Brumfield v. Ibg LLC

CourtCourt of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
DecidedMarch 27, 2024
Docket22-1630
StatusPublished

This text of Brumfield v. Ibg LLC (Brumfield v. Ibg LLC) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Brumfield v. Ibg LLC, (Fed. Cir. 2024).

Opinion

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

______________________

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). Case: 22-1630 Document: 92 Page: 3 Filed: 03/27/2024

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 Case: 22-1630 Document: 92 Page: 4 Filed: 03/27/2024

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: Case: 22-1630 Document: 92 Page: 5 Filed: 03/27/2024

BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC 5

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