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).
     We affirm the district court’s decisions holding claims 1
 and 31–33 of the asserted patents ineligible under § 101
 and denying Hantz leave to file a second amended com-
 plaint.
     Hantz maintains—and Sage agrees—that the district
 court’s ineligibility judgment extended to all claims of the
 asserted patents, not just claims 1 and 31–33. According
 to Hantz, any ineligibility judgment should apply to only
 claims 1 and 31–33 of the asserted patents because Hantz’s
 operative complaint asserted infringement of only those
 claims. We agree. Although Hantz’s operative complaint
 alleged that Sage infringed “one or more claims” of each
 asserted patent, it also stated that Sage’s infringement was
 “detailed in Exhibit C” to the complaint—an exhibit that
 supplied infringement claim charts for only claims 1 and
 31–33 of the asserted patents. E.g., J.A. 263 ¶ 62; J.A. 265
 ¶ 71; see J.A. 390–421 (Ex. C). And, to the extent any lack
Case: 22-1390    Document: 44       Page: 3    Filed: 03/20/2023

 HANTZ SOFTWARE, LLC   v. SAGE INTACCT, INC.                 3

 of clarity persisted as to the specific claims the operative
 complaint was and wasn’t asserting, Hantz dispelled it at
 the district court’s hearing on Sage’s motion to dismiss,
 where Hantz confirmed: “The only claims before the [dis-
 trict] court are the independent claims [i.e., claims 1 and
 31–33] that are set forth in the [first] amended complaint.
 No dependent claims were asserted in the [first amended]
 complaint and therefore [they] aren’t before the court.”
 J.A. 574–75 (capitalization normalized).
      Because, in view of the foregoing, we agree that the op-
 erative complaint asserted infringement of only claims 1
 and 31–33 of each asserted patent, and because Sage did
 not file any counterclaim of its own (instead, it simply
 moved to dismiss Hantz’s complaint), we conclude that the
 ineligibility judgment should apply to only claims 1 and
 31–33 of the asserted patents. We therefore vacate the dis-
 trict court’s judgment insofar as it held any claim other
 than claims 1 and 31–33 of each asserted patent ineligible
 and affirm in all other respects.
      AFFIRMED-IN-PART, VACATED-IN-PART
                            COSTS
 No costs.