Court Opinion

ID: 9955049
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-27 16:01:52.250937+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:15:14.239109
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-1630    Document: 92     Page: 1   Filed: 03/27/2024

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                  ______________________

   HARRIS BRUMFIELD, TRUSTEE FOR ASCENT
                   TRUST,
              Plaintiff-Appellant

                             v.

      IBG LLC, INTERACTIVE BROKERS LLC,
                Defendants-Appellees
               ______________________

                        2022-1630
                  ______________________

     Appeal from the United States District Court for the
 Northern District of Illinois in No. 1:10-cv-00715, Judge
 Virginia M. Kendall.
                 ______________________

                 Decided: March 27, 2024
                 ______________________

     MICHAEL DAVID GANNON, Baker & Hostetler LLP, Chi-
 cago, IL, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented
 by JENNIFER KURCZ, LEIF R. SIGMOND, JR.; ALAINA
 LAKAWICZ, Philadelphia, PA.

     STEFFEN NATHANAEL JOHNSON, Wilson, Sonsini,
 Goodrich & Rosati, PC, Washington, DC, argued for de-
 fendants-appellees. Also represented by KELSEY CURTIS;
 GRANVILLE CLAYTON KAUFMAN, NATALIE J. MORGAN, San
 Diego, CA; MICHAEL BRETT LEVIN, Palo Alto, CA; MICHAEL
 S. SOMMER, New York, NY; NAOYA SON, Los Angeles, CA.
Case: 22-1630     Document: 92     Page: 2    Filed: 03/27/2024

 2                                       BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

                   ______________________

     Before PROST, TARANTO, and HUGHES, Circuit Judges.
 TARANTO, Circuit Judge.
     Trading Technologies International, Inc. (TT)—whose
 successor is the plaintiff-appellant named in the caption—
 brought this action against IBG LLC and its subsidiary In-
 teractive Brokers LLC (together, IBG) in 2010 in the
 Northern District of Illinois, alleging infringement of sev-
 eral TT-owned patents. 1 Four of TT’s patents are at issue
 in this appeal: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,766,304 (issued July 20,
 2004); 6,772,132 (issued August 3, 2004); 7,676,411 (issued
 March 9, 2010); and 7,813,996 (issued October 12, 2010).
 The district court held the asserted claims of the ’411 and
 ’996 patents invalid, and a jury found the asserted claims
 of the ’304 and ’132 patents infringed (and not proved in-
 valid for obviousness) and awarded $6,610,985 in damages,
 resulting in the final judgment now before us.
     Only TT, not IBG, appeals. TT challenges three rulings
 of the district court. First, on cross-motions for summary
 judgment, the district court held that the asserted claims
 of the ’411 and ’996 patents were invalid under 35 U.S.C.
 § 101, while rejecting the § 101 challenge to the asserted
 claims of the ’304 and ’132 patents (with the resulting trial
 limited to a subset of such claims). Trading Technologies
 International, Inc. v. IBG, LLC, No. 10 C 715, 2021 WL

      1  Plaintiff-Appellant Harris Brumfield was the pri-
 mary investor in and majority shareholder of TT, which
 was sold in December 2021, with the rights to the patents
 here at issue assigned to a trust, Ascent Trust. Mr. Brum-
 field, as the sole trustee for Ascent Trust, was then substi-
 tuted for TT as the plaintiff in this action. Like the parties
 and the district court, we refer throughout to plaintiff-ap-
 pellant as Trading Technologies (TT).
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                         3

 2473809, at *5, *7 (N.D. Ill. June 17, 2021) (101 Opinion).
 Second, the district court, acting under Federal Rule of Ev-
 idence 702, excluded one of the damages theories, concern-
 ing foreign activities, proposed by TT’s damages expert.
 Trading Technologies International, Inc. v. IBG LLC, No.
 10 C 715, 2021 WL 5038754, at *2 (N.D. Ill. July 23, 2021)
 (FRE 702 Opinion). Third, the district court denied TT’s
 post-verdict motion for a new trial on damages, a motion in
 which TT alleged that IBG had misrepresented, by state-
 ment or omission, how it was calculating the damages fig-
 ures it presented to the jury. Brumfield, Trustee for Ascent
 Trust v. IB LLC, 586 F. Supp. 3d 827, 830–31 (N.D. Ill.
 2022) (Post-Trial Opinion)
     We reject TT’s challenges. We therefore affirm.
                               I
                               A
      The four patents before us have materially the same
 specification: The application that issued as the ’132 patent
 is the ancestor of the other three patents (so we cite only
 the specification of the ’132 patent). The specification de-
 scribes assertedly improved graphical user interfaces for
 commodity trading and methods for placing trade orders
 using those interfaces. ’132 patent, col. 3, lines 11–20. The
 specification asserts that the improved interfaces allow
 traders to place orders “quickly and efficiently” in volatile
 markets where speed is important. Id., col. 3, line 10; see
 id., col. 2, lines 1–41.
     The claims of the patents differ somewhat, including in
 a respect that plays a role in the analysis of patent eligibil-
 ity under § 101 as that issue is presented to us. The as-
 serted claims of the two patents from 2004 involve an
 interface that, in the words of the ’304 patent, has a “com-
 mon static price axis” along which (changing) bids and asks
 are displayed. ’304 patent, col. 12, lines 41–54 (emphasis
 added). The language of the asserted claims of the ’132
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 4                                         BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

 patent is similar, requiring a “dynamic display of a plural-
 ity of bids and a plurality of asks” in a commodity market,
 “the dynamic display being aligned with a static display of
 prices corresponding thereto, wherein the static display of
 prices does not move in response to a change in the inside
 market,” ’132 patent, col. 12, lines 8–15 (emphases added),
 where “the ‘inside market’ is the highest bid price and the
 lowest ask price,” id., col. 4, lines 58–60.
     The two patents from 2010 are different. The ’411 pa-
 tent, in its claims, requires simply a “price axis,” with no
 requirement that it be static. ’411 patent, col. 12, lines 30–
 39. The same is true, based on claim construction, for the
 ’996 patent. Although that patent’s claims use the phrase
 “static price axis,” the district court, at TT’s urging, con-
 strued that phrase in the ’996 patent to include price axes
 that can be moved in response to “a re-centering or re-posi-
 tioning” command, which can be issued automatically ra-
 ther than by the user. Trading Technologies International,
 Inc. v. IBG LLC, No. 10 C 715, 2019 WL 6609428, at *2–4
 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 5, 2019). In doing so, the district court noted,
 based on the ’996 patent’s prosecution history, that “‘static’
 in the ’996 [p]atent was to be understood in a broader sense
 than the ’132 and ’304 [p]atents.” Id. at *3; see TT’s Open-
 ing Br. at 5–6.
     The following claims are representative for purposes of
 the present appeal—two claims to a method, two to a com-
 puter readable medium hosting code for execution:
     ’304 patent, claim 27. A computer readable me-
     dium having program code recorded thereon for ex-
     ecution on a computer for displaying market
     information relating to and facilitating trading of a
     commodity being traded in an electronic exchange
     having an inside market with a highest bid price
     and a lowest ask price on a graphical user inter-
     face, the program code causing a machine to per-
     form the following steps:
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                       5

        dynamically displaying a first indicator in
        one of a plurality of locations in a bid dis-
        play region, each location in the bid display
        region corresponding to a price level along
        a common static price axis, the first indica-
        tor representing quantity associated with
        at least one order to buy the commodity at
        the highest bid price currently available in
        the market;
        dynamically displaying a second indicator
        in one of a plurality of locations in an ask
        display region, each location in the ask dis-
        play region corresponding to a price level
        along the common static price axis, the sec-
        ond indicator representing quantity associ-
        ated with at least one order to sell the
        commodity at the lowest ask price cur-
        rently available in the market;
        displaying the bid and ask display regions
        in relation to fixed price levels positioned
        along the common static price axis such
        that when the inside market changes, the
        price levels along the common static price
        axis do not move and at least one of the first
        and second indicators moves in the bid or
        ask display regions relative to the common
        static price axis;
        displaying an order entry region compris-
        ing a plurality of locations for receiving
        commands to send trade orders, each loca-
        tion corresponding to a price level along the
        common static price axis; and
        in response to a selection of a particular lo-
        cation of the order entry region by a single
        action of a user input device, setting a plu-
        rality of parameters for a trade order
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 6                                        BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

         relating to the commodity and sending the
         trade order to the electronic exchange.
 ʼ304 patent, col. 14, line 47, through col. 15, line 17.
     ’132 patent, claim 1. A method for placing a trade
     order for a commodity on an electronic exchange
     having an inside market with a highest bid price
     and a lowest ask price, using a graphical user in-
     terface and a user input device, said method com-
     prising:
         setting a preset parameter for the trade or-
         der[;]
         displaying market depth of the commodity,
         through a dynamic display of a plurality of
         bids and a plurality of asks in the market
         for the commodity, including at least a por-
         tion of the bid and ask quantities of the
         commodity, the dynamic display being
         aligned with a static display of prices cor-
         responding thereto, wherein the static dis-
         play of prices does not move in response to
         a change in the inside market;
         displaying an order entry region aligned
         with the static display prices comprising a
         plurality of areas for receiving commands
         from the user input devices to send trade
         orders, each area corresponding to a price
         of the static display of prices; and
         selecting a particular area in the order en-
         try region through single action of the user
         input device with a pointer of the user in-
         put device positioned over the particular
         area to set a plurality of additional param-
         eters for the trade order and send the trade
         order to the electronic exchange.
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                        7

 ʼ132 patent, col. 12, lines 2–26.
     ’411 patent, claim 1. A method of displaying mar-
     ket information relating to and facilitating trading
     of a commodity being traded on an electronic ex-
     change, the method comprising:
         receiving, by a computing device, market
         information for a commodity from an elec-
         tronic exchange, the market information
         comprising an inside market with a current
         highest bid price and a current lowest ask
         price;
         displaying, via the computing device, a bid
         display region comprising a plurality of
         graphical locations, each graphical location
         in the bid display region corresponding to a
         different price level of a plurality of price
         levels along a price axis;
         displaying, via the computing device, an
         ask display region comprising a plurality of
         graphical locations, each graphical location
         in the ask display region corresponding to
         a different price level of the plurality of
         price levels along the price axis;
         dynamically displaying, via the computing
         device, a first indicator representing quan-
         tity associated with at least one trade order
         to buy the commodity at the current high-
         est bid price in a first graphical location of
         the plurality of graphical locations in the
         bid display region, the first graphical loca-
         tion in the bid display region corresponding
         to a price level associated with the current
         highest bid price;
         upon receipt of market information com-
         prising a new highest bid price, moving the
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 8                                       BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

        first indicator relative to the price axis to a
        second graphical location of the plurality of
        graphical locations in the bid display re-
        gion, the second graphical location corre-
        sponding to a price level of the plurality of
        price levels associated with the new high-
        est bid price, wherein the second graphical
        location is different from the first graphical
        location in the bid display region;
        dynamically displaying, via the computing
        device, a second indicator representing
        quantity associated with at least one trade
        order to sell the commodity at the current
        lowest ask price in a first graphical location
        of the plurality of graphical locations in the
        ask display region, the first graphical loca-
        tion in the ask display region correspond-
        ing to a price level associated with the
        current lowest ask price;
        upon receipt of market information com-
        prising a new lowest ask price, moving the
        second indicator relative to the price axis to
        a second graphical location of the plurality
        of graphical locations in the ask display re-
        gion, the second graphical location corre-
        sponding to a price level of the plurality of
        price levels associated with the new lowest
        ask price, wherein the second graphical lo-
        cation is different from the first graphical
        location in the ask display region;
        displaying, via the computing device, an or-
        der entry region comprising a plurality of
        graphical areas for receiving single action
        commands to set trade order prices and
        send trade orders, each graphical area
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                        9

         corresponding to a different price level
         along the price axis; and
         selecting a particular graphical area in the
         order entry region through a single action
         of the user input device to both set a price
         for the trade order and send the trade order
         having a default quantity to the electronic
         exchange.
 ’411 patent, col. 12, line 23, through col. 13, line 16.
     ’996 patent, claim 1. A computer readable me-
     dium having program code recorded thereon for ex-
     ecution on a computer having a graphical user
     interface and a user input device, the program code
     causing a machine to perform the following method
     steps:
         receiving market information for a com-
         modity from an electronic exchange, the
         market information comprising an inside
         market with a current highest bid price
         and a current lowest ask price;
         receiving an input from a user that desig-
         nates a default quantity to be used for a
         plurality of trade orders;
         dynamically displaying a first indicator in
         one of a plurality of locations in a bid dis-
         play region, each location in the bid display
         region corresponding to a price level along
         a static price axis, the first indicator repre-
         senting quantity associated with at least
         one order to buy the commodity at the cur-
         rent highest bid price;
         dynamically displaying a second indicator
         in one of a plurality of locations in an ask
         display region, each location in the ask
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 10                                      BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

         display region corresponding to a price
         level along the static price axis, the second
         indicator representing quantity associated
         with at least one order to sell the commod-
         ity at the current lowest ask price;
         displaying the bid and ask display regions
         in relation to a plurality of price levels ar-
         ranged along the static price axis such that
         when the inside market changes, the price
         levels along the static price axis do not
         change positions and at least one of the
         first and second indicators moves in the bid
         or ask display regions relative to the static
         price axis;
         displaying an order entry region aligned
         with the static price axis comprising a plu-
         rality of areas for receiving commands from
         the user input device to send trade orders,
         each area corresponding to a price level of
         the static price axis; and
         receiving a plurality of commands from a
         user, each command sending a trade order
         to the electronic exchange, each trade order
         having an order quantity based on the de-
         fault quantity without the user designating
         the default quantity between commands,
         wherein each command results from select-
         ing a particular area in the order entry re-
         gion corresponding to a desired price level
         as part of a single action of the user input
         device with a pointer of the user input de-
         vice positioned over the particular area to
         both set an order price parameter for the
         trade order based on the desired price level
         and send the trade order to the electronic
         exchange.
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                       11

 ’996 patent, col. 11, line 45, through col. 12, line 24.
                               B
     TT sued IBG for infringement of the four patents we
 have identified, asserting various claims—some claiming a
 method, some a system, and some “a computer readable
 medium having program code recorded thereon for execu-
 tion on a computer” (e.g., ’304 patent, claim 27, quoted su-
 pra). As relevant for present purposes, the instrument of
 the alleged infringement was the BookTrader module
 (trading tool) that is part of IBG’s Trader Workstation Plat-
 form (TWS), software that traders load onto their comput-
 ers and use for buying and selling on exchanges, such as
 commodities exchanges. IBG released TWS BookTrader a
 few months before the ’304 patent issued in July 2004 (the
 ’132 patent issued the next month and the ’411 and ’996
 patents in 2010). TT alleged that IBG infringed the ’304
 and ’132 patents via TWS BookTrader starting as soon as
 those patents issued, and those allegations went to trial.
 The BookTrader tool also was part of a different IBG prod-
 uct called WebTrader (for use on the world wide web), but
 WebTrader was involved only in the claims that IBG in-
 fringed claims of the ’411 and ’996 patents—which, as will
 be described, were held invalid.
     We describe the three rulings of the district court that
 are at issue on appeal, though not in chronological order.
                                1
     In June 2021, on cross-motions for summary judgment
 on the § 101 eligibility of the four patents’ asserted claims,
 the district court conducted the two-step analysis described
 in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, 573 U.S. 208
 (2014), and ruled partly for TT and partly for IBG. 101
 Opinion, 2021 WL 2473809, at *1, *6–7. The court first
 rejected IBG’s § 101 challenge to the ’304 and ’132 patents’
 claims. Id. at *5. The court discussed our nonprecedential
 decision in Trading Technologies International, Inc. v.
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 12                                      BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

 CQG, Inc., in which we upheld claims of the ’304 and ’132
 patents against a § 101 challenge (asserted by CQG), rea-
 soning that the claims are “‘directed to a specific implemen-
 tation of a solution to a problem in the software arts.’” 675
 F. App’x 1001, 1006 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (CQG) (quoting Enfish,
 LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 822 F.3d 1327, 1339 (Fed. Cir.
 2016)). The district court saw no persuasive reason to draw
 a different conclusion here, though the record is somewhat
 different. 101 Opinion, 2021 WL 2473809, at *5. IBG does
 not appeal the district court’s rejection of its § 101 chal-
 lenge to the asserted claims of the ’304 and ’132 patents.
      Moving to the ’411 and ’996 patents, the district court
 held the asserted claims of those patents to be invalid be-
 cause they claim subject matter that is ineligible for pa-
 tenting under § 101. Id. at *5–7. The court stressed that
 those claims are broader than those of the ’304 and ’132
 patents (in that they do not preclude automatic movement
 of the price axis) and reasoned that TT had failed to explain
 how these broader claims provide a specific solution to the
 problem solved by the ’304 and ’132 patents. Id. at *6.
 Given the difference, the court concluded that the ’411 and
 ’996 patents’ claims amount to nothing more than “the ab-
 stract idea of placing orders on an electronic exchange.”
 101 Opinion, 2021 WL 2473809, at *6. In so ruling, the
 court pointed to our non-precedential decision in another
 case between TT and IBG, Trading Technologies Interna-
 tional, Inc. v. IBG LLC, 767 F. App’x 1006 (Fed. Cir. 2019),
 in which we agreed with a § 101 challenge to claims of U.S.
 Patent No. 7,693,768, which is a descendant of the ’132 pa-
 tent and whose claims call simply for a price axis, not a
 static price axis.
     The court also rejected TT’s contention that another
 nonprecedential decision of this court, IBG LLC v. Trading
 Technologies International, Inc., 757 F. App’x 1004 (Fed.
 Cir. 2019) (IBG I), justified rejecting the § 101 challenge
 here. In IBG I, we held that the four patents at issue in
 the present case did not qualify for Covered Business
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                       13

 Method (CBM) review under § 18 of the Leahy-Smith
 America Invents Act, Pub. L. No. 112-29, 125 Stat. 284,
 329–31 (2011) (AIA), so we did not reach the § 101 merits.
 IBG I, 757 F. App’x at 1007–08. We reasoned that our ear-
 lier holding of eligibility as to the ’304 and ’132 patents in
 CQG implied that those patents did not qualify for CBM
 review. Id. We then stated, with no elaboration, that we
 saw “no meaningful difference” on the CBM-qualification
 issue for the ’411 and ’996 patents, though there was no
 predicate decision of eligibility for those patents, and that
 we were not reaching the § 101 issue. Id. at 1008. In the
 present case, the district court concluded that, although
 “the inquiries under CBM review and § 101 eligibility are
 related,” the CBM determination did “not dictate a finding
 of § 101 eligibility here.” 101 Opinion, 2021 WL 2473809,
 at *7.
     TT’s case on infringement of the ’304 and ’132 patents
 eventually went to trial, and that trial involved only
 method and “computer readable medium” (CRM) claims:
 five method claims (1, 12, 15, 17, and 22) and one CRM
 claim (27) of the ’304 patent, and three method claims (1,
 7, and 25) and two CRM claims (8 and 51) of the ’132 pa-
 tent. Earlier in the case, TT had asserted a larger set of
 claims, including some system claims, but we need not con-
 sider any system claims in addressing the two issues pre-
 sented on appeal concerning the ’304 and ’132 patents
 because TT does not seek to revive any system claims. See
 TT’s Opening Br. at 48, 66 (seeking new trial only on dam-
 ages for these patents).
                               2
     In 2020, before the § 101 ruling, IBG moved to exclude
 certain proposed testimony of TT’s damages expert, Cath-
 erine Lawton, under Federal Rule of Evidence 702. In July
 2021, not long before the trial, the district court ruled on
 the motion. The court allowed much of Ms. Lawton’s pro-
 posed testimony, but it excluded proposed testimony
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 14                                      BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

 advancing one particular basis for Ms. Lawton’s proposed
 amount of damages, a basis tied to activities of foreign us-
 ers of TWS BookTrader. FRE 702 Opinion, 2021 WL
 5038754, at *2.
      Before describing that ruling, we describe another rul-
 ing (issued during briefing on the Rule 702 motion and ul-
 timately relied on in the FRE 702 Opinion) on a related
 IBG motion—in which IBG sought summary judgment of
 no direct or indirect infringement of the asserted claims (of
 all four patents, at the time) based on activities of foreign
 users of the TWS BookTrader trading tool. 2 Trading Tech-
 nologies International, Inc. v. IBG LLC, No. 10 C 715, 2020
 WL 7408745 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 17, 2020) (Partial SJ Opinion).
 The district court, in the Partial SJ Opinion, explained
 what it deemed a materially undisputed fact about foreign
 users of TWS BookTrader: “a user located in a different
 country downloads the TWS software platform to her com-
 puter located in that country and uses a mouse and a mon-
 itor located in that country to place orders and send them
 to the exchange” where the trades occur. Id. at *1. The
 district court then ruled on whether there was a triable is-
 sue of fact as to whether IBG, or its foreign users through
 their activities involving TWS BookTrader, met the domes-
 tic-act requirement of 35 U.S.C. § 271(a), producing direct
 or indirect infringement. At the time, TT was asserting
 method claims, system claims, and CRM claims.
     In answering that question, the court treated together
 the method and system claims of the patents, as to which
 IBG’s motion was unopposed by TT, and granted “summary
 judgment related to infringement of the method and

      2 When IBG moved for partial summary judgment re-
 garding foreign users, the WebTrader product, involved in
 the allegations of infringement of the ’411 and ’996 patents,
 was still in the case, but IBG’s motion addressed only the
 TWS product.
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                      15

 system claims caused by the activities of foreign users.” Id.
 at *2. But the court denied the motion with respect to the
 CRM claims of the patents. See ’304 patent, col. 14, lines
 47–48 (claim 27; all other claims are method claims); ’132
 patent, col. 12, lines 52–53 (claims 8–13, 30–39, 51; all
 other claims are either method or system claims). Based
 on the allegations about foreign users’ downloading of TWS
 from U.S. servers and entry into a “Customer Agreement,”
 the court concluded that the parties genuinely disputed
 facts that might establish domestic infringement—i.e., con-
 cerning whether IBG was selling (or offering to sell) its
 BookTrader product to foreign users and, if so, whether it
 was doing so domestically. Id. at *2–4. That summary
 judgment ruling has not been appealed.
     The district court relied on that ruling in addressing
 IBG’s damages-evidence motion. Ms. Lawton proposed as
 damages not an award of lost profits suffered by TT, but a
 reasonable royalty for IBG’s infringing activities, J.A.
 87413—based on a hypothetical negotiation on July 20,
 2004, the day the ’304 patent issued (to be followed two
 weeks later by issuance of the ’132 patent), J.A. 87658.
 Specifically, she proposed a royalty structured as a per-
 user, per-month royalty—for each month, starting from the
 July 20, 2004 issuance of the earliest patent, TT would re-
 ceive a fixed amount per active user of IBG’s accused prod-
 uct. J.A. 87414–15, 87942, 87963. In her proposed
 damages calculation, Ms. Lawton included foreign active
 users of TWS, identifying four bases (of different scope) for
 such inclusion. FRE 702 Opinion, 2021 WL 5038754, at *2;
 J.A. 87843–44.
     The district court allowed the proposed testimony as to
 two of the asserted bases: “making a copy of the accused
 products via a server located in the United States”; and
 “sale of the accused products in the United States via the
 user’s entry into a Customer Agreement.” FRE 702 Opin-
 ion, 2021 WL 5038754, at *2. The court explained that it
 had already concluded, in its Partial SJ Opinion, that
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 16                                      BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

 those two bases, if the allegations of fact were proved, could
 establish domestic infringement. FRE 702 Opinion, 2021
 WL 5038754, at *2. The district court disallowed the two
 other asserted bases, one that is not at issue on appeal and
 one that is. Id. at *2–3. 3
      The currently disputed disallowed basis was, in Ms.
 Lawton’s words, IBG’s “‘making’ the accused products in
 the United States with foreign damages.” J.A. 87844,
 87851 (capitalization removed); see FRE 702 Opinion, 2021
 WL 5038754, at *2. Regarding the “making the accused
 product” phrase, Ms. Lawton stated that the TWS software
 was “designed and made” and “developed” in the United
 States, J.A. 87851–52, having previously stated that
 “BookTrader is the Accused Product and is included in
 every version of TWS and WebTrader,” J.A. 87793. Re-
 garding the “foreign damages” phrase, she opined, as rele-
 vant here, that TT should receive compensation (damages)
 for the foreign users’ use of copies of TWS. J.A. 87851–52.
 She proposed inclusion, in the per-user, per-month royalty,
 of all foreign active users in a given month (from July 20,
 2004), with no refinement to narrow the pool to any identi-
 fied subgroups of such foreign active users, J.A. 87837, be-
 cause, she opined, IBG deliberately markets the TWS
 software worldwide. J.A. 87853–54. She rested that pro-
 posal on her “understand[ing] that TT is entitled to world-
 wide patent damages for harm that is the foreseeable and
 but-for result of infringement in the United States.” J.A.
 87851.

      3 The disallowed basis that is not on appeal involved
 foreign users’ “use of the accused products in the United
 States.” FRE 702 Opinion, 2021 WL 5038754, at *2. The
 district court disallowed that basis for want of evidence
 that “foreign users” engaged in such use. Id. at *3 (empha-
 sis added). TT does not challenge that ruling on appeal.
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                     17

     IBG moved to exclude that damages basis as impermis-
 sibly resting on an incorrect view of the governing law. IBG
 argued that “Ms. Lawton’s worldwide damages opinion im-
 properly includes foreign users with no link to any alleged
 US infringing activities” (capitalization removed), invoking
 the principle that “‘[i]t is axiomatic that U.S. patent law
 does not operate extraterritorially to prohibit patent in-
 fringement abroad[,]’ and it ‘do[es] not thereby provide
 compensation for a defendant’s foreign exploitation of a pa-
 tented invention, which is not infringement at all.’” J.A.
 85143 (second and third alteration in original) (quoting
 Power Integrations, Inc. v. Fairchild Semiconductor Inter-
 national, Inc., 711 F.3d 1348, 1370–71 (Fed. Cir. 2013)).
 Ms. Lawton’s reliance on a foreseeability-plus-but-for-
 cause standard, IBG contended, was contrary to law. J.A.
 85146, 85148. TT responded that the proposal was legally
 permissible based on WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical
 Corp., 585 U.S. 407 (2018), though WesternGeco involved
 lost-profits, not reasonable-royalty, damages, and involved
 infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(f)(2), not under
 § 271(a). J.A. 88406–11; see J.A. 87851 (Ms. Lawton’s ex-
 pert report invoking WesternGeco). TT, like Ms. Lawton,
 focused on IBG’s domestic designing and programming of
 TWS BookTrader when discussing the “making” identified
 in this basis for damages, and on the assertion that IBG
 “markets and distributes/licenses its BookTrader tool to a
 worldwide audience.” J.A. 88411–12.
     The district court agreed with IBG, excluding the evi-
 dence as “premised on a misapplication of controlling law.”
 FRE 702 Opinion, 2021 WL 5038754, at *2. The district
 court understood WesternGeco to hold that “a patent owner
 claiming infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(f)(2) may re-
 cover lost foreign profits proximately caused by domestic
 infringement.” Id. (quoting 585 U.S. at 417). The district
 court reasoned, however, that it was unclear what Western-
 Geco implies about “the present case involving infringe-
 ment under § 271(a) and reasonable royalty damages.” Id.
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 18                                       BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

 The district court therefore concluded that the controlling
 law for this case continued to be found in Power Integra-
 tions, which involved damages for § 271(a) infringement
 (though, like WesternGeco, it involved an issue about lost
 profits, not reasonable royalties). Id. (citing Power Integra-
 tions, 711 F.3d at 1371, for the proposition that “[g]ener-
 ally, even after establishing one or more acts of
 infringement in the United States, a patentee may not re-
 cover damages for worldwide sales of the patented inven-
 tion on the theory that ‘those foreign sales were the direct
 foreseeable result of [the infringer’s] domestic infringe-
 ment’” (second alteration in original)).
     The “making the accused product” basis of damages
 was therefore excluded at trial, but TT was permitted to
 present its evidence based on the making of a copy for the
 foreign user via a domestic server and the making of a do-
 mestic sale via a Customer Agreement between the foreign
 user and IBG. The jury found infringement, rejected the
 remaining validity challenges, and awarded damages of
 $6,610,985. In its post-trial opinion, the district court reit-
 erated its exclusion of the disputed damages basis. Post-
 Trial Opinion, 586 F. Supp. 3d at 839–40.
                               3
     The third ruling before us on appeal is the post-trial
 ruling concerning the damages evidence and argument
 submitted by IBG (not TT). At trial in 2021, TT argued
 that IBG had directly infringed, or induced others to in-
 fringe, method claims and CRM claims of the ’132 and ’304
 patents based on the TWS BookTrader trading tool. Of sig-
 nificance for purposes of the third ruling on appeal to us,
 not all users of TWS use the BookTrader feature, which
 was the only accused feature of TWS. For present pur-
 poses, we accept that the jury award of $6,610,985 corre-
 sponds to the total put forth by IBG at a royalty rate
 measured by domestic usage, rather than global monthly
 users: 10 cents per commodity-futures unit sold by users in
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                       19

 the United States via the accused BookTrader module only.
 By contrast, TT’s global monthly user royalty, which in-
 cluded all TWS users regardless of whether they used
 BookTrader, summed to $962,440,850 over the period of in-
 fringement.
     After the trial, TT moved for a new trial on damages
 and post-trial damages discovery under Federal Rules of
 Civil Procedure 59(a)(1)(A) and 60(b)(3), alleging that IBG
 had withheld information during discovery and presented
 false testimony at trial on how, in IBG’s own calculation of
 damages, it was counting units sold via BookTrader. J.A.
 93233; Post-Trial Opinion, 586 F. Supp. 3d at 833–34. TT
 argued essentially that IBG was undercounting the num-
 ber of units traded using BookTrader by not counting units
 traded using a combination of BookTrader and another
 TWS feature, despite representing otherwise to TT and to
 the jury. J.A. 93233–34, 93239, 103633–34. The district
 court denied the motion.
       The district court stated that such misrepresentation,
 if it had occurred, could form the basis for a new trial under
 either Rule 59 or Rule 60. Post-Trial Opinion, 586 F. Supp.
 3d at 833–34. The district court determined, however, that
 TT had not justified the granting of the new-trial or discov-
 ery relief it sought. The court ruled that TT had not shown
 that IBG had either withheld information during discovery
 or presented false testimony on how it was counting units
 traded. Id. at 837–38. The court also rejected TT’s claim
 for relief based on TT’s assertion that it reached its new
 understanding of IBG’s damages calculation only because
 of information newly presented at trial, explaining that TT
 had access even before trial to the information necessary to
 reach that new understanding. Id.
                               4
    The district court denied TT’s motion for a new trial on
 February 22, 2022. TT timely filed a notice of appeal. We
 have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).
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 20                                       BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

      TT challenges three rulings: the district court’s grant
 of summary judgment of invalidity of the asserted claims
 of the ’411 and ’996 patents, the district court’s exclusion
 of one basis for recovering “foreign damages,” and the dis-
 trict court’s denial of TT’s motion for a new damages trial.
 We address those challenges in turn.
                               II
     We agree with the district court that the asserted
 claims of the ’411 and ’996 patents claim ineligible subject
 matter. In this case, where we see no legally material facts
 in dispute, we decide the § 101 issue de novo. See Interna-
 tional Business Machines Corp. v. Zillow Group, Inc., 50
 F.4th 1371, 1376–77 (Fed. Cir. 2022).
                               A
     The asserted claims of the ’411 and ’996 patents are di-
 rected to abstract ideas, and they add nothing (no inventive
 concept) that transforms them into claims to eligible sub-
 ject matter. Under the two-step analysis of Alice, the
 claims are therefore invalid under § 101. We drew the
 same conclusion in two precedential decisions in cases in-
 volving four other TT patents, one of them (U.S. Patent No.
 7,904,374) a child of the ’996 patent. Trading Technologies
 International, Inc. v. IBG LLC, 921 F.3d 1084 (Fed. Cir.
 2019) (IBG II); Trading Technologies International, Inc. v.
 IBG LLC, 921 F.3d 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2019) (IBG III). We see
 no material distinction between those cases and this one.
     We consider “the focus of the claimed advance over the
 prior art” at the first step of Alice. IBG II, 921 F.3d at 1092
 (internal quotation marks omitted where quoting Intellec-
 tual Ventures I LLC v. Capital One Financial Corp., 850
 F.3d 1332, 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2017)). Here, the claims focus
 on the receipt and display of certain market information
 (bids and offers) in a manner that newly helps users see the
 information for use in making trades. But the combination
 of receipt and display of information, even of a particular
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                           21

 type, and use of the information to engage in the funda-
 mental economic practice of placing an order, are abstract
 ideas. See id. at 1092–93 (collecting cases).
      Nothing in the claims, understood in light of the speci-
 fication, calls for anything but preexisting computers and
 displays, programmed using techniques known to skilled
 artisans, to present the new arrangement of information.
 See, e.g., ’132 patent, col. 4, line 61, through col. 5, line 3;
 ’411 patent, col. 4, line 63, through col. 5, line 4; ’996 patent,
 col. 4, lines 57–65. In that circumstance, a claim to “a pur-
 portedly new arrangement of generic information that as-
 sists traders in processing information more quickly” is a
 claim “directed to the abstract idea of graphing bids and
 offers to assist a trader to make an order.” IBG II, 921 F.3d
 at 1093; see also id. at 1093–95. The focus is not on im-
 proving computers, as “mere automation of manual pro-
 cesses using generic computers” does not constitute such
 an improvement. IBG III, 921 F.3d at 1384 (internal quo-
 tation marks omitted where quoting Credit Acceptance
 Corp. v. Westlake Services, 859 F.3d 1044, 1055 (Fed. Cir.
 2017)); id. at 1385 (“[A]rranging information along an axis
 does not improve the functioning of the computer, make it
 operate more efficiently, or solve any technological prob-
 lem.”).
     TT also cannot succeed at the second step of Alice, re-
 quiring an inventive concept to avoid ineligibility of a claim
 held at the first step to be directed to an abstract idea. “The
 abstract idea itself cannot supply the inventive concept, no
 matter how groundbreaking the advance.” IBG II, 921
 F.3d at 1093 (internal quotation marks omitted where
 quoting SAP America, Inc. v. InvestPic, LLC, 898 F.3d
 1161, 1171 (Fed. Cir. 2018)); IBG III, 921 F.3d at 1385
 (same). We have held that “receiving market information
 is simply routine data gathering, and displaying infor-
 mation as indicators along a scaled price axis is well-un-
 derstood, routine, conventional activity that does not add
 something significantly more to the abstract idea.” IBG II,
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 22                                      BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

 921 F.3d at 1093. Given the absence of an improvement in
 computer functionality, we conclude that the specific claim
 elements, “individually and as an ordered combination,”
 id., even if they make particular choices among abstract
 ideas involving information and ordering, do not add an in-
 ventive concept needed for eligibility.
     We have presented the foregoing analysis with specific
 reference to the analysis set forth in the two cited IBG
 cases, applied to the similar claims at issue here. But that
 is only because the claims here are so similar to the claims
 in those cases. The principles that control here are amply
 supported by numerous other precedents, cited in or post-
 dating those decisions, as well. See, e.g., Ultramercial, Inc.
 v. Hulu, LLC, 772 F.3d 709, 715 (Fed. Cir. 2014); OIP Tech-
 nologies, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 788 F.3d 1359, 1362
 (Fed. Cir. 2015); Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A.,
 830 F.3d 1350, 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2016); Intellectual Ventures
 I LLC, 850 F.3d at 1338; Credit Acceptance Corp., 859 F.3d
 at 1055; Interval Licensing LLC v. AOL, Inc., 896 F.3d
 1335, 1345 (Fed. Cir. 2018); SAP America, Inc., 898 F.3d at
 1167; Data Engine Technologies LLC v. Google LLC, 906
 F.3d 999, 1007–08 (Fed. Cir. 2018); Ericsson Inc. v. TCL
 Communication Technology Holdings Ltd., 955 F.3d 1317,
 1327 (Fed. Cir. 2020); IBM, 50 F.4th at 1378.
                               B
     TT argues that we should reject IBG’s § 101 challenge
 to the asserted claims of the ’411 and ’996 patents because,
 as noted above, we rejected a § 101 challenge to claims of
 the ’304 and ’132 patents in our decision in CQG. But that
 decision is not precedential, and “[w]e are not bound by
 non-precedential decisions at all, much less ones to differ-
 ent patents, different specifications, or different claims.”
 IBG II, 921 F.3d at 1095 (emphasis added). The lack of
 precedential force is reason enough to reject TT’s reliance
 on CQG, and the difference in the claims reinforces that
 conclusion.
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                         23

      The claims of the ’304 and ’132 patents at issue in CQG
 require a “static price axis,” 675 F. App’x at 1003 (quoting
 ’304 patent, col. 12, line 36, through col. 13, line 3), whereas
 the claims of the ’411 and ’996 patents at issue here are
 broader, allowing some automatic movement of the price
 axis (by construction, in the case of the ’996 patent, Trad-
 ing Technologies, 2019 WL 6609428, at *3). IBG has not
 appealed the § 101 ruling regarding the ’304 and ’132 pa-
 tents, so we have no occasion here to question that the
 static price axis can be characterized as providing “a spe-
 cific solution to [a] then-existing technological problem[],”
 Data Engine, 906 F.3d at 1007–08—in particular, to the
 problem described by TT, namely, that a trader might click
 a location on the screen in an attempt to execute a transac-
 tion at a particular price but the attempt might fail if the
 price axis moved automatically, see TT’s Opening Brief at
 7–8. Even if the static price axis provides a specific solu-
 tion to an existing problem, however, it does not follow that
 the claims at issue here, which cover displays with auto-
 matic movement of the price axis, provide such a specific
 solution. And TT suggests no other problem for which the
 ’411 and ’996 patents claim a “specific” solution. Accord-
 ingly, we conclude that CQG does not support alteration of
 our direct application of the § 101 standards reflected in
 our precedential decisions to hold that the asserted claims
 of the ’411 and ’996 patents are invalid for claiming the
 above-identified abstract ideas concerning the display of
 market information to facilitate trading in commodities
 markets.
     TT also argues that a conclusion of eligibility of the as-
 serted claims of the ’411 and ’996 patents is compelled by
 our holding in IBG I. In that decision, however, we did not
 hold that any claims of the ’411 and ’996 patents were in-
 eligible under § 101—an issue we did not reach—but, ra-
 ther, that those patents did not qualify for CBM review.
 757 F. App’x at 1007–08. We reject TT’s argument based
 on IBG I.
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 24                                      BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

     TT does not invoke claim preclusion or issue preclusion
 based on the IBG I decision. And the IBG I decision is not
 precedential, so that decision is not binding: “We are not
 bound by non-precedential decisions at all . . . .” IBG II,
 921 F.3d at 1095. In addition, the only rationale given in
 the IBG I decision was that an earlier eligibility conclusion
 (as to the ’132 and ’304 patents in CQG) implied nonquali-
 fication for CBM review under the requirement that a pa-
 tent, to qualify, must not be “for [a] technological
 invention[],” AIA § 18(d)(1). See IBG I, 757 F. App’x at
 1007–08. That rationale did not apply to the ’411 and ’996
 patents, for which no eligibility holding existed.
     Moreover, what TT now urges is not what IBG I con-
 cluded for two patents—that eligibility implied nonqualifi-
 cation for CBM review—but the logical converse of that
 rationale (in generalized form), namely, that nonqualifica-
 tion for CBM review implies eligibility. That converse prin-
 ciple, however, is not found in IBG I or in any other
 authority cited by TT. And we see no good reason to adopt
 it. The “for technological inventions” language used in AIA
 § 18(d)(1) with respect to the expired CBM program served
 merely to curtail access to a special, temporary avenue for
 patentability review, not to loosen or otherwise alter the
 substantive standards governing the merits determination
 of patentability, including § 101 eligibility. That language
 has not defined what is sufficient for eligibility under the
 § 101 standards we have developed in an extensive body of
 case law applying the principles of Alice in a variety of set-
 tings. We therefore reject TT’s argument that the ’411 and
 ’996 patents’ failure to qualify for CBM review implies that
 their claims are eligible under § 101.
                              III
     TT argues that the district court erred in excluding one
 basis for damages proposed by TT’s damages expert, Ms.
 Lawton—specifically, that TT should recover “foreign dam-
 ages” flowing from “‘[m]aking’ the Accused Products in the
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                      25

 United States.” J.A. 87851. Exclusion of evidence under
 Federal Rule of Evidence 702 is generally reviewed under
 the standards prescribed by the pertinent regional circuit.
 Power Integrations, 711 F.3d at 1356. Seventh Circuit law,
 applicable here, provides for review for an abuse of discre-
 tion, which exists when the exclusion rests on a legal error,
 as determined de novo on appeal. See Downing v. Abbott
 Laboratories, 48 F.4th 793, 804 (7th Cir. 2022); United
 States v. Dingwall, 6 F.4th 744, 750 (7th Cir. 2021). Where
 an exclusion rests on an interpretation of patent law, we
 apply our own law and review the interpretation without
 deference. BASF Plant Science, LP v. Commonwealth Sci-
 entific & Industrial Research Organisation, 28 F.4th 1247,
 1275 (Fed. Cir. 2022) (quoting Sulzer Textil A.G. v. Picanol
 N.V., 358 F.3d 1356, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2004)).
     TT argues that the district court should have applied
 the extraterritoriality analysis articulated by the Supreme
 Court in WesternGeco, rather than more restrictive princi-
 ples the district court drew from Power Integrations. The
 district court was reluctant to conclude, on its own, that
 WesternGeco displaces Power Integrations as the required
 framework of analysis for this case, involving 35 U.S.C.
 § 271(a) and a reasonable royalty. We now draw that con-
 clusion, in agreement with TT. Nevertheless, we conclude
 that, even under the WesternGeco framework, the evidence
 offered by TT’s expert was properly excluded.
                              A
                              1
     For a determination whether patent damages are
 properly awarded in a particular case based partly on con-
 duct abroad, the decision in WesternGeco established a
 framework of analysis that necessarily supersedes the
 analysis set forth in our earlier decision Power Integra-
 tions. Not only is the structure of analysis different, but
 we also had relied on the Power Integrations analysis in our
 decision in the WesternGeco case on review in the Supreme
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 26                                      BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

 Court, see WesternGeco L.L.C. v. ION Geophysical Corp.,
 791 F.3d 1340, 1350–51 (Fed. Cir. 2015), and the Supreme
 Court reversed our decision, noting the reliance on Power
 Integrations, 585 U.S. at 411–12. In these circumstances,
 we must follow the Supreme Court’s analysis, which now
 governs in place of the analysis of Power Integrations. See
 Ideker Farms, Inc. v. United States, 71 F.4th 964, 988 n.11
 (Fed. Cir. 2023); California Institute of Technology v.
 Broadcom Ltd., 25 F.4th 976, 991 (Fed. Cir. 2022); SIPCO,
 LLC v. Emerson Electric Co., 980 F.3d 865, 870 n.1 (Fed.
 Cir. 2020); Troy v. Samson Manufacturing Co., 758 F.3d
 1322, 1326 (Fed. Cir. 2014); Doe v. United States, 372 F.3d
 1347, 1354–57 (Fed. Cir. 2004).
     We do not parse Power Integrations to identify which
 particular sentences are now superseded by WesternGeco.
 Nor do we have occasion to determine whether the West-
 ernGeco analysis would ultimately have supported a recov-
 ery by Power Integrations of damages based on foreign
 conduct given the facts of its case. Here, and in future
 cases, analysis of the issue should simply proceed under
 the WesternGeco framework. 4

      4  After the Supreme Court decided WesternGeco,
 (which involved 35 U.S.C. § 271(f)(2)), the district court in
 the Power Integrations case (which involved 35 U.S.C.
 § 271(a)) concluded that WesternGeco “implicitly over-
 ruled” our 2013 Power Integrations decision. Power Inte-
 grations, Inc. v. Fairchild Semiconductor International,
 Inc., No. 04-1371-LPS, 2018 WL 4804685, at *1 (D. Del.
 Oct. 4, 2018) (Stark, J.). On that basis, the court, acting
 under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6), granted
 Power Integrations relief from the earlier judgment and
 newly allowed it “to seek recovery of worldwide damages,”
 and the court certified the ruling for interlocutory review
 by this court under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b). Id. at *2. But the
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                      27

    We proceed with a detailed description of the Western-
 Geco analysis, enabling us then to address the doctrinal is-
 sues flagged by TT and by the district court, before, in
 subsection III.B infra, applying the analysis to this case.
                              2
     WesternGeco was the owner of several patents cover-
 ing systems for surveying the ocean floor by use of sound-
 sending-and-receiving devices on long streamers towed by
 ships, where relevant claims required particular features
 for steering the streamers. See WesternGeco, 585 U.S. at
 411; WesternGeco, 791 F.3d at 1343, vacated, 579 U.S. 915
 (2016), reinstated in relevant part, 837 F.3d 1358 (Fed. Cir.
 2016), reversed, 585 U.S. at 417. As relevant to the Su-
 preme Court decision, a jury found the defendant ION Ge-
 ophysical liable for infringement of the patent claims under
 35 U.S.C. § 271(f)(2), 5 where the infringement consisted of
 ION Geophysical’s domestic manufacturing of components

 appeal was dismissed before appellate review occurred,
 and the case settled, producing a dismissal in the district
 court, before a new trial occurred, No. 04-1371-LPS (D. Del.
 Oct. 25, 2019), ECF No. 995.
     5   Whoever without authority supplies or causes
     to be supplied in or from the United States any
     component of a patented invention that is espe-
     cially made or especially adapted for use in the in-
     vention and not a staple article or commodity of
     commerce suitable for substantial noninfringing
     use, where such component is uncombined in
     whole or in part, knowing that such component is
     so made or adapted and intending that such com-
     ponent will be combined outside of the United
     States in a manner that would infringe the patent
     if such combination occurred within the United
     States, shall be liable as an infringer.
 35 U.S.C. § 271(f)(2).
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 28                                      BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

 of patent-claimed systems and its sending of the compo-
 nents abroad to companies that would use them in assem-
 bling the overall systems and then use the systems to
 compete with WesternGeco in selling surveying services (to
 oil companies looking for undersea oil). WesternGeco, 585
 U.S. at 411. The jury awarded lost-profits damages to
 WesternGeco, under the patent statute’s damages provi-
 sion, 35 U.S.C. § 284, 6 for the foreign survey-services sales
 WesternGeco lost to its survey-services competitors that
 had been supplied by ION Geophysical. Id. This court, re-
 lying on Power Integrations, held that award to be an im-
 permissible extraterritorial application of § 284.
 WesternGeco, 791 F.3d at 1350–51.
     The Supreme Court reversed, concluding that the lost-
 profits award for the § 271(f)(2) infringement was not im-
 permissibly extraterritorial. 585 U.S. at 412–17. Specifi-
 cally, the Court concluded that § 284 permits “the patent
 owner to recover for lost foreign profits,” id. at 417, when
 such recovery is justified under § 284’s directive to provide

      6  Upon finding for the claimant the court shall
     award the claimant damages adequate to compen-
     sate for the infringement, but in no event less than
     a reasonable royalty for the use made of the inven-
     tion by the infringer, together with interest and
     costs as fixed by the court.
         When the damages are not found by a jury, the
     court shall assess them. In either event the court
     may increase the damages up to three times the
     amount found or assessed. Increased damages un-
     der this paragraph shall not apply to provisional
     rights under [35 U.S.C. § 154(d)].
         The court may receive expert testimony as an
     aid to the determination of damages or of what roy-
     alty would be reasonable under the circumstances.
 35 U.S.C. § 284.
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                        29

 “‘complete compensation’ for infringements,” applied to the
 infringing (making-and-supplying) actions specified in
 § 271(f)(2), which the Court held to be domestic conduct.
 Id. at 408 (quoting General Motors Corp. v. Devex Corp.,
 461 U.S. 648, 655 (1983)).
      The Supreme Court reached that conclusion by apply-
 ing to the relevant patent-law statutes its two-step frame-
 work for deciding when an application of a statute is
 impermissibly extraterritorial. Under that framework,
 which starts with a presumption that a statute lacks extra-
 territorial reach, a court ordinarily asks, first, “whether the
 presumption against extraterritoriality has been rebutted”
 (by clear enough congressional action) and, second (if the
 presumption has not been rebutted), “whether the case in-
 volves a domestic application of the statute” (rather than
 an extraterritorial application). Id. at 413 (internal quota-
 tion marks omitted where quoting RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. Eu-
 ropean Community, 579 U.S. 325, 337 (2016)). The Court
 decided that the case should be decided by skipping the
 first step and proceeding immediately to the second step.
 Id. In conducting the second-step inquiry—into whether
 the statutory application at issue is a “domestic applica-
 tion”—courts are to identify “the statute’s focus,” id. (inter-
 nal quotation marks omitted where quoting RJR Nabisco,
 579 U.S. at 337), where the statute’s “focus is the object of
 its solicitude, which can include the conduct it seeks to reg-
 ulate, as well as the parties and interests it seeks to protect
 or vindicate,” id. at 414 (cleaned up, internal quotation
 marks omitted where quoting Morrison v. National Aus-
 tralia Bank Ltd., 561 U.S. 247, 267 (2010), and an earlier
 decision).
      When initially describing the relevant statutory provi-
 sions, the Court started by quoting the cause-of-action pro-
 vision, 35 U.S.C. § 281 (“A patentee shall have remedy by
 civil action for infringement of his patent.”), before quoting
 provisions of § 271 on infringement and § 284 on damages.
 WesternGeco, 585 U.S. at 409–11; see also Dowling v.
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 30                                       BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

 United States, 473 U.S. 207, 227 n.19 (1985) (referring to
 § 281 as providing a “cause of action”). But when determin-
 ing the “statutory focus” for its extraterritoriality analysis,
 the Court “beg[a]n with § 284,” the damages provision.
 WesternGeco, 585 U.S. at 414. It reasoned that “[t]he por-
 tion of § 284 at issue” was the portion stating that “‘the
 court shall award the claimant damages adequate to com-
 pensate for the infringement,’” and it noted its precedents’
 explanations that § 284’s “overriding purpose . . . is to af-
 ford patent owners complete compensation for infringe-
 ments,” id. (cleaned up, internal quotation marks omitted
 where quoting General Motors, 461 U.S. at 655), and that
 the § 284 “question . . . is how much . . . the Patent Holder
 suffered by the infringement,” id. at 414–15 (cleaned up,
 internal quotation marks omitted where quoting Aro Man-
 ufacturing Co. v. Convertible Top Replacement Co., 377
 U.S. 476, 507 (1964) (“Aro II,” a common shorthand)).
 Based on the “the infringement” language of § 284 and its
 precedents, the Court concluded: “Accordingly, the in-
 fringement is plainly the focus of § 284.” Id. at 415.
     Having identified “the infringement” as the focus of
 § 284, the Court, to complete its determination whether
 “the conduct relevant to the statutory focus in this case is
 domestic,” then discussed the statutory provision defining
 “the infringement” at issue in the case. Id. at 414. That
 provision was § 271(f)(2), which, the Court concluded, “fo-
 cuses on domestic conduct.” Id. at 415. The Court ex-
 plained: “The conduct that § 271(f)(2) regulates—i.e., its
 focus—is the domestic act of ‘supply[ing] in or from the
 United States.’” Id. (alteration in original) (quoting
 § 271(f)(2)); see also id. (concluding that § 271(f) “vindicates
 domestic interests” because it reaches domestically made
 components; and that the focus is on “the act of exporting
 components from the United States,” which is “domestic in-
 fringement”). Therefore, the Court concluded, “the lost-
 profits damages that were awarded to WesternGeco were a
 domestic application of § 284.” Id. at 415–16.
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      The Court added several points in response to objec-
 tions to its analysis. It indicated that infringement was not
 the same as injury and did not encompass all the conduct
 that contributed to producing the injury. In particular, the
 Court reasoned that the infringement remained domestic
 even though foreign conduct (e.g., ION Geophysical’s cus-
 tomers’ system assembly and sale of survey services) con-
 tributed to WesternGeco’s loss of sales abroad; such
 “overseas events were merely incidental to the infringe-
 ment”; and those events “do not have ‘primacy’ for purposes
 of the extraterritoriality analysis.” Id. at 416 (quoting Mor-
 rison, 561 U.S. at 267). The Court also indicated that dam-
 ages are not the same as injury. Id. at 417 (stating that
 the dissent’s “position wrongly conflates legal injury with
 the damages arising from that injury”). Relatedly, the
 Court explained that WesternGeco was critically different
 from RJR Nabisco, whose pertinent provision was a civil-
 cause-of-action provision, 18 U.S.C. § 1964(c), that con-
 tained language expressly referring to injury, language
 that the Court in RJR Nabisco held to be limited to “‘a do-
 mestic injury.’” WesternGeco, 585 U.S. at 416 (quoting RJR
 Nabisco, 579 U.S. at 346)). Whereas RJR Nabisco involved
 “a substantive element of a cause of action,” the Court in
 WesternGeco said, 35 U.S.C. § 284 is a “remedial damages
 provision,” not a cause-of-action provision, let alone one
 with an express injury element. Id. 7

    7  Although the Court had earlier referred to the cause-
 of-action provision for the patent statute, 35 U.S.C. § 281,
 the Court in WesternGeco did not refer to § 281 in this RJR
 Nabisco discussion—perhaps reflecting the fact that there
 was no dispute that the cause of action was available to
 WesternGeco (which was awarded some damages not sub-
 ject to challenge for extraterritoriality). The Court thus did
 not mention that § 281 itself contains no specific reference
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 32                                      BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

     Importantly for the present case, it is clear that the
 Court in WesternGeco effectively recognized that a causa-
 tion requirement is part of the § 284 standard, which au-
 thorizes an award “adequate to compensate for” the
 infringement. The Court quoted formulations inherently
 acknowledging a causation requirement that demands at
 least but-for causation. It quoted the Aro II description of
 § 284 as asking “how much . . . the Patent Holder . . . suf-
 fered by the infringement” and also the Aro II statement
 that the patentee is entitled to recover “the difference be-
 tween [its] pecuniary condition after the infringement, and
 what [its] condition would have been if the infringement
 had not occurred.” WesternGeco, 585 U.S. at 414–15, 417
 (alterations in original) (emphasis added) (internal quota-
 tion marks omitted where quoting Aro II, 377 U.S. at 507).
 And it quoted the statement in General Motors that com-
 pensation for infringement is “adequate” when it places the
 patentee “in as good a position as he would have been in if
 the patent had not been infringed.” Id. at 417 (quoting 461
 U.S. at 655); see also General Motors, 461 U.S. at 654–55
 (describing § 284 as providing for “full compensation for
 ‘any damages’ he suffered as a result of the infringement”
 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted where
 quoting legislative history)). Finally, the Court in Western-
 Geco concluded by calling out the unaddressed issue of the
 scope of the causation requirement: “In reaching this hold-
 ing, we do not address the extent to which other doctrines,
 such as proximate cause, could limit or preclude damages
 in particular cases.” 585 U.S. at 417 n.3.

 to injury, making it unlike 18 U.S.C. § 1964(c). The United
 States pointed out this difference in distinguishing RJR
 Nabisco in its amicus brief in WesternGeco. Brief for the
 United States as Amicus Curiae Supporting Petitioner, at
 29–30, WesternGeco, 585 U.S. 407, 2018 WL 1168813.
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                               3
     The first doctrinal issue before us is whether the West-
 ernGeco framework applies when the direct infringement
 in question (either itself or as a component of indirect in-
 fringement) is one of the acts at issue here accused of in-
 fringing under § 271(a). We readily conclude that it does.
     Nothing about the WesternGeco analysis of § 284, the
 damages provision, or about § 281, the cause-of-action pro-
 vision, is altered when “the infringement” at issue is in-
 fringement under § 271(a) rather than § 271(f). Under
 WesternGeco we must examine the particular acts alleged
 to constitute infringement under particular statutory pro-
 visions to determine if the allegations focus on domestic
 conduct. Section 271(a) provides that “whoever without
 authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented
 invention, within the United States or imports into the
 United States any patented invention during the term of
 the patent therefor, infringes the patent.” 35 U.S.C.
 § 271(a) (emphases added). At least the making, using, of-
 fering to sell, and selling provisions are expressly limited
 to domestic acts. 8

     8  The remaining act, importing into the United States,
 might also be properly characterized as a domestic act. Cf.
 Carnegie Mellon University v. Marvell Technology Group,
 Ltd., 807 F.3d 1283, 1308 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (Regarding “im-
 port[ing] into the United States for use in the United
 States,” the court stated: “Section 271(a) makes clear that
 Congress meant to reach such ‘import[ation]’ and ‘use[]’ as
 domestic conduct.”). In any event, Congress clearly author-
 ized coverage of importing as an infringing act, so if import-
 ing is characterized as extraterritorial, the statute provides
 a “clear indication of an extraterritorial application,” thus
 rebutting the presumption against extraterritoriality at
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 34                                      BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

     If the exporting covered by § 271(f)(2) is a domestic act
 for purposes of the extraterritoriality analysis, as Western-
 Geco held, so too are the § 271(a)-covered acts at issue in
 this case. The WesternGeco extraterritoriality framework
 for damages under § 284 therefore applies to the infringe-
 ment under § 271(a) here.
                              4
     We also conclude that the WesternGeco framework ap-
 plies to a reasonable-royalty award, not just a lost-profits
 award, under § 284, though its application must reflect the
 established differences in standards for the two types of
 awards.
      Although the damages at issue in WesternGeco were
 lost-profits damages, 585 U.S. at 411, 417, the Court’s stat-
 utory analysis did not distinguish the forms of damages. In
 discussing § 284, the Court described it as providing “a gen-
 eral damages remedy,” and its essential point about § 284
 was that damages were for “the infringement.” Id. at 414–
 15. In describing the basic principle governing damages
 under § 284, the Court relied on two precedents that in-
 volved reasonable royalties. Id. (relying on General Motors
 and Aro II). The Supreme Court in Aro II construed the
 language of § 284 as treating the reasonable royalty au-
 thorized by the provision as a form of damages rather than
 as a substitute for damages, 377 U.S. at 504–08, notwith-
 standing the difference in conceptual foundation of lost
 profits and a reasonable royalty (at least when not meas-
 ured by an established royalty); and we have consistently
 followed that treatment, see, e.g., Rite-Hite Corp. v. Kelley
 Co., 56 F.3d 1538, 1544–45 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (en banc); Laser
 Dynamics, Inc. v. Quanta Computer, Inc., 694 F.3d 51, 66
 (Fed. Cir. 2012); Pavo Solutions LLC v. Kingston Technol-
 ogy Co., 35 F.4th 1367, 1379 (Fed. Cir. 2022); VLSI

 the first step of the two-step analysis. WesternGeco, 585
 U.S. at 413 (internal quotation marks omitted).
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                    35

 Technology LLC v. Intel Corp., 87 F.4th 1332, 1345 (Fed.
 Cir. 2023). We hold, therefore, that the Court’s framework
 in WesternGeco, and its conclusions about what is a domes-
 tic rather than extraterritorial application of § 284, must
 apply to a reasonable-royalty case.
     That conclusion hardly means that the analysis of a
 reasonable-royalty case may ignore the well-recognized dif-
 ferences between lost-profits and reasonable-royalty dam-
 ages, conceptually and in the formulations governing their
 availability and calculation. An award of lost profits gen-
 erally depends on showing the existence and magnitude of
 profits lost to the patentee on sales the patentee did not
 make, or made at lower prices, as a result, under proper
 causation standards, of the infringement. See, e.g., Mentor
 Graphics Corp. v. EVE-USA, Inc., 851 F.3d 1275, 1283–90
 (Fed. Cir. 2017); Ericsson, Inc. v. Harris Corp., 352 F.3d
 1369, 1376–79 (Fed. Cir. 2003); Rite-Hite, 56 F.3d at 1544–
 49; see also Dowagiac Manufacturing Co. v. Minnesota Mo-
 line Plow Co., 235 U.S. 641, 648 (1915). “The reasonable
 royalty theory of damages, however, seeks to compensate
 the patentee not for lost sales caused by the infringement,
 but for its lost opportunity to obtain a reasonable royalty
 that the infringer would have been willing to pay if it had
 been barred from infringing.” AstraZeneca AB v. Apotex
 Corp., 782 F.3d 1324, 1334 (Fed. Cir. 2015). “As the exclu-
 sive right conferred by the patent was property, and the
 infringement was a tortious taking of a part of that prop-
 erty, the normal measures of damages was the value of
 what was taken,” and it is “permissible to show the value
 by proving what would have been a reasonable royalty, con-
 sidering the nature of the invention, its utility and ad-
 vantages, and the extent of the use involved.” Dowagiac,
 235 U.S. at 648.
     This case involves a reasonable royalty, and repeatedly
 articulated standards frame how the particular issue pre-
 sented here is properly formulated. “There is no dispute
 here about the propriety of using the common hypothetical-
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 36                                      BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

 negotiation approach to calculating a reasonable royalty,
 under which the finder of fact ‘attempts to ascertain the
 royalty upon which the parties would have agreed had they
 successfully negotiated an agreement just before infringe-
 ment began.’” Asetek Danmark A/S v. CMI USA Inc., 852
 F.3d 1352, 1362 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (quoting Lucent Technolo-
 gies, Inc. v. Gateway, Inc., 580 F.3d 1301, 1324 (Fed. Cir.
 2009)); see Jury Instructions at 51–56, Trading Technolo-
 gies International, Inc. v. IBG LLC, No. 10 C 715 (N.D. Ill.
 Sept. 2, 2021), ECF No. 2130. Many authorities address
 issues concerning the hypothetical negotiation, which, op-
 erating under certain assumptions, at its core is a process
 for identifying the incremental value of the claimed tech-
 nology over noninfringing alternatives and determining
 how that gain would be shared. See, e.g., VLSI, 87 F.4th at
 1345–46; Asetek Danmark, 852 F.3d at 1362–63; Carnegie
 Mellon, 807 F.3d at 1304–05; AstraZeneca, 782 F.3d at
 1334–44; Aqua Shield v. Inter Pool Cover Team, 774 F.3d
 766, 770 (Fed. Cir. 2014); Lucent, 580 F.3d at 1324–25.
      The foundational principle is that “the royalty due for
 patent infringement should be the value of what was
 taken—the value of the use of the patented technology.”
 AstraZeneca, 782 F.3d at 1344 (emphasis added) (internal
 quotation marks omitted); see VLSI, 87 F.4th at 1345; Aqua
 Shield, 774 F.3d at 770. One aspect of that principle is that
 “[t]he royalty base for reasonable royalty damages cannot
 include activities that do not constitute patent infringe-
 ment, as patent damages are limited to those ‘adequate to
 compensate for the infringement.’” AstraZeneca, 782 F.3d
 at 1343 (quoting 35 U.S.C. § 284). For example, a patentee
 “may of course obtain damages only for acts of infringe-
 ment after the issuance of the . . . patent.” Hoover Group,
 Inc. v. Custom Metalcraft, Inc., 66 F.3d 299, 304 (Fed. Cir.
 1995) (quoted with approval in AstraZeneca, 782 F.3d at
 1343). Relatedly, the bottom-line royalty “must be ‘appor-
 tion[ed] to [the value of the patented technology]—by sep-
 arating out and excluding other value in economic products
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                     37

 or practices.” VLSI, 87 F.4th at 1345 (citing numerous
 cases). In other words, the incremental value to be allo-
 cated, in the hypothetical negotiation, is the value of the
 claimed technology (not, e.g., of unclaimed product im-
 provements) over that of noninfringing alternatives.
      Those principles point to a minimum requirement for a
 patentee seeking reasonable-royalty damages based on for-
 eign conduct that is not independently infringing. Under
 the foregoing principles, the hypothetical negotiation must
 turn on the amount the hypothetical infringer would agree
 to pay to be permitted to engage in the domestic acts con-
 stituting “the infringement.” 35 U.S.C. § 284. If the pa-
 tentee seeks to increase that amount by pointing to foreign
 conduct that is not itself infringing, the patentee must, at
 the least, show why that foreign conduct increases the
 value of the domestic infringement itself—because, e.g., the
 domestic infringement enables and is needed to enable oth-
 erwise-unavailable profits from conduct abroad—while re-
 specting the apportionment limit that excludes values
 beyond that of practicing the patent. This kind of causal
 connection, framed in terms of the agreement-to-pay aspect
 of a hypothetical negotiation, is a necessary beginning—we
 need not here say it is sufficient—for a foreign-conduct
 analysis in a reasonable-royalty case. Cf. Carnegie Mellon,
 807 F.3d at 1307 (noting that defendant’s sales abroad
 were “strongly enough tied to its domestic infringement as
 a causation matter to have been part of the hypothetical-
 negotiation agreement,” before moving on to apply extra-
 territoriality standards based on Power Integrations, now
 superseded by WesternGeco).
                              5
     Finally, and relatedly, because WesternGeco estab-
 lishes a new framework, of which causation is a necessary
 part, a few observations on causation are warranted based
 on the Supreme Court’s note that it was not ruling on “the
 extent to which other doctrines, such as proximate cause,
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 38                                       BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

 could limit or preclude damages in particular cases.” 585
 U.S. at 417 n.3.
      We have recognized that “proximate” causation is re-
 quired and that proximate causation requires but-for cau-
 sation plus more, including the absence of remoteness.
 Rite-Hite, 56 F.3d at 1546 (“the ‘test’ for compensability . . .
 under § 284 is not solely a ‘but for’ test”; additional limits,
 including limits on remoteness, apply, labeled “proximate
 cause”). We have said, too, in the lost-profits setting, that
 “reasonable, objective foreseeability” is “generally” suffi-
 cient for proximate causation, while indicating that a dif-
 ferent conclusion might be justified if there is “a persuasive
 reason to the contrary.” Id.
      The Supreme Court, for its part, has noted that proxi-
 mate causation is more than but-for causation, see, e.g.,
 Anza v. Ideal Steel Supply Corp., 547 U.S. 451, 456–57
 (2006), containing a directness requirement, id. at 457–58,
 and described the proximate-cause requirement as the
 “traditional requirement,” Bank of America Corp. v. City of
 Miami, 581 U.S. 189, 201 (2017). More specifically, the
 Court has explained that “[i]t is a well established principle
 of [the common] law that in all cases of loss, we are to at-
 tribute it to the proximate cause, and not to any remote
 cause” and that the Court “assume[s] Congress is familiar
 with the common-law rule and does not mean to displace it
 sub silentio.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted where
 quoting Lexmark International, Inc. v. Static Control Com-
 ponents, Inc., 572 U.S. 118, 132 (2014)). And, based on that
 logic, the Court held the proximate-cause requirement ap-
 plicable to a statutory claim that was “akin to a tort action,”
 id. (internal quotation marks omitted)—a characterization
 that fits patent infringement, described by the Court as “a
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                        39

 tortious taking,” Dowagiac, 235 U.S. at 648. 9 At the same
 time, the Supreme Court explained that, for some statutes,
 “foreseeability alone is not sufficient to establish proximate
 cause,” Bank of America, 581 U.S. at 201, and that the
 “[p]roximate-cause analysis is controlled by the nature of
 the statutory cause of action,” id. (internal quotation
 marks omitted where quoting Lexmark, 572 U.S. at 133).
 In finding foreseeability insufficient under the statute at
 issue in Bank of America, the Court considered the conse-
 quences of the contrary view in the context of that statute.
 Id. at 202–03.
     The foregoing authorities raise questions about the
 proper approach to determining, based on “other doctrines,
 such as proximate cause,” WesternGeco, 585 U.S. at 417
 n.3, when foreign conduct can properly play a role in calcu-
 lating patent damages. One such question is whether the
 “reasonable, objective foreseeability” presumptive stand-
 ard for lost profits, Rite-Hite, 56 F.3d at 1546, is applicable
 where the damages are for a (non-established) reasonable
 royalty, whose conceptual foundation is notably different
 from that of lost profits. Another question concerns the
 long-recognized general avoidance of extraterritorial reach
 that is an aspect of the statutory context. Microsoft Corp.
 v. AT & T Corp., 550 U.S. 437, 455–56 (2007); Deepsouth
 Packing Co. v. Laitram Corp., 406 U.S. 518, 531 (1972);
 Carnegie Mellon, 807 F.3d at 1306; Power Integrations, 711
 F.3d at 1371. What, if any, room is there to take that

     9  See also Carbice Corp. of America v. American Pa-
 tents Development Corp., 283 U.S. 27, 33 (1931); Belknap v.
 Schild, 161 U.S. 10, 17 (1896); Schillinger v. United States,
 155 U.S. 163, 169 (1894); Wordtech Systems, Inc. v. Inte-
 grated Network Solutions, Inc., 609 F.3d 1308, 1313 (Fed.
 Cir. 2010); Mars, Inc. v. Coin Acceptors, Inc., 527 F.3d 1359,
 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2008); cf. Mentor Graphics, 851 F.3d at 1284
 (analogizing to tort law).
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 40                                       BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

 consideration into account in applying the proximate-cause
 requirement, itself not addressed in WesternGeco, without
 contradicting the Supreme Court’s ruling in WesternGeco?
 We need not and do not here suggest answers to, or further
 explore, those or other questions.
                               B
     The requirement of the foregoing framework that is
 dispositive here is that “the infringement”—the focus of
 § 284, as the Court in WesternGeco repeatedly stressed—
 have the needed causal relationship to the foreign conduct
 for which recovery is sought. Ms. Lawton’s “Making the
 Accused Product with Foreign Damages” basis for claimed
 damages did not meet this fundamental requirement—at
 least because Ms. Lawton did not focus on “the infringe-
 ment.” That failure called for its exclusion.
                               1
      Infringement under § 271(a) is one of the specified acts
 involving the “patented invention”—making, using, offer-
 ing to sell, selling, or importing it. 35 U.S.C. § 271(a).
 “[T]he claims measure the invention,” Continental Paper
 Bag Co. v. Eastern Paper Bag Co., 210 U.S. 405, 419 (1908);
 “[e]ach element contained in a patent claim is deemed ma-
 terial to defining the scope of the patent invention, . . . and
 a patentee’s rights extend only to the claimed combination
 of elements, and no further,” Limelight Networks, Inc. v.
 Akamai Technologies, Inc., 572 U.S. 915, 921 (2014) (inter-
 nal quotation marks omitted where quoting Warner-Jen-
 kinson Co., Inc. v. Hilton Davis Chemical Co., 520 U.S. 17,
 29 (1997)); and “infringement must be decided with respect
 to each asserted claim as a separate entity,” W.L. Gore &
 Associates, Inc. v. Garlock, Inc., 721 F.2d 1540, 1559 (Fed.
 Cir. 1983). See also, e.g., Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc.
 v. Sandoz, Inc., 574 U.S. 318, 321, 332 (2015); Altoona Pub-
 lix Theatres v. American Tri-Ergon Corp., 294 U.S. 477, 487
 (1935); Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1312 (Fed.
 Cir. 2005) (en banc); Pall Corp. v. Micron Separations, Inc.,
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                       41

 66 F.3d 1211, 1220 (Fed. Cir. 1995); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d
 438, 441 (CCPA 1970).
      Here, there are two groups of claims at issue: claims to
 a method; and claims to a computer readable medium
 (CRM) containing computer code. Infringement therefore
 is limited to making, using, offering to sell, selling, or im-
 porting a method or a CRM. Ms. Lawton’s at-issue pro-
 posal, however, does not focus on one of those acts.
     In that proposal, the asserted infringement is “Making
 the Accused Product.” This language cannot reasonably be
 read to refer to the method claims. TT has not argued that
 it refers to making the claimed methods. And any such
 reading of the language would have to overcome at least
 two related obstacles: There is no established recognition
 in patent law of direct infringement by “making” a
 “method”; and, indeed, we have indicated that direct in-
 fringement is limited to using the method, stating that “[a]
 method claim is directly infringed only by one practicing
 the patented method,” Joy Technologies, Inc. v. Flakt, Inc.,
 6 F.3d 770, 775 (Fed. Cir. 1993). See NTP, Inc. v. Research
 in Motion, Ltd., 418 F.3d 1282, 1319–21 (Fed. Cir. 2005)
 (explaining similar recognition in congressional reports as-
 sociated with the Process Patent Amendments Act of 1988,
 Pub. L. No. 100-418, Title IX, § 9003, 102 Stat. 1563–67;
 ultimately reserving novel issue whether methods can be
 sold or offered for sale); Timothy R. Holbrook, Method Pa-
 tent Exceptionalism, 102 Iowa L. Rev. 1001, 1014 (2017)
 (“Generally, process patents are infringed only when the
 steps of the process are performed.”).
     For Ms. Lawton’s proposal to suffice even to begin a
 showing of causation based on domestic “infringement,”
 therefore, it would have to refer to the CRM claims. But
 Ms. Lawton in proposing the theory, and TT in explaining
 it, have pointedly not focused on making an individual
 memory-device unit, whether freestanding (like a memory
 stick) or a part of a larger physical unit (like a hard drive
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 42                                     BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

 in a personal computer or server). They have referred, in-
 stead, to the TWS BookTrader software itself—“the in-
 structions themselves detached from any medium” (rather
 than a “tangible ‘copy’”), “software in the abstract,” soft-
 ware “[a]bstracted from a usable copy.” Microsoft, 550 U.S.
 at 447–448, 449 n.10, 451, 451 n.12. Ms. Lawton stated,
 using the singular when discussing what was “made,” that
 “BookTrader is the Accused Product and is included in
 every version and every download of TWS and WebTrader,”
 J.A. 87793, and it was “designed and made” and “devel-
 oped” and “upgrade[d]” in the United States before being
 “provided . . . to customers around the world,” J.A. 87851–
 53. TT, explaining Ms. Lawton’s proposal in the district
 court, focused on domestic designing and programming of
 TWS BookTrader. J.A. 88411–12; see also Oral Arg. at
 14:07–14:20 (same).
      The Supreme Court has recognized the important dis-
 tinction between software and a particular copy of it on a
 CRM, as just noted. See Microsoft, 550 U.S. at 447–448,
 449 n.10, 451, 451 n.12. Even if the BookTrader software
 as such could be claimed (without violating statutory re-
 quirements such as 35 U.S.C. § 101)—which we need not
 decide—the software itself is not claimed in the ’304 and
 ’132 patent claims at issue. Thus, Ms. Lawton’s proposal
 is legally insufficient, even under the WesternGeco frame-
 work, for the simple reason that, though it claims a “mak-
 ing,” it does not start from an act of “infringement”—
 making a claimed CRM (or method)—in asserting the re-
 quired causal connection to the foreign conduct for which
 the proposal seeks royalty damages. We will not rewrite
 Ms. Lawton’s proposal to say something it does not.
                              2
     That deficiency suffices for affirmance of the evidence-
 exclusion ruling, but it is worth noting at least one other
 seeming deficiency in Ms. Lawton’s proposal, which rein-
 forces our unwillingness to rewrite Ms. Lawton’s proposal.
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                     43

 Although they expressly invoked WesternGeco, Ms. Lawton
 and TT presented no focused, coherent explanation of the
 required causal connection to domestic infringement, even
 putting aside the mismatch between the proposal and the
 claims.
     Notable in this respect is a fact about timing. We may
 assume (without deciding) that IBG had to make early
 CRMs domestically (or practice the claimed method) as
 part of its process of developing its software and that the
 value of such development work to IBG might reflect pro-
 spective foreign-earned revenue for the resulting product.
 Cf. Carnegie Mellon, 807 F.3d at 1294, 1297, 1307 (refer-
 ring to payment for domestic infringement that is part of
 development work that, when completed, would produce
 large foreign revenues). In this case, however, according to
 TT and Ms. Lawton, IBG’s development of its BookTrader
 product meeting all claim limitations occurred before TT’s
 patents issued: TT accused IBG of marketing its Book-
 Trader product before July 20, 2004, which caused in-
 fringement to begin precisely when the ’304 patent issued.
 On that premise, IBG’s making of CRMs in the initial cre-
 ation of a BookTrader product meeting all claim limitations
 was not infringing under § 271(a), and IBG therefore did
 not need to pay TT anything for that work, which could not
 properly be included in the calculation in the hypothetical
 negotiation held “just before” July 20, 2004. See Asetek
 Danmark, 852 F.3d at 1362; Lucent, 580 F.3d at 1324.
      Later domestic making of BookTrader-containing
 CRMs (or practicing of the claimed methods) could be in-
 fringing, of course, and properly be subject to a royalty.
 But TT was permitted to introduce evidence that some for-
 eign users of BookTrader obtained their copies from domes-
 tic acts of making a copy or selling. FRE 702 Opinion, 2021
 WL 5038754, at *2. The only disallowed proposal therefore
 had to involve making of copies abroad for foreign users
 (and foreign sales).
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 44                                     BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

     On TT’s and Ms. Lawton’s premise that pre-July 20,
 2004 versions of TWS BookTrader met the limitations of
 the ’304 and ’132 patents’ claims, TT has not offered a con-
 crete, coherent account of why, in the hypothetical negoti-
 ation, the royalty for new domestic acts of making claimed
 CRMs (or practicing claimed methods), starting July 20,
 2004, would have properly been increased to reflect the pro-
 spective making and sale of CRMs abroad for use abroad.
 On the noted premise, IBG, even before the patents issued,
 already had CRMs containing TWS BookTrader that met
 the patents’ limitations. “[N]either export from the United
 States nor use in a foreign country of a product covered by
 a United States patent constitutes infringement.” Johns
 Hopkins University v. CellPro, Inc., 152 F.3d 1342, 1366
 (Fed. Cir. 1998). And TT has not argued that the making
 of CRMs abroad would be infringing, even if the software
 installed abroad came from the United States, either under
 § 271(a), see Centillion Data Systems, LLC v. Qwest Com-
 munications International, Inc., 631 F.3d 1279, 1288 (Fed.
 Cir. 2011); Deepsouth, 406 U.S. at 527, or under § 271(f),
 see Microsoft, 550 U.S. at 449–50 (software itself is not a
 “component” under § 271(f)). 10
     IBG might of course infringe by domestically making
 new CRMs containing upgraded versions of TWS Book-
 Trader. But TT has not shown how value added by the up-
 grades would be properly added to the royalty in light of
 the apportionment requirement to avoid charging for value
 not attributable to the claimed invention. In particular, TT
 has not explained how such upgrade value would be

      10Congress responded to Deepsouth in 1984, but it did
 not change § 271(a) or, therefore, redefine when “making”
 occurs under that provision. Rather, Congress added a new
 subsection (f) defining new infringing acts. See Microsoft,
 550 U.S. at 442–45; see also Life Technologies Corp. v.
 Promega Corp., 580 U.S. 140, 151–52 (2017).
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                        45

 anything but the value of features beyond what is required
 by the patent claims, on TT’s and Ms. Lawton’s premise
 about pre-July 20, 2004 versions of TWS Book Trader com-
 ing within the claims.
     There is, in short, an apparent deficiency over and
 above the fundamental infringement-identifying one previ-
 ously discussed. We need not, however, definitively draw
 a conclusion about the presence of this additional defi-
 ciency. The fundamental deficiency discussed above suf-
 fices for affirmance of the district court’s Rule 702
 exclusion ruling.
                               IV
      In its final challenge in this appeal, TT asserts that the
 district court “abused its discretion” when it denied TT’s
 motion for a new damages trial and new discovery on dam-
 ages, a motion in which TT asserted that IBG committed
 fraud regarding its own calculation of damages. TT’s
 Opening Br. at 52. As the district court noted in denying
 the motion, the substance of TT’s request is materially the
 same whether it is considered under Rule 59 or under Rule
 60(b)(3), Post-Trial Opinion, 586 F. Supp. 3d at 833–34,
 and TT has not distinguished the two Rules in its argu-
 ments on appeal, TT’s Opening Br. at 52–67. TT itself en-
 dorses an “abuse of discretion” standard for our review of
 the district court’s denial, id. at 33, 52, reflecting the Sev-
 enth Circuit’s precedents. See Abellan v. Lavelo Property
 Management, LLC, 948 F.3d 820, 830 (7th Cir. 1994) (Rule
 59); Philos Technologies, Inc. v. Philos & D, Inc., 802 F.3d
 905, 917 (7th Cir. 2015) (Rule 60(b)(3)); see also Cap Export,
 LLC v. Zinus, Inc., 996 F.3d 1332, 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2021)
 (following regional-circuit law). The Seventh Circuit has
 stated that relief under 60(b)(3) is “‘an extraordinary rem-
 edy and is granted only in exceptional circumstances.’”
 Wickens v. Shell Oil Co., 620 F.3d 747, 759 (7th Cir. 2010)
 (quoting Dickerson v. Board of Education, 32 F.3d 1114,
 1116 (7th Cir. 1994)).
Case: 22-1630     Document: 92      Page: 46    Filed: 03/27/2024

 46                                        BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

     TT’s argument on appeal reduces to the assertion that
 IBG, whose damages calculation was based on counting
 particular accused trades made by users of IBG’s Trader
 Workstation Platform (TWS), failed to give TT enough in-
 formation about how IBG was counting the trades—more
 particularly, what role the BookTrader feature of TWS had
 to play in a trade (e.g., as originator or as submitter) for the
 trade to be counted. See TT’s Opening Br. at 59–60. We
 see no clear error, based on the record, in the district court’s
 careful evaluation of the evidence available to TT through
 discovery and its determination that IBG did disclose the
 key information that TT alleged was withheld, including
 the list of various TWS tools (features). Post-Trial Opinion,
 586 F. Supp. 3d at 835–36. 11 On the basis of its supported
 findings, the court could properly conclude, as it did, that
 TT had ample reason and opportunity before trial to un-
 cover the now-asserted problems with IBG’s evidence that
 TT says it uncovered only through its post-trial investiga-
 tion. Id. at 837–38.
     It is institutionally important that parties generally be
 held to the duty to conduct needed investigations of facts
 before trial. See, e.g., Rutledge v. United States, 230 F.3d
 1041, 1052 (7th Cir. 2000) (stating that “Rule 60(b) motions
 cannot be used to present evidence that with due diligence
 could have been introduced before judgment”). We see no
 abuse of discretion in the district court’s denial of TT’s post-
 trial motion.
                                V
    We have considered TT’s other arguments, and we find
 them unpersuasive. For the foregoing reasons, we affirm

      11 Nor do we see clear error in the district court’s re-
 jection of TT’s assertion that IBG sponsored false testi-
 mony, id. at 837, a ruling to which TT presents no
 meaningful challenge on appeal.
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 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC                                      47

 the district court’s judgment, including its grant of sum-
 mary judgment of ineligibility of the asserted claims of the
 ’411 and ’996 patents, exclusion of Ms. Lawton’s testimony
 on the “domestic making with foreign damages” theory,
 and denial of TT’s motion for a new trial.
     The parties shall bear their own costs.
                        AFFIRMED