Court Opinion

ID: 9385594
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-04-07 15:00:56.047485+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:03.179907
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-1364      Document: 46          Page: 1        Filed: 04/07/2023

        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                    ______________________

                       PEOPLE.AI, INC.,
                       Plaintiff-Appellant

                                   v.

                         CLARI INC.,
                      Defendant-Appellee
                    ______________________

                          2022-1364
                    ______________________

    Appeal from the United States District Court for the
 Northern District of California in No. 3:21-cv-06314-WHA,
 Judge William H. Alsup.

           ----------------------------------------------------

                       PEOPLE.AI, INC.,
                       Plaintiff-Appellant

                                   v.

           SETSAIL TECHNOLOGIES, INC.,
                 Defendant-Appellee
               ______________________

                          2022-1366
                    ______________________
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 2                                PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

    Appeal from the United States District Court for the
 Northern District of California in No. 3:20-cv-09148-WHA,
 Judge William H. Alsup.
                  ______________________

                   Decided: April 7, 2023
                   ______________________

     EDWARD R. REINES, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, Red-
 wood Shores, CA, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also rep-
 resented by SARAH STERNLIEB, New York, NY; ZACHARY
 TRIPP, Washington, DC.

     JONATHAN WEINBERG, King & Spalding LLP, Washing-
 ton, DC, argued for defendant-appellee SetSail Technolo-
 gies, Inc. Also represented by PAUL ALESSIO MEZZINA;
 ALLISON H. ALTERSOHN, New York, NY; DAVID SHANE
 BRUN, San Francisco, CA.

     EUGENE NOVIKOV, Morrison & Foerster LLP, San Fran-
 cisco, CA, argued for defendant-appellee Clari Inc. Also
 represented by DARALYN JEANNINE DURIE; ANDREW
 TRELOAR JONES, Washington, DC; RAGHAV KRISHNAPRIYAN,
 Brussels, Belgium.
                 ______________________

 Before NEWMAN, CHEN, and CUNNINGHAM, Circuit Judges.
 CUNNINGHAM, Circuit Judge.
      People.ai, Inc. appeals from the United States District
 Court for the Northern District of California’s grant of
 judgment on the pleadings under Federal Rule of Civil Pro-
 cedure 12(c) in favor of Defendants, Clari Inc. and SetSail
 Technologies, Inc. People.ai, Inc. v. SetSail Techs., Inc.,
 575 F. Supp. 3d 1193 (N.D. Cal. 2021) (Decision). People.ai
 asserted a total of seven patents against Clari or SetSail.
 Id. at 1197. The district court held that the asserted claims
 of all seven patents are invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Id.
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                               3

 at 1212. People.ai appeals as to three of the asserted pa-
 tents, U.S. Patent Nos. 10,922,345, 10,565,229, and
 10,657,129. 1 We affirm.
                          I.       BACKGROUND
      People.ai offers business-analytics software to optimize
 customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Deci-
 sion at 1197. Those systems track and manage business
 relationships and interactions with customers and poten-
 tial customers. Id. For example, CRM systems allow busi-
 nesses to track customer and account information, sales
 leads, and communications between salespeople and cus-
 tomers. Appellant’s Br. 6. The more data provided to a
 CRM system, the better the system works. Decision at
 1197.
      The patents at issue in this appeal are directed to the
 way data is added to “systems of records,” which may be
 “customer relationship management (CRM) systems, en-
 terprise resource planning (ERP) systems, document man-
 agement systems, applicant tracking systems, among
 others.” ’345 patent col. 50 ll. 14–17, 29–34; ’229 patent col.
 49 ll. 39–42, 54–59 (same); ’129 patent col. 64 ll. 14–17,
 29–34 (same); see also Appellant’s Br. 1–2 (“People.ai’s
 claims are directed to concrete improvements to existing
 customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and in
 particular the use of an objective rules-based approach for
 using tailored filtering policies to intelligently derive use-
 ful business information from emails, meetings, and phone
 calls, matching that information with customer accounts or
 sales opportunities, and recording those relationships and
 activities.” (emphasis removed)). The patents explain that,
 “[t]ypically, these systems of records are manually

     1   The ’345 patent was asserted against Clari. Deci-
 sion at 1197. The ’229 and ’129 patents were asserted
 against both Clari and SetSail. Id.
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 4                                 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

 updated, which can result in multiple issues,” stemming
 from the inherently fallible nature of any process per-
 formed manually—the data may be entered late, incor-
 rectly, or not at all, “resulting in systems of records that
 include outdated, incorrect, or incomplete information.”
 ’345 patent col. 50 ll. 17–26; ’229 patent col. 49 ll. 42–51
 (same); ’129 patent col. 64 ll. 17–26 (same).
     The patents are directed to overcoming these issues
 with manual data entry. ’345 patent col. 50 ll. 29–31; ’229
 patent col. 49 ll. 54–56 (same); ’129 patent col. 64 ll. 29–31
 (same). “In particular,” the patents “describe[] systems
 and methods for linking electronic activities,” such as “elec-
 tronic mail, phone calls, [and] calendar events,” “to record
 objects included in one or more systems of record.” ’345
 patent col. 50 ll. 31–36; ’229 patent col. 49 ll. 56–61 (same);
 ’129 patent col. 64 ll. 31–36 (same).
                          A. ’345 Patent
     The ’345 patent is entitled “Systems and Methods for
 Filtering Electronic Activities by Parsing Current and His-
 torical Electronic Activities.” People.ai agreed at oral ar-
 gument that we could limit our analysis to the patent
 claims analyzed by the district court. Oral Arg. at
 14:55–15:15, https://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/de-
 fault.aspx?fl=22-1364_01092023.mp3.        Specifically, the
 district court focused its analysis on claim 11 and briefly
 addressed claim 18 of the ’345 patent. Decision at 1208–09;
 see also Appellant’s Br. 10 n.3.
     Claim 11 of the ’345 patent recites:
     A system comprising:
         one or more processors coupled with
         memory and configured by machine-reada-
         ble instructions to:
             identify a first electronic activity
             and a second electronic activity
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                              5

             associated with a data source pro-
             vider that has been transmitted by
             a sender of the first electronic ac-
             tivity and the second electronic ac-
             tivity and received by one or more
             recipients of the first electronic ac-
             tivity and the second electronic ac-
             tivity, the first electronic activity
             and the second electronic activity
             readable by the one or more recipi-
             ents;
             parse the first electronic activity to
             identify one or more electronic ac-
             counts associated with at least the
             sender or the one or more recipi-
             ents of the first electronic activity;
             determine, responsive to parsing
             the first electronic activity, that the
             first electronic activity is sent from
             or received by an electronic account
             of the one or more electronic ac-
             counts, the electronic account cor-
             responding to the data source
             provider;
             determine, responsive to parsing
             the second electronic activity, that
             the second electronic activity is
             sent from or received by the elec-
             tronic account of the one or more
             electronic accounts;
             select, based on the electronic ac-
             count, one or more filtering policies
             associated with the data source
             provider to apply to the first elec-
             tronic activity and the second elec-
             tronic activity, the selected one or
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 6                                PEOPLE.AI, INC.    v. CLARI INC.

            more filtering policies including at
            least one of i) a keyword policy con-
            figured to identify electronic activi-
            ties including a predetermined
            keyword; ii) a regex pattern policy
            configured to identify electronic ac-
            tivities including one or more char-
            acter strings that match a
            predetermined regex pattern; or
            iii) a logic-based policy configured
            to identify electronic activities
            based on participants of the elec-
            tronic activities satisfying a prede-
            termined group of participants;
            determine, by applying the selected
            one or more filtering policies to the
            first electronic activity, to restrict
            the first electronic activity from be-
            ing matched with one or more rec-
            ord objects of a system of record of
            the data source provider based on
            the first electronic activity satisfy-
            ing at least one of the selected one
            or more filtering policies, the sys-
            tem of record of the data source pro-
            vider including a plurality of record
            objects;
            restrict the first electronic activity
            from being matched with one or
            more record objects of the system of
            record;
            determine, by applying the selected
            one or more filtering policies to the
            second electronic activity, to match
            the second electronic activity with
            one or more record objects of the
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                             7

             system of record of the data source
             provider based on the second elec-
             tronic activity not satisfying any of
             the selected one or more filtering
             policies;
             match, responsive to determining
             to match the second electronic ac-
             tivity with the one or more record
             objects, the second electronic activ-
             ity with a first record object of the
             one or more record objects respon-
             sive to a match policy; and
             transmit, to the system of record,
             instructions to store an association
             between the second electronic ac-
             tivity and the first record object in
             the system of record.
 ’345 patent col. 192 l. 57–col. 193 l. 53.
     Claim 18 depends from claim 11 and adds limitations
 directed to maintenance and use of “node profiles.” ’345
 patent col. 194 ll. 34–52. Node profiles are “data profiles
 that store information on various entities, such as a per-
 son’s name and email address.” Appellant’s Br. 13 (quoting
 Decision at 1199).
     Claim 18 recites:
     The system of claim 11, wherein the one or more
     processors are further configured to:
         maintain a plurality of node profiles corre-
         sponding to a plurality of unique entities,
         each electronic account of the one or more
         electronic accounts linked to a respective
         node profile of the plurality of node profiles;
         determine, for the first electronic activity,
         participants of the first electronic activity
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 8                                 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

         based on respective electronic accounts for
         the participants included in the first elec-
         tronic activity;
         identify, for each of the participants, the re-
         spective node profile having an electronic
         account value for an electronic account
         field of the node profile which matches the
         respective electronic account of the partici-
         pant included in the first electronic activ-
         ity; and
         apply the one or more filtering policies to
         the first electronic activity based on ex-
         tracted field-value pairs from the node pro-
         files for the participants of the first
         electronic activity.
 ’345 patent col. 194 ll. 34–52.
                          B. ’229 Patent
     The ’229 Patent is entitled “Systems and Methods for
 Matching Electronic Activities Directly to Record Objects
 of Systems of Record.” As with the ’345 patent, People.ai
 agreed at oral argument that we could limit our analysis to
 those claims analyzed by the district court. Oral Arg. at
 14:55–15:15. The district court analyzed claim 19 and
 briefly addressed claims 6, 7, and 11. Decision at 1206–07;
 see also Appellant’s Br. 10 n.3. As People.ai does not raise
 any arguments on appeal directed to the limitations of
 claims 6, 7, and 11, we focus our analysis solely on claim
 19. See Ballard Med. Prods. v. Allegiance Healthcare
 Corp., 268 F.3d 1352, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2001) (declining to
 consider arguments not briefed on appeal).
     Claim 19 of the ’229 patent recites:
     A system comprising:
         one or more processors; and
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                             9

         a memory coupled to the one or more pro-
         cessors, the one or more processors config-
         ured to:
             access a plurality of electronic ac-
             tivities transmitted or received via
             electronic accounts of one or more
             data source providers;
             access a plurality of record objects
             of one or more systems of record,
             each record object of the plurality of
             record objects corresponding to a
             record object type and comprising
             one or more object fields having one
             or more object field values, the sys-
             tems of record corresponding to the
             one or more data source providers;
             identify, an electronic activity of
             the plurality of electronic activities
             to match to one or more record ob-
             jects, the electronic activity of the
             plurality of electronic activities
             identifying participants including a
             sender of the electronic activity and
             one or more recipients of the elec-
             tronic activity;
             determine a data source provider
             associated with providing the one
             or more processors access to the
             electronic activity;
             identify a system of record corre-
             sponding to the determined data
             source provider, the system of rec-
             ord including a plurality of candi-
             date record objects to which to
             match the electronic activity;
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 10                               PEOPLE.AI, INC.    v. CLARI INC.

            determine, responsive to applying
            a first policy including one or more
            filtering rules, that the electronic
            activity is to be matched to at least
            one record object of the identified
            system of record;
            in response to determining that the
            electronic activity is to be matched
            to at least one record object of the
            identified system of record,
            identify a first set of candidate rec-
            ord objects to which to match the
            electronic activity responsive to ap-
            plying a second policy including a
            first set of rules for identifying one
            or more record objects of a first rec-
            ord object type based on an object
            field value of the record object that
            identifies the one or more recipi-
            ents;
            identify a second set of candidate
            record objects to which to match
            the electronic activity responsive to
            applying the second policy includ-
            ing a second set of rules for identi-
            fying candidate record objects
            based on the sender of the elec-
            tronic activity, wherein the second
            policy includes a third set of rules
            for identifying candidate record ob-
            jects of a second record object type;
            select at least one candidate record
            object included in both the first set
            of candidate record objects and the
            second set of candidate record ob-
            jects; and
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                            11

             store, in a data structure, an asso-
             ciation between the selected at
             least one candidate record object
             and the electronic activity.
 ’229 patent col. 144 l. 40–col. 145 l. 25.
                             C. ’129 Patent
     The ’129 patent is entitled “Systems and Methods for
 Matching Electronic Activities to Record Objects of Sys-
 tems of Record with Node Profiles.” Its claims are directed
 to the maintenance and use of node profiles. See, e.g., ’129
 patent col. 195 ll. 22–67. As with the other two patents at
 issue in this appeal, People.ai agreed at oral argument that
 we could limit our analysis to those claims analyzed by the
 district court. Oral Arg. at 14:55–15:15. The district court
 analyzed claim 20 and briefly addressed claims 1, 11, 12,
 19, and 23. Decision at 1199–1205; see also Appellant’s Br.
 10 n.3. On appeal, People.ai makes arguments only as to
 claims 1, 11, 19, and 20. Appellant’s Br. 50–55. We thus
 limit our discussion to those four claims. See Ballard Med.
 Prods., 268 F.3d at 1363.
     Claim 1 of the ’129 patent recites:
     A method comprising:
         maintaining, by one or more processors, a
         plurality of node profiles corresponding to
         a plurality of unique entities, each node
         profile including a plurality of fields, each
         field of the plurality of fields including one
         or more node field values;
         accessing, by the one or more processors, a
         plurality of electronic activities transmit-
         ted or received via electronic accounts asso-
         ciated with one or more data source
         providers, the one or more processors con-
         figured to update the plurality of node
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 12                                PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

         profiles using the plurality of electronic ac-
         tivities;
         maintaining, by the one or more processors,
         a plurality of record objects of one or more
         systems of record, each record object of the
         plurality of record objects comprising one
         or more object fields having one or more ob-
         ject field values;
         extracting, by the one or more processors,
         data included in an electronic activity of
         the plurality of electronic activities;
         matching, by the one or more processors,
         the electronic activity to at least one node
         profile of the plurality of node profiles
         based on determining that the extracted
         data of the electronic activity and the one
         or more values of the fields of the at least
         one node profile satisfy a node profile
         matching policy;
         matching, by the one or more processors,
         the electronic activity to at least one record
         object of the plurality of record objects
         based on the extracted data of the elec-
         tronic activity and object values of the at
         least one record object by:
             identifying, by the one or more pro-
             cessors, responsive to applying at
             least one matching policy of a plu-
             rality of matching policies for iden-
             tifying record objects based on one
             or more recipients of the electronic
             activity and a sender of the elec-
             tronic activity, a set of record ob-
             jects with which to match the
             electronic activity, each record
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                            13

             object of the set identified based on
             the one or more recipients or the
             sender of the electronic activity;
             and
             selecting by the one or more proces-
             sors, the at least one record object
             included in the set of record objects;
             and
         storing, by the one or more processors, in a
         data structure, an association between the
         electronic activity and the at least one rec-
         ord object.
 ’129 patent col. 195 ll. 22–67. Dependent claim 11 depends
 from claim 10, which in turn depends from claim 1; simi-
 larly, claim 19 depends from claim 1. Id. col. 197 ll. 24–40,
 col. 198 l. 56–col. 199 l. 19. Claim 11, by way of dependent
 claim 10, adds limitations directed to matching an elec-
 tronic activity to a record object based on information in
 the relevant node profile. Id. col. 197 ll. 24–40. Claim 19
 adds limitations requiring matching an electronic activity
 to a record object based on “selecting . . . at least one can-
 didate record object included in both the first set of candi-
 date record objects and the second set of candidate record
 objects to match to the electronic activity based on the first
 set of rules and the second set of rules of the matching pol-
 icy.” Id. col. 198 l. 56–col. 199 l. 19.
                      D. District Court Decision
     The district court applied the two-step Alice/Mayo test
 and held that all asserted claims of the ’345, ’229, and ’129
 patents are directed to an abstract idea, lack an inventive
 concept, and are therefore not patent eligible under § 101.
 Decision at 1205–09, 1212. First, the district court com-
 pared the asserted claims to “the activities of a prototypical
 corporate salesperson.” Decision at 1200 (referring to ’129
 patent’s asserted claims); id. at 1206 (identifying corporate
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 14                                PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

 salesperson analogy for ’229 patent’s asserted claims); id.
 at 1208 (reiterating corporate salesperson analogy for ’345
 patent’s asserted claims). The district court explained that
 the corporate salesperson filters and matches communica-
 tions as claimed in the ’345 and ’229 patents when “she dis-
 cards the junk mail before updating the business files she
 maintains with relevant communications.” Id. at 1208
 (’345 patent); see also id. at 1206 (’229 patent). The corpo-
 rate salesperson maintains and uses data structures anal-
 ogous to the claimed node profiles in the ’129 patent when
 she applies business rules (such as checking sender and re-
 cipient) to correspondence to match incoming communica-
 tions to particular contacts and accounts and then updates
 the correct records. Id. at 1200 (’129 patent). The district
 court concluded that the asserted claims “do little else than
 recite a common commercial practice long performed by hu-
 mans.” Id. (’129 patent); see also id. at 1206 (stating that
 the ’229 patent’s asserted claims are directed to “a long
 common practice”); id. at 1208 (stating that the “corporate
 salesperson has long conducted” the activity claimed in the
 ’345 patent’s asserted claims).
     With respect to step two, the district court found no in-
 ventive concept in the asserted claims of any of the patents.
 Id. at 1202–05 (’129 patent); id. at 1206–07 (’229 patent);
 id. at 1208–09 (’345 patent). In sum, it concluded that all
 asserted claims are invalid as patent ineligible under § 101.
 Id. at 1212.
    People.ai appeals.       We have jurisdiction under 28
 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).
                       II.     DISCUSSION
     We review a district court’s grant of judgment on the
 pleadings under the standard of review applied by the re-
 gional circuit, here, the Ninth Circuit. See Data Engine
 Techs. LLC v. Google LLC, 906 F.3d 999, 1007 (Fed. Cir.
 2018). The Ninth Circuit reviews grants of motions for
 judgment on the pleadings de novo, accepting as true all
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 factual allegations in the complaint and viewing those fac-
 tual allegations in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.
 LeGras v. AETNA Life Ins. Co., 786 F.3d 1233, 1236 (9th
 Cir. 2015) (citations omitted).
      “Patent eligibility under § 101 is a question of law that
 may implicate underlying issues of fact.” In re Killian, 45
 F.4th 1373, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2022) (citations omitted). “Pa-
 tent eligibility can be determined on the pleadings under
 Rule 12(c) when there are no factual allegations that, when
 taken as true, prevent resolving the eligibility question as
 a matter of law.” Data Engine Techs., 906 F.3d at 1007
 (citations omitted).
      Under § 101, “[w]hoever invents or discovers any new
 and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition
 of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may
 obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and re-
 quirements of” Title 35 of the United States Code. The Su-
 preme Court has long held that there is an “implicit
 exception” in § 101—“[l]aws of nature, natural phenomena,
 and abstract ideas are not patentable.” Alice Corp. Pty. v.
 CLS Bank Int’l Ltd., 573 U.S. 208, 216 (2014) (quoting
 Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 569
 U.S. 576, 589 (2013)). The Supreme Court has established
 a two-step test for determining whether claims fall within
 one of the judicial exceptions. Alice, 573 U.S. at 217–18;
 Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Lab’ys, Inc., 566
 U.S. 66, 77–78 (2012). At step one, we “determine whether
 the claims at issue are directed to a patent-ineligible con-
 cept,” such as an abstract idea. Alice, 573 U.S. at 218. If
 the claims are directed to a patent-ineligible concept, we
 “examine the elements of the claim to determine whether
 it contains an inventive concept sufficient to transform the
 claimed abstract idea into a patent-eligible application” at
 step two. Id. at 221 (internal quotation marks omitted)
 (quoting Mayo, 566 U.S. at 72, 80).
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 16                                 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

     The asserted claims of the ’345, ’229, and ’129 patents
 are directed to an abstract idea at Alice/Mayo step one and
 lack a saving inventive concept at Alice/Mayo step two.
 Therefore, the asserted claims are patent ineligible.
                          A. ’345 Patent
     We agree with the district court that, under Alice/Mayo
 step one, claim 11 of the ’345 patent is “directed to the ab-
 stract idea of data processing by restricting certain data
 from further analysis based on various sets of generic
 rules.” Decision at 1208. And like the district court, we
 can find no inventive concept to save this claim from patent
 ineligibility at Alice/Mayo step two. See id. at 1208–09.
 Similarly, we hold that claim 18, the only other ’345 patent
 claim about which People.ai makes any specific argument
 in its briefing before this court, is directed to an abstract
 idea at Alice/Mayo step one and lacks a redeeming in-
 ventive concept at Alice/Mayo step two.
                   i.     Alice/Mayo Step One
      Claim 11 is a system claim that relies on “one or more
 processors” configured to perform the following steps:
 (1) identify a first and a second electronic activity (e.g.,
 emails); (2) determine that the first electronic activity is
 sent or received by a certain electronic account by parsing
 the first electronic activity; (3) determine that the second
 electronic activity is sent or received by a certain electronic
 account by parsing the second electronic activity; (4) select
 a filtering policy that includes at least one of (i) a keyword
 policy, (ii) a regex pattern policy, or (iii) a logic-based pol-
 icy; (5) apply the filtering policy “to restrict the first elec-
 tronic activity from being matched with one or more record
 objects;” (6) apply the filtering policy and match the second
 electronic activity to a record object based on a “match pol-
 icy;” and (7) transmit to a system of record (e.g., CRM) “in-
 structions to store an association between the second
 electronic activity and the first record object in the system
 of record.” ’345 patent col. 192 l. 57–col. 193 l. 53. Our
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 understanding of the claim matches, almost exactly, the
 district court’s explanation of claim 11. Decision at 1208.
 And as the district court found, this claimed system accom-
 plishes the same ends using the same steps long under-
 taken by a salesperson or corporate mailroom sorting
 correspondence and setting aside certain correspondence
 for further processing and filing. Id.
     The Supreme Court has held that “fundamental . . .
 practice[s] long prevalent in our system of commerce” are
 abstract ideas. Alice, 573 U.S. at 219–20 (quoting Bilski v.
 Kappos, 561 U.S. 593, 611 (2010)). As we have found in
 other cases, “[a]utomation or digitization of a conventional
 method of organizing human activity . . . does not bring the
 claims out of the realm of abstractness.” Weisner v. Google
 LLC, 51 F.4th 1073, 1083 (Fed. Cir. 2022); see also Credit
 Acceptance Corp. v. Westlake Servs., 859 F.3d 1044, 1055
 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (“Our prior cases have made clear that
 mere automation of manual processes using generic com-
 puters does not constitute a patentable improvement in
 computer technology.”). The ’345 patent confirms that the
 claimed invention is directed to replacement of an already
 existing manual process of updating systems of record with
 an automated process, and the benefits of its claims are im-
 provements to accuracy, speed, and efficiency—benefits in-
 herent in automation. See, e.g., ’345 patent col. 50 ll.
 12–37. The asserted claims of the ’345 patent are similar
 to those we have found patent ineligible in other cases.
      In Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Symantec Corp., we
 held that claims directed to a “method of filtering emails”
 “to address the problems of spam e-mail and the use of e-
 mail to deliver computer viruses” were directed to an ab-
 stract idea. 838 F.3d 1307, 1313 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (Syman-
 tec). We explained that “it was long-prevalent practice for
 people receiving paper mail to look at an envelope and dis-
 card certain letters, without opening them, from sources
 from which they did not wish to receive mail based on char-
 acteristics of the mail.” Id. at 1314. And we held that
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 18                                PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

 applying that “well-known idea using generic computers to
 the particular technological environment of the Internet” is
 directed to an abstract idea. Id. (internal quotation marks
 omitted) (citation omitted).
      In University of Florida Research Foundation, Inc. v.
 General Electric Co., we addressed claims for receiving and
 converting physiologic treatment data from bedside ma-
 chines from a machine-specific format into a machine-inde-
 pendent format, processing that data, and displaying the
 results. 916 F.3d 1363, 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2019). Previously,
 this treatment data had been entered into information sys-
 tems manually, which was error-prone, “time-consuming
 and expensive.” Id. at 1367 (citation omitted). The patent
 at issue proposed “replacing the ‘pen and paper methodol-
 ogies’ with ‘data synthesis technology’ in the form of ‘device
 drivers written for the various bedside machines’ that al-
 low the bedside device to present data from the various
 bedside machines ‘in a configurable fashion within a single
 interface.’” Id. (citation omitted). We found that the patent
 “acknowledges that data from bedside machines was previ-
 ously collected, analyzed, manipulated, and displayed
 manually, and it simply proposes doing so with a com-
 puter”—“a quintessential ‘do it on a computer’ patent.” Id.
 (citations omitted). Automation of the previously manual
 process “conserve[d] human resources and minimize[d] er-
 rors.” Id. But we held that even though the automation
 might “result in life altering consequences,” a “laudable”
 outcome, that improvement “does not render it any less ab-
 stract.” Id. (citation omitted).
     The asserted claims of the ’345 patent, like the claims
 in Symantec and University of Florida Research Founda-
 tion, are directed to automation of a long prevalent manual
 process. Symantec is particularly relevant, as that case
 dealt with claims directed to a method of “filtering emails”
 akin to the ’345 patent’s claims to filtering a first and a
 second “electronic activity.” See Symantec, 838 F.3d at
 1313. In Symantec, the goal of the claims was to filter out
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                              19

 harmful or spam e-mail. Id. In the ’345 patent, the goal of
 the claims is to filter out certain “electronic activities,” in-
 cluding emails, leaving only useful electronic activity for
 inclusion in a system of record. See, e.g., ’345 patent ab-
 stract. Like Symantec, it was a long prevalent practice for
 salespeople receiving correspondence to set aside certain
 correspondence based on its characteristics and to file or
 further process other correspondence, as called for by the
 claims of the ’345 patent. See 838 F.3d at 1314 (“[I]t was
 long-prevalent practice for people receiving paper mail to
 . . . discard certain letters . . . based on characteristics of
 the mail.”). That the claimed automation leads to expected
 improvements in speed, accuracy, and completeness is
 laudable, but as we explained in University of Florida Re-
 search Foundation, the inherent benefits of automation
 “do[] not render it any less abstract.” See 916 F.3d at 1367.
      People.ai seeks to distinguish Symantec by arguing
 that the Symantec claims used computers to filter emails
 in the same way that the manual process had long been
 performed, whereas the asserted claims of the ’345 patent
 “recite a specific series of steps with specific kinds of rule-
 based filtering policies (e.g., keyword policy, regex pattern,
 or specific kinds of logic-based policies), with the filtering
 policies selected at a particular level of granularity, that
 together differs from the judgment-based process previ-
 ously used by humans.” Appellant’s Reply Br. 17. Peo-
 ple.ai asserts that the ’345 patent’s claims are more like
 those we found patent eligible in McRO or Finjan. Appel-
 lant’s Br. 31–36 (first citing McRO, Inc. v. Bandai Namco
 Games Am. Inc., 837 F.3d 1299 (Fed. Cir. 2016); and then
 citing Finjan, Inc. v. Blue Coat Sys., Inc., 879 F.3d 1299
 (Fed. Cir. 2018)); Appellant’s Reply Br. 16–18. It argues
 that the claimed system replaces a manual “subjective pro-
 cess with an automated objective and rules-based process,”
 filtering electronic activities in a fundamentally different
 way than people did manually, which improves the
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 20                                PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

 functionality of existing CRM systems.        Appellant’s Br.
 29–30. We disagree.
      Automation of a manual process may not be an abstract
 idea if the automated process differs from the manual pro-
 cess and provides “a specific means or method that im-
 proves the relevant technology.” See McRO, 837 F.3d at
 1314–15 (citing Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 822 F.3d
 1327, 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2016)). In McRO, we held that using
 unconventional rules in the ordered combination of claimed
 steps of patents related to “automating part of a preexist-
 ing 3–D animation method” were not directed to an ab-
 stract idea at Alice/Mayo step one. Id. at 1302–03. The fact
 that the steps employed by the claims in McRO differed
 from those previously employed in the manual process was
 critical to our conclusion. See id. at 1302–03 (“We hold that
 the ordered combination of claimed steps, using unconven-
 tional rules that relate sub-sequences of phonemes, tim-
 ings, and morph weight sets, is not directed to an abstract
 idea and is therefore patent-eligible subject matter under
 § 101.” (emphasis added)); see also FairWarning IP, LLC v.
 Iatric Sys., Inc., 839 F.3d 1089, 1094 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (ex-
 plaining that “the traditional process and newly claimed
 method [at issue in McRO] stood in contrast: while both
 produced a similar result, i.e., realistic animations of facial
 movements accompanying speech, the two practices pro-
 duced those results in fundamentally different ways”).
 Moreover, the claims incorporating the unconventional
 rules provided “a specific asserted improvement in com-
 puter animation” by “allowing computers to produce ‘accu-
 rate and realistic lip synchronization and facial
 expressions in animated characters.’” McRO, 837 F.3d at
 1313–14 (citation omitted).
     In Finjan, the claims involved generating a “security
 profile” of a downloadable item via a “behavior-based” virus
 scan with “information about potentially hostile opera-
 tions.” 879 F.3d at 1304. As in McRO, we found it im-
 portant that the claimed method differed from the
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                               21

 traditional method. Id. at 1304–06 (finding eligible at Al-
 ice/Mayo step one claims requiring a virus scanning secu-
 rity profile including “information about potentially hostile
 operations produced by a ‘behavior-based’ virus scan” in
 contrast to “traditional, ‘code-matching’ virus scans that
 are limited to recognizing the presence of previously-iden-
 tified viruses, typically by comparing the code in a down-
 loadable to a database of known suspicious code”). We also
 found that the claims in Finjan were “directed to a non-
 abstract improvement in computer functionality” by im-
 proving the virus scanning capability of computer security
 systems. Id. at 1305.
     Here, the steps claimed in ’345 patent claim 11 do not
 differ from those previously used in the long-prevalent man-
 ual practice of selecting certain communications for further
 processing and filing in a CRM or other system of records—
 despite People.ai’s contrary argument.
     Claim 11 of the ’345 patent allows for three possible
 types of filtering rules:
     i) a keyword policy configured to identify electronic
     activities including a predetermined keyword;
     ii) a regex pattern policy configured to identify elec-
     tronic activities including one or more character
     strings that match a predetermined regex pattern;
     or
     iii) a logic-based policy configured to identify elec-
     tronic activities based on participants of the elec-
     tronic activities satisfying a predetermined group
     of participants.
 ’345 patent col. 193 ll. 17–26. Salespeople have long fil-
 tered their correspondence according to rules falling within
 these broad categories of “filtering policies.” For example,
 the “logic-based policy” would be used by a salesperson
 choosing not to send e-mails from his or her spouse to a
 CRM (or before the advent of CRMs, choosing not to file
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 22                                PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

 them in his or her business records). The ’345 patent con-
 firms that this type of long-practiced filtering is contem-
 plated by the claims. Id. col. 88 ll. 25–44 (“The filtering
 engine 270 can maintain user-specific filtering policies that
 include one or more rules defined for specific users. . . . In
 another example, the user may define a rule to restrict
 emails sent to the user’s spouse at a given company to be
 linked to record objects of the company.”). People.ai’s as-
 sertion that this automated objective rule differs from the
 subjective filtering traditionally used by salespeople is un-
 availing. A salesperson seeking to not save personal corre-
 spondence in his or her business records would use the
 same rule (excluding from records emails from a spouse’s
 email address) and do so either manually or by using an
 automated rule. The claims of the ’345 patent, unlike those
 addressed in McRO, do not claim a different method than
 that traditionally used long before the application of com-
 puter technology to the problem of sorting correspondence.
      The claims of the ’345 patent, also unlike those ad-
 dressed in McRO and Finjan, do not improve computer
 functionality. Although the claimed automation of sorting
 correspondence may improve speed and accuracy, this im-
 provement comes from replacing a human with a computer
 in that sorting procedure. In such cases, “the focus of the
 claims is not on . . . an improvement in computers as tools,
 but on certain independently abstract ideas that use com-
 puters as tools.” FairWarning IP, 839 F.3d at 1095 (first
 citing Bancorp Servs., L.L.C. v. Sun Life Assurance Co. of
 Can. (U.S.), 687 F.3d 1266, 1278 (Fed. Cir. 2012); and then
 citing Elec. Power Grp., LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350,
 1354 (Fed. Cir. 2016)). That principle applies here.
     People.ai asserts that the asserted claims of the ’345
 patent differ from the traditional process because manu-
 ally practicing all of the steps of these claims:
      would require opening and reading all incoming
      and outgoing communications at a company (as
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                            23

     well as monitoring all phone calls and meetings);
     determining the sender and recipients of each com-
     munication; selecting different rules-based filter-
     ing policies depending on the account associated
     with the particular sender or recipient; reading the
     content of all of those communications in order to
     identify relevant business information and apply
     the selected filtering policies; applying the rules-
     based filtering policies to assess whether the com-
     munication should be logged as relevant to partic-
     ular sales opportunities or instead excluded; then
     logging the appropriate information in the correct
     account or opportunity record in a place where
     salespeople, company leadership, and other corpo-
     rate systems could then make use of that infor-
     mation.
 Appellant’s Br. 46 (emphases in original).
      People.ai’s arguments are not tethered to the asserted
 claims. For example, claim 11 requires analysis of only two
 communications (“identify a first electronic activity and a
 second electronic activity”), not analysis of every communi-
 cation into and out of a company. Compare ’345 patent col.
 192 ll. 60–61 with Appellant’s Br. 46. Similarly, claim 11
 does not require the claimed system to “read[] the content
 of all of those communications in order to identify relevant
 business information.” Compare ’345 patent col. 193 ll. 1–
 13 with Appellant’s Br. 46. Rather, claim 11 requires that
 the processor(s) “parse the first electronic activity to iden-
 tify one or more electronic accounts associated with at least
 the sender or the one or more recipients of the first elec-
 tronic activity”—not necessarily read the content of all
 communications. ’345 patent col. 193 ll. 1–4. Finally, claim
 11 does not require the claimed system to “log[] the appro-
 priate information in the correct account or opportunity
 record in a place where salespeople, company leadership,
 and other corporate systems could then make use of that
 information.” Compare ’345 patent col. 193 ll. 51–53 with
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 24                                PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

 Appellant’s Br. 46. Rather, it requires the system to “trans-
 mit, to the system of record, instructions to store an asso-
 ciation between the second electronic activity and the first
 record object in the system of record”—not necessarily in a
 place where specific people can access the information.
 ’345 patent col. 193 ll. 51–53.
     After weeding out the steps not required by the claims
 from People.ai’s argument, three steps remain: “determin-
 ing the sender and recipients of each communication; se-
 lecting different rules-based filtering policies depending on
 the account associated with the particular sender or recip-
 ient;” and “applying the rules-based filtering policies to as-
 sess whether the communication should be logged as
 relevant to particular sales opportunities or instead ex-
 cluded.” Appellant’s Br. 46. As we discussed above, we see
 no difference between these limitations and the steps em-
 ployed by the prototypical salesperson in the manual pro-
 cess.
     Lastly, People.ai argues that claim 18’s “node profile[]”
 limitations provide an additional concrete limitation ren-
 dering it patent eligible at Alice/Mayo step one. Appellant’s
 Br. 30; ’345 patent col. 194 ll. 34–52. People.ai argues that
 the claimed node profile is a specific data structure that
 allows for “matching and filtering based on information
 that is not in the CRM.” Appellant’s Br. 30; see also id. at
 34–35. People.ai argues that by doing some analysis out-
 side the CRM, the claims permit bulk updating of a CRM
 and solve a network traffic limitation imposed by certain
 CRMs. Id. at 31.
     The district court found that People.ai did not mean-
 ingfully distinguish the limitations of claim 18 from claim
 11 and concluded that claim 18 was directed to the same
 abstract idea: “data processing by restricting certain data
 from further analysis based on various sets of generic
 rules.” Decision at 1208–09. We agree. People.ai’s argu-
 ments fail because the node profile, as described by the
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                            25

 specification and discussed by the district court, is merely
 a computerized version of a rolodex entry or file corre-
 sponding to an individual, such as a specific customer, in a
 filing cabinet. The district court stated that node profiles
 are “data profiles that store information on various enti-
 ties, such as a person’s name and email address.” Id. at
 1199. On appeal, People.ai agrees with that definition and
 points to it in connection with claim 18 of the ’345 patent.
 Appellant’s Br. 13 (“The specification explains that ‘node
 profiles’ are ‘data profiles that store information on various
 entities, such as a person’s name and email address.’”) (ci-
 tation omitted). Moreover, People.ai asserts that the node
 profiles solve a specific technological problem created by
 some CRMs, such as Salesforce, that limit the number of
 daily interactions a user may have with the CRM, Appel-
 lant’s Br. 31, but the claims are not limited to CRMs. That
 is, there is no evidence of a technological problem with the
 claimed systems of record, nor does claim 18 present a tech-
 nological solution; rather it presents a conventional solu-
 tion to a conventional problem of data organization.
     In conclusion, the asserted claims of the ’345 patent are
 directed to the abstract idea of “data processing by restrict-
 ing certain data from further analysis based on various sets
 of generic rules.” See Decision at 1208. This is a longstand-
 ing process. As we have held in several prior cases, auto-
 mation of a longstanding manual process is not patent
 eligible at Alice/Mayo step one. See, e.g., Symantec, 838
 F.3d at 1313–16; Univ. of Fla. Rsch. Found., 916 F.3d at
 1367. Nor do the benefits of that automation, such as in-
 creased accuracy or efficiency, render the automated pro-
 cess patent eligible at Alice/Mayo step one. Thus, the
 asserted claims of the ’345 patent, as exemplified by claims
 11 and 18, are directed to an abstract idea at Alice/Mayo
 step one.
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 26                                 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

                    ii.    Alice/Mayo Step Two
     We find no inventive concept in either claim 11 or claim
 18 of the ’345 patent sufficient to render those claims pa-
 tent eligible at Alice/Mayo step two.
      We have repeatedly held that “[t]he abstract idea itself
 cannot supply the inventive concept.” Am. Axle & Mfg.,
 Inc. v. Neapco Holdings LLC, 967 F.3d 1285, 1299 (Fed.
 Cir. 2020) (collecting citations) (citations omitted); see also
 Trading Techs. Int’l, Inc. v. IBG LLC, 921 F.3d 1378, 1385
 (Fed. Cir. 2019). Here, as already discussed above, claim
 11 of the ’345 patent requires a system to (1) identify a first
 and a second electronic activity (e.g., emails); (2) determine
 that the first electronic activity is sent or received by a cer-
 tain electronic account by parsing the first electronic activ-
 ity; (3) determine that the second electronic activity is sent
 or received by a certain electronic account by parsing the
 second electronic activity; (4) select a filtering policy that
 includes at least one of (i) a keyword policy, (ii) a regex pat-
 tern policy, or (iii) a logic-based policy; (5) apply the filter-
 ing policy “to restrict the first electronic activity from being
 matched with one or more record objects;” (6) apply the fil-
 tering policy and match the second electronic activity to a
 record object based on a “match policy;” and (7) transmit to
 a system of record (e.g., CRM) “instructions to store an as-
 sociation between the second electronic activity and the
 first record object in the system of record.” ’345 patent col.
 192 l. 57–193 l. 53. Those steps are all necessary parts of
 the abstract idea of “data processing by restricting certain
 data from further analysis based on various sets of generic
 rules.” They cannot supply the inventive concept.

     The features of claim 11 not recited in the above para-
 graph are generic computer features: “A system compris-
 ing: one or more processors coupled with memory and
 configured by machine-readable instructions.” ’345 patent
 col 192 ll. 57–59. “[T]he mere recitation of a generic com-
 puter cannot transform a patent-ineligible abstract idea
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                               27

 into a patent-eligible invention.” Alice, 573 U.S. at 223.
 Claims directed to performance of a longstanding manual
 process on a generic computer may lead to laudable in-
 creases in efficiency or accuracy (the exact kinds of im-
 provements computerization is expected to yield in all
 cases), but lack an inventive concept which might render
 them patent eligible at Alice/Mayo step two. Intell. Ven-
 tures I LLC v. Cap. One Bank (USA), 792 F.3d 1363, 1367
 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (Cap. One) (“Nor, in addressing the second
 step of Alice, does claiming the improved speed or efficiency
 inherent with applying the abstract idea on a computer
 provide a sufficient inventive concept.”).
      People.ai asserts that the inventive concept can be
 found in (1) the ordered combination of steps recited “to ex-
 tract data from bulk communications activities,” Appel-
 lant’s Br. 37; (2) the filtering rules of claim 11, id. at 38–39;
 and (3) the node profiles of claim 18, id. at 41, 44. People.ai
 argues that the district court oversimplified the claims by
 neglecting the aforementioned limitations. Id. at 44–50. It
 contends that the claims of the ’345 patent are more spe-
 cific than—and thus distinguishable from—the claims that
 this court held patent ineligible in Symantec. Id. at 41–42.
 It argues that the claims of the ’345 patent are like those
 found patent eligible at Alice/Mayo step two in BASCOM
 and Amdocs. Id. at 38–41 (first citing BASCOM Glob. In-
 ternet Servs., Inc. v. AT&T Mobility LLC, 827 F.3d 1341
 (Fed. Cir. 2016); and then citing Amdocs (Israel) Ltd. v.
 Openet Telecom, Inc., 841 F.3d 1288 (Fed. Cir. 2016)). Fi-
 nally, People.ai argues that the Defendants had to produce
 evidence that the claimed system was in routine or conven-
 tional use. Appellant’s Br. 38, 46. We do not find these
 arguments persuasive.
     As to People.ai’s argument that an inventive concept
 can be found in the asserted claims’ ordered combination of
 steps, the ordered combination of steps are exactly the
 same steps that a salesperson would have traditionally un-
 dertaken to filter and sort his or her correspondence by
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 28                               PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

 hand.     See Two-Way Media Ltd. v. Comcast Cable
 Commc’ns, LLC, 874 F.3d 1329, 1341 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (“The
 steps are organized in a completely conventional way—
 data are first processed, sent, and once sent, information
 about the transmission is recorded.”). The ordered combi-
 nation of steps, which matches the ordered combination of
 steps traditionally practiced by people manually, are them-
 selves part of the abstract idea and “cannot supply the in-
 ventive concept.” See Am. Axle, 967 F.3d at 1299 (citation
 omitted). Our conclusion is confirmed by People.ai’s iden-
 tification of the purported benefit of the asserted claims—
 avoiding the pitfalls of manual data entry by using a com-
 puter to implement “tailored, objective selection of relevant
 business activities to identify relevant communications
 and their relationships to particular accounts and sales op-
 portunities, particularly with the nuance and accuracy that
 the People.ai system’s architecture allows for.” Appellant’s
 Br. 37–38. These improvements in speed, cost, and accu-
 racy are benefits of using computers for automation gener-
 ally and do not result from some other inventive concept.
 The ordered combination of steps in the ’345 patent’s
 claims 11 and 18 do not provide an inventive concept.
     People.ai’s argument that the filtering rules recited in
 claim 11 provide an inventive concept leads to the same
 conclusion. Because these filtering rules are part of the ab-
 stract idea itself, they cannot provide an inventive concept.
     People.ai’s arguments about claim 18’s “node profiles”
 are not tethered to claim 18. People.ai argues that there is
 no conventional “brick-and-mortar” mailroom that main-
 tained a “node graph of node profiles to enable the identifi-
 cation, storage, and analysis of data and relationships that
 would otherwise be unrecorded.” 2 Appellant’s Br. 46. But

      2  The ’345 patent’s specification explains that a node
 graph includes “a plurality of nodes and a plurality of edges
 between the nodes indicating activity or relationships.”
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                              29

 as People.ai admits in its reply brief, none of the asserted
 claims require a node graph. Appellant’s Reply Br. 24
 (“[T]he claims themselves do not require a ‘node graph[.]’”).
 And we see no requirement in claim 18 requiring storing
 “relationships” between node profiles. ’345 patent col. 194
 ll. 34–52. “[W]e have repeatedly held that features that are
 not claimed are irrelevant as to step 1 or step 2 of the
 Mayo/Alice analysis.” Am. Axle, 967 F.3d at 1293 (citations
 omitted).
      Claim 18 actually requires a “plurality of node profiles
 corresponding to a plurality of unique entities, each elec-
 tronic account of the one or more electronic accounts linked
 to a respective node profile of the plurality of node profiles.”
 ’345 patent col. 194 ll. 36–39. Claim 18 further requires a
 filtering policy to be applied “based on extracted field-value
 pairs from the node profiles for the participants of the first
 electronic activity.” Id. col. 194 ll. 49–52. The node pro-
 files, as actually claimed, do not describe an unconven-
 tional architecture or unconventional assemblage of
 generic parts that might convey an inventive concept. Peo-
 ple.ai agrees with the district court’s definition of “node

 ’345 patent col. 6 ll. 40–44. Each field in a node profile can
 include “one or more value data structures,” including a
 value, an “occurrence metric” indicating “a level of cer-
 tainty” that the recorded value is correct and can record the
 specific data source and electronic activity from which each
 value was derived. Id. col. 15 ll. 15–37, col. 18 ll. 9–17. As
 more data is added, the node graph can use that additional
 data “to populate missing fields or add new values to exist-
 ing fields, reinforce field values that have low confidence
 scores and further increase the confidence score of field val-
 ues, adjust confident scores of certain data points, and
 identify patterns or make deductions based on the values
 of various fields of node profiles of nodes included in the
 graph.” Id. col. 12 ll. 55–65.
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 30                               PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

 profiles”: “data profiles that store information on various
 entities, such as a person’s name and email address.” Ap-
 pellant’s Br. 13 (quoting Decision at 1199 when describing
 the claimed node profiles of claim 18). This is not an un-
 conventional architecture. Instead, it is an electronic ro-
 lodex or an electronic filing cabinet used to store business
 correspondence and records with files for each customer.
      People.ai argues that the asserted claims of the ’345
 patent are more detailed than and thus distinguishable at
 Alice/Mayo step two from those that this court found patent
 ineligible in Symantec. Id. at 41–42. People.ai argues that
 the asserted claims’ requirements of “selection of specific
 kinds of objective rules, using a particular architecture,
 to . . . replac[e] subjective human judgment and data entry”
 distinguish the ’345 patent’s asserted claims. Id. at 42.
 This argument fails for the same reason discussed above—
 the “objective” rules permitted by the asserted claims in-
 clude those used by a person manually filtering his or her
 correspondence and entering data. See Symantec, 838 F.3d
 at 1314–16 (claiming a “long-prevalent practice” without
 “improv[ing] the functioning of the computer itself” insuffi-
 cient to render claims patentable) (citations omitted).
     People.ai’s argument that the asserted claims of the
 ’345 patent are analogous to those we found patent eligible
 at Alice/Mayo step two in BASCOM also fails.               In
 BASCOM, we found that claims were directed to the ab-
 stract idea of “filtering content on the Internet.” 827 F.3d
 at 1348. At Alice/Mayo step two, we explained that “an in-
 ventive concept can be found in the non-conventional and
 non-generic arrangement of known, conventional pieces.”
 Id. at 1350. And we found that the claims in BASCOM had
 such an inventive concept: “the installation of a filtering
 tool at a specific location, remote from the end-users, with
 customizable filtering features specific to each end user,”
 which “gives the filtering tool both the benefits of a filter
 on a local computer and the benefits of a filter on the ISP
 server.” Id. We emphasized that “[t]he claims do not
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                            31

 merely recite the abstract idea of filtering content along
 with the requirement to perform it on the Internet, or to
 perform it on a set of generic computer components.” Id.
 “Such claims would not contain an inventive concept.” Id.
 (citation omitted). The claims of the ’345 patent are such
 claims. Unlike the claims in BASCOM that contained the
 technological improvement of permitting customizable fil-
 tering at a specific location coupled with the benefits of re-
 mote filtering at the ISP server, 827 F.3d at 1350, the
 claims of the ’345 patent do not require installation of the
 filtering tool at a specific location yielding technologically
 unique benefits. Rather, the claims mirror the manual pro-
 cess performed in corporate mailrooms long before the ’345
 patent’s proposed automation, and the cited benefits are
 only those expected of any automation—increased speed
 and accuracy—benefits which we explained did not provide
 an inventive concept in Symantec. See 838 F.3d at 1315
 (“‘[C]laiming the improved speed or efficiency inherent
 with applying the abstract idea on a computer’ does not
 ‘provide a sufficient inventive concept.’” (quoting Cap. One,
 792 F.3d at 1367)).
     People.ai’s comparison to Amdocs is similarly unavail-
 ing. In Amdocs, one of the claims at issue “entail[ed] an
 unconventional technological solution (enhancing data in a
 distributed fashion) to a technological problem (massive
 record flows which previously required massive data-
 bases).” 841 F.3d at 1300. Although the solution required
 generic components, it “necessarily require[d] that these
 generic components operate in an unconventional manner
 to achieve an improvement in computer functionality.” Id.
 at 1300–01. Unlike the claim in Amdocs, the claims of the
 ’345 patent seek to solve a conventional problem (slow and
 error-prone manual data entry) with a conventional solu-
 tion (automation of manual data entry). Like the claim in
 Amdocs, the claims of the ’345 patent require generic com-
 puter components, but unlike the claim in Amdocs, they do
 not require those components to operate in an
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 32                                PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

 unconventional manner. Thus, Amdocs does not compel us
 to find that the claims of the ’345 patent have an inventive
 concept at step two.
      Finally, People.ai argues that the asserted claims of
 the ’345 patent cannot be held patent ineligible because the
 Defendants cited no evidence showing that “the claims re-
 cite an invention that is [] merely the routine or conven-
 tional use” of generic computer components and therefore
 failed to bear their burden of showing invalidity by clear
 and convincing evidence. Appellant’s Br. 38 (quoting DDR
 Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P., 773 F.3d 1245, 1259
 (Fed. Cir. 2014)). The Defendants argue that People.ai’s
 evidentiary argument is a red herring because the claimed
 steps merely spell out the abstract idea of filtering and fil-
 ing emails and the abstract idea cannot provide the in-
 ventive concept. Appellees’ Br. 50. We agree with the
 Defendants.
       “[W]hether a claim recites patent eligible subject mat-
 ter is a question of law[,] which may contain underlying
 facts.” Berkheimer v. HP Inc., 881 F.3d 1360, 1368 (Fed.
 Cir. 2018) (citations omitted). “Any fact . . . pertinent to
 the invalidity conclusion must be proven by clear and con-
 vincing evidence.” Id. (citing Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd.
 P’ship, 564 U.S. 91, 95 (2011)). But “not every § 101 deter-
 mination contains genuine disputes over the underlying
 facts material to the § 101 inquiry.” Id. (citations omitted).
 This is one such case where there is no genuine dispute
 over the underlying material facts. It is undisputed that
 the computer components recited by the asserted claims of
 the ’345 patent (“one or more processors coupled with
 memory and configured by machine-readable instructions,”
 ’345 patent col. 192 ll. 58–59) are generic. And the method
 being performed on those generic components matches the
 manual process conventionally performed by a salesperson,
 i.e., the abstract idea itself under Alice/Mayo step one.
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                               33

     We conclude that there is no inventive concept in
 claims 11 or 18 of the ’345 patent. And as People.ai made
 no specific arguments about any other claim, we conclude
 that the asserted claims of the ’345 patent lack an in-
 ventive concept. We affirm the district court’s decision that
 the asserted claims of the ’345 patent are patent ineligible
 under § 101. See Decision at 1208–09.
                             B. ’229 Patent
     We reach the same result for the asserted claims of the
 ’229 patent. At Alice/Mayo step one, claim 19 of the ’229
 patent is directed to the same abstract idea as the asserted
 claims of the ’345 patent. And we, like the district court,
 can find no saving inventive concept at Alice/Mayo step
 two. Decision at 1205–07.
      Claim 19, like claim 11 of the ’345 patent, requires a
 filtering policy. Unlike claim 11 of the ’345 patent, claim
 19 does not restrict the filtering policy to a type or types of
 rules. See ’229 patent col. 144 l. 40–col. 145 l. 25. Rather,
 with respect to the filtering policy, it says only: “determine,
 responsive to applying a first policy including one or more
 filtering rules, that the electronic activity is to be matched
 to at least one record object of the identified system of rec-
 ord.” Id. col. 144 l. 66–col. 145 l. 2. Claim 19 requires var-
 ious other rules, but it similarly does not provide any
 specificity as to those rules: “identify a first set of candidate
 record objects to which to match the electronic activity re-
 sponsive to applying a second policy including a first set of
 rules for identifying one or more record objects of a first rec-
 ord object type based on an object field value of the record
 object that identifies the one or more recipients;” and “iden-
 tify a second set of candidate record objects to which to
 match the electronic activity responsive to applying the
 second policy including a second set of rules for identifying
 candidate record objects based on the sender of the elec-
 tronic activity, wherein the second policy includes a third
 set of rules for identifying candidate record objects of a
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 34                                PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

 second record object type.” Id. col. 145 ll. 6–18 (emphases
 added). These limitations do nothing to distinguish the
 claims of the ’229 patent from those of the ’345 patent al-
 ready found to be abstract at Alice/Mayo step one above.
     People.ai makes the same arguments with respect to
 the ’229 patent as it makes with respect to the ’345 patent,
 see Appellant’s Br. 28–50, and those arguments fail for the
 same reasons. The only new argument People.ai advances
 as to the ’229 patent is that its claims require data storage
 on a local processor outside of the CRM and that this addi-
 tional requirement, which the ’345 patent lacks, makes the
 claims of the ’229 patent not abstract. Id. at 31; Appellant’s
 Reply Br. 13. People.ai also argues that this local storage
 requirement renders the asserted claims of the ’229 patent
 eligible at Alice/Mayo step two. Appellant’s Br. 41. Peo-
 ple.ai’s argument is not persuasive.
     Even assuming the ’229 patent’s claims require the use
 of local storage—an argument the district court rejected,
 Decision at 1206, local storage of information is not suffi-
 cient in this case to render the asserted claims patent eli-
 gible. Wherever the associations are stored, the idea
 underlying the ’229 patent’s claims is abstract. Storing as-
 sociations locally for bulk upload to a system of record, such
 as a CRM, is itself an abstract idea. It is similar to a cor-
 porate mailroom, which might sort mail according to filter-
 ing policies, match mail to certain filing locations or
 recipients, and then store that mail in the mailroom until
 delivering it in bulk once a day. This local storage require-
 ment cannot provide the inventive concept.
                         C. ’129 Patent
     The asserted claims of the ’129 patent are similar to
 those of the ’345 and ’229 patents, and they fail both steps
 of the Alice/Mayo test for many of the same reasons. In
 People.ai’s own words: “Claim 1 of the ’129 Patent recites
 a method for constructing and maintaining a node graph
 based on data extracted from communications activities
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 PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.                             35

 and matched to a CRM.” Appellant’s Br. 50 (citing ’129 pa-
 tent col. 195 ll. 22–67). However, as People.ai admits in its
 reply brief, the claims do not require a node graph but
 merely require a plurality of node profiles. Appellant’s Re-
 ply Br. 24. And as already explained, “node profiles” are
 “data profiles that store information on various entities,
 such as a person’s name and email address.” Decision at
 1199. Construction and maintenance of these node profiles
 fails both steps of Alice/Mayo. As already explained, node
 profiles are merely an electronic rolodex or an electronic
 filing cabinet used to store business correspondence and
 records with files for each customer.
      The matching policies of claim 1 of the ’129 patent do
 not help. They are generic matching policies that would be
 used by any person to manually associate correspondence
 with an entry in a rolodex or filing cabinet. For example,
 the claimed matching policies are fulfilled by matching an
 electronic activity to a node profile “based on determining
 that the extracted data of the electronic activity and the
 one or more values of the fields of the at least one node pro-
 file satisfy a node profile matching policy” and by matching
 an electronic activity to a record object based on recipient
 or sender. ’129 patent col. 195 ll. 42–61. In other words,
 the matching policies can be fulfilled by filing an electronic
 activity in a digital file folder according to the identity of
 the sender. Claim 1, even when considering the matching
 policies, fails both Alice/Mayo steps for the same reasons
 provided for the ’345 and ’229 patents above.
      Dependent claim 11, in People.ai’s own words, “pro-
 vides for matching an electronic activity to a record object
 based on information that is not in the electronic activity
 itself or stored in the system of record, but instead is stored
 exclusively in a node profile of the node graph.” Appellant’s
 Br. 51. But the fields of the node profile include infor-
 mation such as a “person’s name and email address.” De-
 cision at 1199. The claimed searching for emails using an
 email address is an abstract idea. Furthermore, it does not
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 36                               PEOPLE.AI, INC.   v. CLARI INC.

 provide an inventive concept because, as we explained in
 our analysis of the ’345 patent, “[t]he abstract idea itself
 cannot supply the inventive concept.” Am. Axle, 967 F.3d
 at 1299 (citation omitted).
      Dependent claim 19 (also dependent from claim 1) re-
 quires, in People.ai’s own words, “a specific kind of match-
 ing policy—a policy including two sets of rules (one for
 identifying record objects based on the recipients and the
 other based on the sender)—and that identifies the rele-
 vant records in a particular way (where the record object
 matches both sets of policies).” Appellant’s Br. 51. These
 sets of rules merely organize data according to the sender
 and recipient of a communication. Notably, corporate mail-
 rooms and salespeople have long organized correspondence
 by sender and recipient and filed said correspondence in
 the correct file based on that information. This claim too
 fails both steps of the Alice/Mayo inquiry.
                        CONCLUSION
    We have considered People.ai’s remaining arguments
 and find them unpersuasive. For the reasons discussed
 above, we affirm the district court’s decision.
                        AFFIRMED