Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 1 Filed: 07/03/2024
NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________
IMPACT ENGINE, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant
v.
GOOGLE LLC, Defendant-Appellee ______________________
2022-2291 ______________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of California in No. 3:19-cv-01301-CAB- DEB, Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo. ______________________
Decided: July 3, 2024 ______________________
JASON M. WILCOX, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Washington, DC, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by STEPHEN DESALVO; GARRET A. LEACH, Chicago, IL; SHARRE LOTFOLLAHI, Los Angeles, CA.
ANDREW DUFRESNE, Perkins Coie LLP, Madison, WI, argued for defendant-appellee. Also represented by DAN L. BAGATELL, Hanover, NH; JONATHAN IRVIN TIETZ, Washing- ton, DC; DAVID A. NELSON, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 2 Filed: 07/03/2024
Sullivan, LLP, Chicago, IL; DAVID ANDREW PERLSON, ANTONIO R. SISTOS, San Francisco, CA. ______________________
Before REYNA, TARANTO, and HUGHES, Circuit Judges. Opinion for the court filed by Circuit Judge TARANTO. Opinion concurring-in-part, dissenting-in-part filed by Circuit Judge REYNA. TARANTO, Circuit Judge. In the action now before us, Impact Engine, Inc. alleges infringement by Google LLC of a family of Impact Engine’s patents. Several orders of the district court are central to addressing the disputes on appeal. First, the district court entered two claim-construction orders: one that, e.g., con- strued “compiling engine” to reflect the ordinary meaning of “compiler,” Impact Engine, Inc. v. Google LLC, No. 19- cv-01301, 2021 WL 5541942, at *4 (S.D. Cal. Feb. 5, 2021) (First Claim Construction Order); the other that construed “project viewer” elements in several asserted claims to be means-plus-function elements under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f), Impact Engine, Inc. v. Google LLC, No. 19-cv-01301, 2021 WL 9525522, at *3 (S.D. Cal. May 14, 2021) (Supplemental Claim Construction Order). Second, acting under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c), the district court held some asserted claims to be invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Impact Engine, Inc. v. Google LLC, No. 19-cv-01301, 2021 WL 5234415, at *3–6 (S.D. Cal. Nov. 10, 2021) (Rule 12(c) Order). Third, acting under Fed. R. Civ. P. 56, the district court held that (a) ad- ditional asserted claims are invalid under § 101, (b) Impact Engine had presented no basis on which a reasonable jury could find infringement of two asserted claims containing the “project viewer” phrase, and (3) one asserted claim is invalid under § 112(a)’s written-description and enable- ment requirements. Impact Engine, Inc. v. Google LLC, 624 F. Supp. 3d 1190, 1193–96 (S.D. Cal. 2022) (Summary Judgment Order). Under those rulings, all asserted claims Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 3 Filed: 07/03/2024
IMPACT ENGINE, INC. v. GOOGLE LLC 3
were either invalid or not infringed, so the district court entered final judgment for Google. Impact Engine appeals. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1), and we affirm. I A Seven patents are at issue here: U.S. Patent No. 7,870,497 and six others that, descending from the ’497 pa- tent through continuation applications, have the same specification, named inventors, and April 2005 priority date as the ’497 patent. 1 J.A. 29–215. The patents describe and claim “systems and methods for creating, editing, shar- ing and distributing high-quality, media-rich web-based communications”—i.e., “presentation[s], banner advertise- ment[s], website[s] or brochure[s]”—which “can be created in a layered fashion that integrates text, colors, back- ground patterns, images, sound, music, and/or video.” ’497 patent, col. 1, lines 13–14, 30–35. The specification ex- plains that such communications, in the prior art, were de- veloped by a “professional graphic designer,” “typically part of a professional agency,” and that hiring such profession- als was “usually cost-prohibitive for small enterprises . . . and can be unnecessarily costly for larger enterprises.” Id., col. 1, lines 15–20. The specification describes, as a
1 By the time the district court entered final judg- ment, Impact Engine asserted the following sixteen claims from seven patents: claims 1 and 9 of U.S. Patent No. 7,870,497; claims 14, 16, 22, and 23 of U.S. Patent No. 10,565,618; claims 1, 7, and 12 of U.S. Patent No. 10,068,253; claims 14 and 18 (both dependent on claim 1) of U.S. Patent No. 8,930,832; claims 4, 21, and 25 (all de- pendent on claim 1) of U.S. Patent No. 9,361,632; claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 8,356,253; and claim 30 of U.S. Patent No. 10,572,898. Impact Engine Opening Br. at 15. Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 4 Filed: 07/03/2024
simplifying and cost-lowering advance, internet-accessible “software as a service” (SaaS) that “automates the process of creating and distributing professional quality, media- rich communications” in a “logical step-by-step, start-to- finish process that requires no programming intervention” and instead involves “auto-determining the ‘look and feel’ [and/or ‘content’] of a communication based on a series of interview questions and/or other meta data.” Id., col. 1, lines 24–26, 43–44; id., col. 2, lines 12–18, 49–50. The prin- cipal SaaS system described and claimed in the asserted patents is a “communication builder engine” that “includes a project builder . . . for generating a project viewer . . . via which a user can view and assemble various media compo- nents or assets into an integrated communication” and that “further includes a media repository . . . for storing commu- nication project templates, media assets, communication project metadata, and any other data resources.” Id., col. 3, lines 9–15; see also id., col. 2, line 65, through col. 3, line 29; id., fig.1. Claims 1 and 9 of the ’497 patent and claim 30 of the ’898 patent are representative for purposes of appeal: ’497 patent, claim 1. A multimedia communication system comprising: a media repository storing communication project templates and media assets of a number of content types, the project tem- plates and media assets being accessible by a graphical user interface on a client com- puter via a network; and a project builder providing the graphical user interface for the client computer via the network for local display of the graph- ical user interface on the client computer, the graphical user interface comprising controls to receive user input for selecting at least one communication project Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 5 Filed: 07/03/2024
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template from the media repository and one or more media assets, and assembling a communication based on the at least one communication project template, the pro- ject builder further including an interac- tive interview for display on the graphical user interface, the interactive interview providing a plurality of questions to a user for eliciting a user response pertaining to user preferences, and further receiving the user preferences about the at least one communication project template and one or more media assets to assemble the commu- nication. ’497 patent, claim 9. A multimedia communication system in accordance with claim 1, further com- prising a project viewer that renders an assembled communication and transmits the rendered com- munication via the network to the client computer for viewing in the graphical user interface. ’898 patent, claim 30. An online advertisement generation system for autonomously generating and broadcasting a communication to a graphical user interface of a recipient device, the communi- cation capable of being rendered, the online adver- tisement generation system comprising: a media repository for storing media con- tent comprising a plurality of online adver- tisement templates and a plurality of media assets; a communications system server coupled to the media repository, the communications system server being connectable to an in- ternet network, the communications sys- tem server being configured for receiving, via the internet network, one or more of Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 6 Filed: 07/03/2024
user data, keyword data, and geographic data, and comprising: an advertisement generation engine for au- tonomously generating the communication, the advertisement generation engine for accessing the media repository and select- ing, based on one or more of the user data, keyword data, and geographic data, at least one of the plurality of online adver- tisement templates and at least one of the plurality of media assets to generate the communication, the communication includ- ing a collection of slides comprising a grouping of design layers, design elements, and content containers; a compiling engine for integrating the at least one selected media asset with the at least one selected online advertisement template, and for grouping the design lay- ers, design elements, and content contain- ers into the collection of slides so as to generate the communication capable of be- ing rendered in a manner so as to be con- tent specific to the user data, keyword data, and geographic data; a formatting engine for formatting the com- munication; and a distribution engine wherein once the communication is generated and format- ted, the communications system server au- tonomously broadcasts the one or more communications via the distribution en- gine to the recipient device so as to be ren- dered at the graphical user interface thereof, the slides being displayable in an auto-play on or an auto-play off format. Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 7 Filed: 07/03/2024
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B In July 2019, Impact Engine filed a complaint against Google in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California alleging that Google was and is in- fringing six of Impact Engine’s patents, J.A. 280–307, and in March 2020, Impact Engine added allegations of in- fringement of two more patents from the ’497 patent fam- ily, J.A. 1250–80. As relevant here, the litigation produced rulings on claim construction, the invalidity of several as- serted claims under § 101, infringement of certain surviv- ing claims, and the invalidity of one claim under § 112. 1 The district court entered two claim-construction or- ders of relevance to this appeal. In a February 2021 order, the district court construed the “compiling engine” claim phrase—relying on the agreed-on “commonly understood meaning” of “compiler” (as used in the specification) to one “in the computer arts at the time the patent was filed”—as a program that does “back-end processing of source code into machine or object code.” First Claim Construction Or- der, at *4. In the same order, the district court construed the “project builder” claim phrase as “server-side software and hardware that obtains user information, selects appro- priate template(s) and asset(s) and obtains user formatting and transmission information,” noting that “program con- structs” that “provide this function of the system would be tools familiar to one of skill.” Id. at *4–5. In May 2021, the district court issued a supplemental claim-construction order addressing limitations containing the phrase “project viewer.” The court explained that the “claims and the specification describe the patents’ Project Viewer limitation as much more than an application to dis- play a file created by another application.” Supplemental Claim Construction Order, at *3. Rather, “the functions performed by the Project Viewer” across the asserted claims “include rendering [serializing] the communication Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 8 Filed: 07/03/2024
[i.e., collection of slides]; displaying slides in auto-play on or auto-play off modes; sending the communication to the client computer; [and] allowing the user to view templates and media assets.” Id. (first two alterations in original). In particular, rendering is something the project viewer does to material provided to the project viewer by the project builder (project slides and other content), and “render[ing]” means “serializing the project slides and content into a for- mat that can be stored or transmitted.” Id. at *1; see id. at *2 (“The Project Viewer renders, or serializes, the commu- nication using the selected templates and assets provided by the Project Builder into the collection of slides and transmits or sends the rendered communication to the cli- ent user for viewing and editing.”); ’497 patent, col. 4, lines 27–30 (“The project viewer . . . is an application that ren- ders or ‘serializes’ the communication project slides and content, and provides them with functionality.”). Because a “project viewer” performs more than display functions, the court concluded, “project viewer” would not be understood by a relevant artisan as itself identifying a structure. Supplemental Claim Construction Order, at *3 (emphasizing the lack of evidence that “known ‘viewer’ ap- plications” could “render or serialize the communication project slides and provide them with functionality as de- scribed by the patents”). Accordingly, the presence of “pro- ject viewer” in relevant claims, accompanied by identification of functions it must perform, made the “pro- ject viewer” element at issue a means-plus-function ele- ment under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f). Id. The district court then stated that, in the aggregate, the corresponding “structures disclosed to perform the functions of the Project Viewer are described at Col. 4:27 through Col. 9:19.” Id. 2 In November 2021, the district court, acting on Google’s motion under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c) (framed and treated as a motion to dismiss), held that claims 14, 16, 22, and 23 of Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 9 Filed: 07/03/2024
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the ’618 patent and claim 1 of the ’497 patent—none of which contain “project viewer” language—are invalid un- der 35 U.S.C. § 101. Rule 12(c) Order, at *3–6, *8. The district court reasoned that those claims “are directed at the abstract idea of a system for generating customized or tailored computer communications based on user infor- mation,” id. at *4 (citing Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Cap- ital One Bank (USA), 792 F.3d 1363, 1369–70 (Fed. Cir. 2015)), and “recite only generic computer components func- tioning in their known conventional manner,” which “does not amount to inventive concept,” id. at *6; see also id. at *5 (first citing Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, 573 U.S. 208, 225–26 (2014); and then citing Intellectual Ven- tures I LLC v. Symantec Corp., 838 F.3d 1307, 1316 (Fed. Cir. 2016)). 3 In August 2022, the district court granted summary judgment to Google on the remainder of Impact Engine’s asserted claims, disposing of each remaining asserted claim under one of three rationales. a Certain remaining claims recite both a “project builder” that generates a communication and a “project viewer” that merely sends or displays, but does not “render,” the com- munication: claims 1, 7, and 12 of the ’8,253 patent; claims 1, 14, and 18 of the ’832 patent; and claims 1, 4, 21, and 25 of the ’632 patent. For those claims, the district court granted summary judgment of invalidity under § 101 for reasons similar to those expressed in its Rule 12(c) opinion. Summary Judgment Order, at 1194–96. The court rea- soned that “in the scope of these asserted claims,” the pro- ject viewer “operate[s] in its known and familiar capacity,” which does not amount to an inventive concept. Id. at 1194–95; see also Supplemental Claim Construction Order, at *3 (distinguishing the project viewer’s disclosed function “to render or serialize the communication project slides and Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 10 Filed: 07/03/2024
provide them with functionality as described by the pa- tents” as potentially nonconventional in the art, in contrast with the routine and well-known function of “display[ing] a file created by another application”). b For claim 9 of the ’497 patent and claim 1 of the ’6,253 patent, each of which requires the “project viewer” to “ren- der” a communication, the district court granted summary judgment of noninfringement. Impact Engine does not dis- pute that those claims are materially similar for present purposes, that the “project viewer” language is means-plus- function language, or that the analysis is properly focused on the “render” function those claims require the “project viewer” to perform. Accordingly, for its infringement case, Impact Engine had to identify structure in the specifica- tion—here, algorithms for what is undisputedly software— corresponding to the claimed rendering function. Impact Engine relied on the analysis provided by its expert, Dr. Wicker. In its summary-judgment briefing, Im- pact Engine stated that “[t]he Court left it to the parties— and their experts—to determine which of those disclosed structures are necessary to perform each claimed func- tion.” J.A. 9856 (emphasis in original). Impact Engine ex- plained that Dr. Wicker had therefore performed an infringement analysis that “organized the [five-column specification] passage identified by the Court [in the Sup- plemental Claim Construction Order] into nine algorithmic structures” and then “identified which structures are nec- essary to perform each claimed function.” J.A. 9856 (citing J.A. 8352–54 ¶¶ 250–51, 253–54; J.A. 8393 ¶ 296; J.A. 8486 ¶ 379). Dr. Wicker asserted that, for the project viewer’s rendering functionality, the corresponding struc- ture consisted of three of the nine algorithmic structures he had identified, and those three were located in aggre- gate at fifteen lines of column 4 of the ’497 patent, namely lines 27–42: “(1) receiving a project object as input, the Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 11 Filed: 07/03/2024
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project object containing information necessary for render- ing; (2) loading and interpreting the project object; [and] (3) determining a load sequence for the communication pro- ject.” J.A. 8352–53 ¶¶ 250, 253. The district court held that Impact Engine had “based its infringement analysis on a construction that does not comport with the Court’s claim construction” and therefore “[could not] sustain its burden to prove infringement.” Summary Judgment Order, at 1194. The district court noted that it had earlier “identified a significant portion of the specification that describes how the project viewer ren- ders a communication based on the user’s selections, start- ing at Col. 4:27 through Col. 9:19” and explained that “[w]ithin these columns, the specification discloses in detail how the project viewer loads the content and design ele- ments selected by the user into containers at various layers to render a communication.” Id. at 1193–94 (citing ’497 pa- tent, col. 5, line 7, through col. 8, line 59). The court then observed that “Impact Engine’s expert did not apply any of this detailed description of how the project viewer uses the information it is provided to render a communication” but instead relied for the rendering functionality only on one paragraph in column 4. Id. at 1194. The district court con- cluded, however, that all the cited passage discloses is “simply receipt by the project viewer of the ‘project object,’ the information necessary for the project viewer to render the communication as configured by the end user” and that the “receipt of the information to render a communication as configured by the end user is not the structure for the actual rendering of the communication as required by the claims and the Court’s construction.” Id. (emphasis added). For that reason, the district court granted Google summary judgment of noninfringement of the two claims at issue. c One more claim had to be addressed: claim 30 of the ’898 patent, which recites a “compiling engine.” For that Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 12 Filed: 07/03/2024
claim, the district court granted Google summary judg- ment of invalidity under § 112(a), citing both the enable- ment and written-description requirements. Id. at 1195. The district court explained that the specification “does not disclose any information or mechanism that would inform a person of skill in the art how a compiler as construed”— “a program that translates source code into machine or ob- ject code”—also performs the claimed functions of the “com- piling engine” of “group[ing] the claimed design layers, design elements and content containers into a collection of slides to generate a communication.” Id. at 1195 (emphasis added). II On appeal, Impact Engine presents three issues for our review. First, Impact Engine challenges the district court’s holding that several asserted claims are invalid for ineligi- bility under § 101. Second, Impact Engine challenges an aspect of the district court’s “project viewer” claim con- struction, particularly as it relates to the claimed “render- ing” functionality, and on that basis challenges the two noninfringement determinations. Third, Impact Engine challenges the district court’s determination that claim 30 of the ’898 patent is invalid under § 112(a). Following Ninth Circuit law, we decide de novo whether the Rule 12(c) judgment and summary judgment before us are correct. OIP Technologies, Inc. v. Ama- zon.com, Inc., 788 F.3d 1359, 1362 (Fed. Cir. 2015); Kaneka Corp. v. Xiamen Kingdomway Group Co., 790 F.3d 1298, 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2015); Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c); Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). Subject-matter eligibility under § 101 is a legal issue that we decide de novo where, as here, there are no under- lying material factual determinations to review. Natural Alternatives International, Inc. v. Creative Compounds, LLC, 918 F.3d 1338, 1342 (Fed. Cir. 2019). We review a district court’s claim construction, including identification of any corresponding structure for a means-plus-function Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 13 Filed: 07/03/2024
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claim, without deference to the extent that it is based on intrinsic evidence, but we review subsidiary fact-finding for clear error. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 574 U.S. 318, 331–32 (2015); Williamson v. Citrix Online, LLC, 792 F.3d 1339, 1346 (Fed. Cir. 2015). In- fringement is a factual issue. Lucent Technologies, Inc. v. Gateway, Inc., 580 F.3d 1301, 1309 (Fed. Cir. 2009). Inva- lidity under § 112(a) is a factual issue as to written descrip- tion and a legal issue with subsidiary factual issues as to enablement. Vasudevan Software, Inc. v. MicroStrategy, Inc., 782 F.3d 671, 682, 684 (Fed. Cir. 2015). We conclude that Impact Engine has identified no error that warrants setting aside the district court’s judgment. A The district court ruled that the asserted claims inval- idated as claiming patent-ineligible subject matter under § 101 are (1) “directed at the abstract idea of a system for generating customized or tailored computer communica- tions based on user information” and (2) “recite only ge- neric computer components functioning in their known, conventional manner” and therefore fail to recite an in- ventive concept. Rule 12(c) Order, at *4–6; see also Sum- mary Judgment Order, at 1194–95. We see no error in those rulings and no need for additional claim construction to draw that conclusion. “[W]e have explained that ‘[i]nformation as such is an intangible’; accordingly, ‘gathering and analyzing infor- mation of a specified content, then displaying the results’ without ‘any particular assertedly inventive technology for performing those functions’ is an abstract idea.” In re Killian, 45 F.4th 1373, 1382 (Fed. Cir. 2022) (second alter- ation in original) (quoting Electric Power Group, LLC v. Al- stom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350, 1353–54 (Fed. Cir. 2016)), cert. denied sub nom. Killian v. Vidal, 144 S. Ct. 100 (2023), reh’g denied, 144 S. Ct. 441 (2023); Trading Technologies International, Inc. v. IBG LLC, 921 F.3d 1378, 1385 (Fed. Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 14 Filed: 07/03/2024
Cir. 2019) (same); Two-Way Media Ltd. v. Comcast Cable Communications, LLC, 874 F.3d 1329, 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (same); Capital One, 792 F.3d at 1369 (“Providing this minimal tailoring [of website information content based on user-specific information] is an abstract idea.”). Here, the claims held ineligible are directed to an ab- stract idea in that well-established sense. Those claims re- cite systems comprising an unordered list of generically named elements (i.e., “project builder,” “media repository,” “[formatting/compiling/distribution] engine”) each associ- ated with high-level, broadly articulated, result-defined in- formation-processing functionality. The focus of the claims is the abstract idea of processing information—turning user-provided input into user-tailored output—and not any improved concrete tools or methods by which that pro- cessing functionality is achieved. See FairWarning IP, LLC v. Iatric Systems, Inc., 839 F.3d 1089, 1095 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (“Thus here, as in Electric Power, ‘the focus of the claims is not on . . . an improvement in computers as tools, but on certain independently abstract ideas that use com- puters as tools.’” (alteration in original) (quoting Electric Power, 830 F.3d at 1354)). Nor do the relevant claims recite an inventive concept that transforms them into a patent-eligible application of that abstract idea. The relevant claims do not recite a spe- cific improvement to computer components or standard functionality; they recite unordered arrangements of ge- neric functional components that, at best, use generic com- puter-related components (i.e., “network[s],” “graphical user interface[s],” “server[s]”) as tools in a routine and con- ventional sense to practice the above-defined abstract in- formation-processing idea. See Hawk Technology Systems, LLC v. Castle Retail, LLC, 60 F.4th 1349, 1358–59 (Fed. Cir. 2023) (“Simply stated, ‘[n]othing in the claims, under- stood in light of the specification, requires anything other than off-the-shelf, conventional computer, network, and display technology for gathering, sending, and presenting Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 15 Filed: 07/03/2024
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the desired information.’” (alteration in original) (quoting Electric Power, 830 F.3d at 1355)); Symantec Corp., 838 F.3d at 1315 (“[T]hese claims use generic computers to per- form generic computer functions.”). The claims also do not limit the arrangement of the claimed components in any way that recites an inventive concept. Although an “inventive concept can be found in the non-conventional and non-generic arrangement of known, conventional pieces,” BASCOM Global Internet Services, Inc. v. AT&T Mobility LLC, 827 F.3d 1341, 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2016), the relevant claims before us merely list the constituent elements of the claimed systems without providing any concrete or specific nonconventional manner in which those constituent parts are arranged or a noncon- ventional mode of operation that the claimed arrangement might achieve. See Internet Patents Corp. v. Active Net- work, Inc., 790 F.3d 1343, 1348 (Fed. Cir. 2015). Last, for those invalidated claims reciting a “project viewer” associated with the functionality of merely sending or displaying a communication but not “rendering” it, Sum- mary Judgment Order, at 1194–95, no different conclusion is warranted. Although Impact Engine asserts that the project viewer, when performing the sending/displaying functionality, “limits the claims to a ‘specific, discrete im- plementation’ of the allegedly ‘abstract idea,’” Impact En- gine cites no material evidence demonstrating that the project viewer, in that context, performs anything other than well-known, routine, and conventional computer func- tionality. Impact Engine Opening Br. at 49–50 (quoting BASCOM, 827 F.3d at 1350). And Impact Engine’s argu- ments on appeal are undercut by the positions it took be- fore (and the evidence it provided to) the district court, where Impact Engine argued that the “project viewer” (at least where no rendering functionality is required) is a well-known, routine software construct. Compare J.A. 7561, 12533 (Impact Engine arguing that the “project viewer” should be construed as “a known program Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 16 Filed: 07/03/2024
construct that would be familiar to one of skill in the art”), and J.A. 7609–11 (Dr. Wicker’s report in support of Impact Engine’s proposed claim constructions, stating that a “pro- ject viewer” as used in the asserted patents would be un- derstood by a relevant artisan as “a known programming construct”), with J.A. 12379–80 (Impact Engine arguing that the rendering functionality associated with the “pro- ject viewer” potentially provides an inventive concept). B Impact Engine next challenges the district court’s rul- ing, on Google’s motion for summary judgment, that Im- pact Engine lacked evidence to permit a reasonable finding that claim 9 of the ’497 patent and claim 1 of the ’6,253 patent, both of which claim a “project viewer” that performs the function of “render[ing]” a communication, are in- fringed. Summary Judgment Order, at 1194. Impact En- gine does not challenge the conclusion that the materially indistinguishable claim elements consisting of “project viewer” with the identified “render[ing]” function are means-plus-function elements. Impact Engine Opening Br. at 51, 66–67. Nor does Impact Engine dispute that the district court’s noninfringement determination must stand if Impact Engine’s relied-on passages of the specification fail to supply an algorithm for carrying out the claimed ren- dering function under our precedents governing “special purpose computer-implemented means-plus-function limi- tation[s].” Noah Systems, Inc. v. Intuit Inc., 675 F.3d 1302, 1312 (Fed. Cir. 2012). We conclude that the relied-on spec- ification passages do fail to supply the required algorithm, and so we affirm on this issue without having to resolve other disputes about ultimately immaterial aspects of the course of litigation and adjudication regarding various “project viewer” claims. On appeal, Impact Engine relies entirely on column 4, lines 27–42, as setting out the required algorithm. Impact Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 17 Filed: 07/03/2024
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Engine Opening Br. at 59–63, 66, 69–70; Impact Engine Reply Br. at 31–32. 2 That passage reads: The project viewer, such as the project viewer 118 shown in FIG. 1, is an application that renders or “serializes” the communication project slides and content, and provides them with functionality. When the project viewer is launched, it is passed a data structure and associated software programs called the project object. The project object con- tains the information necessary for the communi- cation project to render and playback as configured by the end user. Slides are represented in the pro- ject object as elements in an array. Once the pro- ject object is loaded and interpreted, the project viewer determines a load sequence for the commu- nication project content. The project object is ag- nostic as to the type of file it is rendering and is,
2 Although Impact Engine argues that its expert ad- dressed other specification passages assertedly reciting other algorithmic structures for the “project viewer,” Im- pact Engine Opening Br. at 72–74, the only passages it re- lies on for the rendering function are those in column 4, lines 27–42, id. at 59, 66. Impact Engine recognizes, cor- rectly, that the proper focus of analysis for these means- plus-function claims is on structures performing the claimed functions, not the “project viewer” without further qualification. Id. at 73 (noting that many specification de- tails assertedly addressed by its expert are “not pertinent to any project viewer function claimed in the ’497 and ’6,253 patents”). The claims at issue for noninfringement require the rendering function. We therefore may focus on that requirement. Because we conclude that the infringe- ment proof fails (under summary-judgment standards) re- garding that requirement, and that conclusion requires no additional claim construction, we need not go further. Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 18 Filed: 07/03/2024
therefore, able to produce a wide variety of commu- nications such as websites, dynamically created websites, Flash™ banner ads, presentations, bro- chures, advertisements on third party websites, and/or the like. ’497 patent, col. 4, lines 27–42. As noted, the specification proceeds beyond that paragraph to add several columns’ worth of specifics, see id., cols. 4–9, but Impact Engine in- sists on disregarding those additional descriptions and in- stead relying entirely on the paragraph quoted above. We therefore limit our analysis to the adequacy of that para- graph. The paragraph is inadequate. Recognizing the need for genuine structure in the specification over and above the claimed function, we have repeatedly explained that “purely functional language, which simply restates the function associated with the means-plus-function limita- tion, is insufficient to provide the required corresponding structure.” Noah Systems, 675 F.3d at 1317; see Black- board, Inc. v. Desire2Learn, Inc., 574 F.3d 1371, 1384 (Fed. Cir. 2009); Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd. v. In- ternational Game Technology, 521 F.3d 1328, 1333–35 (Fed. Cir. 2008). In this case, the specification paragraph Impact Engine relies on for the required algorithm adds nothing of substance to what the claim-expressed function of “render[ing]” the communication itself requires under the unchallenged construction of that claim term. The district court, construing the rendering language, ruled that “render[ing]” means “serializing the project slides and content into a format that can be stored or trans- mitted,” Supplemental Claim Construction Order, at *1, adding: “The Project Viewer renders, or serializes, the com- munication using the selected templates and assets pro- vided by the Project Builder into the collection of slides and transmits or sends the rendered communication to the cli- ent user for viewing and editing,” id. at *2. The function- Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 19 Filed: 07/03/2024
IMPACT ENGINE, INC. v. GOOGLE LLC 19
defining language of the claim, as construed, itself requires presentation of material from the project builder to the pro- ject viewer for the latter to take in and process into a form for a serial output for storage or transmission to the user for the latter’s viewing or editing. Impact Engine has pro- vided no basis for us to read the above-quoted paragraph— including its general reference to receiving a project object from the project builder, which is loaded and interpreted by the project viewer and then processed into an output— as saying anything substantial beyond what is required by the construction of the claimed rendering function. The district court so concluded, Summary Judgment Order, at 1194, and we agree. As Google argues, “those sixteen lines contain no specific algorithm, just a high-level description of the rendering function as an introduction to the detailed algorithmic structure in the following columns.” Google Response Br. at 53. Those lines are not enough. And Im- pact Engine eschews reliance on the succeeding columns containing actual how-to algorithms, 3 thus avoiding the § 112(f) inquiry into whether the accused Google processes are equivalents to the specifics of those columns.
3 See, e.g., ’497 patent, col. 5, lines 14–18 (“All of the complex programming needed to govern content loading, playback, and functionality has been incorporated into the project viewer and container components. The system in- cludes a number of core design files.”); id., col. 4, line 45– 46 (“[T]he project viewer . . . loads the content into the con- tainers.”); id., col. 7, lines 11–13 (“The image component is a multimedia module that is used inside the core design files to load and display images and/or .swf files.”); id., col. 7, lines 36–37 (“The video component is used inside the core design files to load and display .flv video.”); id., col. 8, lines 8–9 (“The text component is used inside the core design files to load and display HTML formatted text.”). Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 20 Filed: 07/03/2024
Arguing for a contrary conclusion, Impact Engine points to our decision in University of Pittsburgh of Com- monwealth System of Higher Education v. Varian Medical Systems, Inc., 561 F. App’x 934, 941 (Fed. Cir. 2014). Even aside from the fact that the decision is not precedential, University of Pittsburgh does not save Impact Engine’s case. At most, the decision indicates that one specification passage can suffice to serve as corresponding structure if it adequately discloses structure itself, even if other passages in the specification provide additional implementation de- tails. Here, Impact Engine’s problem is that the sole spec- ification passage it relies on is an inadequate disclosure of corresponding structure, for the reasons stated. We there- fore affirm the district court’s ruling that claim 9 of the ’497 patent and claim 1 of the ’6,253 patent are not infringed. C We also affirm the district court’s ruling that claim 30 of the ’898 patent is invalid under § 112(a) for lack of writ- ten-description support (so we need not reach the enable- ment issue). For the ’898 patent’s written description to be adequate for claim 30, the written description itself must show a relevant artisan that the inventors were in posses- sion of the subject matter claimed in claim 30, where “[o]ne shows that one is in possession of the invention by describ- ing the invention, with all its claimed limitations.” Lock- wood v. American Airlines, Inc., 107 F.3d 1565, 1572 (Fed. Cir. 1997) (emphasis in original) (internal quotation marks omitted); see Ariad Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Eli Lilly & Co., 598 F.3d 1336, 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (en banc) (“[T]he hall- mark of written description is disclosure. Thus, ‘possession as shown in the disclosure’ is a more complete formula- tion.”). On appeal, Impact Engine does not challenge the district court’s construction of a “compiler” or a “compiling engine” as a program for “back-end processing of source code into machine or object code.” First Claim Construction Order, at *4. For the written description to be adequate, therefore, it must describe the claimed “compiling engine,” Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 21 Filed: 07/03/2024
IMPACT ENGINE, INC. v. GOOGLE LLC 21
under that construction, as performing the claimed func- tions of “integrating the at least one selected media asset with the at least one selected online advertisement tem- plate” and “grouping the design layers, design elements, and content containers into the collection of slides so as to generate the communication capable of being rendered in a manner so as to be content specific to the user data, key- word data, and geographic data.” ’898 patent, col. 19, line 39, through col. 20, line 27. The ’898 patent’s specification nowhere contains that description. Impact Engine identifies sections of the ’898 patent’s specification that, at best, treat a “compiler” as a black-box functionality, see Impact Engine Opening Br. at 76–77 (citing ’898 patent, figs.1, 3; id., col. 12, lines 52–54), and otherwise provide no description of a “compiling en- gine” that processes source code into machine code and also performs the claimed functions. To the extent that the specification refers to “compil[ing]” a communication, it is merely referring to putting “customized communication project(s) . . . into a format suitable for transmission,” not to compiling source code into machine code. ’898 patent, col. 12, lines 52–54. Impact Engine has identified nothing in the specification that describes a program that performs the defining function of a “compiling engine” (source-code- into-machine-code processing) as also performing the other functions required by claim 30. That deficiency is a suffi- cient basis for affirming the district court’s invalidity de- termination. A contrary conclusion is not supported by the testi- mony of Dr. Wicker that a skilled artisan “would have un- derstood how to implement this functionality in software.” J.A. 10494–95 ¶ 1192 (cited by Impact Engine Opening Br. at 77–78). Our precedents rejecting the notion that an en- abling disclosure always suffices to meet § 112(a)’s written- description requirement make clear that, even if a skilled artisan “would have understood how to implement” the claimed functionality in software if the specification Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 22 Filed: 07/03/2024
described a compiler containing the functionality, that does not mean that the written description itself demonstrates to a relevant artisan that the inventors possessed the in- vention of that functionality in a compiler. See, e.g., Ariad, 598 F.3d at 1344–45, 1351–53; Boston Scientific Corp. v. Johnson & Johnson, 647 F.3d 1353, 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2011); University of Rochester v. G.D. Searle & Co., 358 F.3d 916, 927 (Fed. Cir. 2004); In re Barker, 559 F.2d 588, 591 (CCPA 1977) (“A specification may contain a disclosure that is suf- ficient to enable one skilled in the art to make and use the invention and yet fail to comply with the description of the invention requirement.”). Because the specification fails to describe any instance of the claimed “compiling engine,” as construed, performing the claimed “integrating,” “group- ing,” and “generat[ing]” functions, we conclude, as a matter of law, that claim 30 is invalid for lack of written-descrip- tion support. III We have considered Impact Engine’s remaining argu- ments and find them unpersuasive. For the foregoing rea- sons, the district court’s judgment is affirmed. AFFIRMED Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 23 Filed: 07/03/2024
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of California in No. 3:19-cv-01301-CAB- DEB, Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo. ______________________
REYNA, Circuit Judge, concurring-in-part, dissenting-in- part. I concur in part with the majority opinion. I dissent only to the majority’s non-infringement and ineligibility de- terminations as to the “project viewer” claims. I would va- cate the district court’s summary judgment grant of (1) non-infringement of claim 9 of the ’497 patent and claim 1 of the ’6,253 patent, and (2) Section 101 ineligibility of the claims in the ’8,253 patent, ’832 patent, and ’632 pa- tent, and remand for further proceedings. Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 24 Filed: 07/03/2024
I The district court erred in granting summary judgment of non-infringement and ineligibility as to the “project viewer” claims. These determinations were based on the district court’s legally insufficient and underdeveloped claim construction of “project viewer,” a term that no party disputes is a means-plus-function claim term. As a result, the district court left the parties, and us, with no basis to determine whether the “project viewer” claims of the ’497 patent and the ’6,253 patent are infringed by Google’s ac- cused products and whether the “project viewer” claims of the ’8,253 patent, ’832 patent, and ’632 patent are ineligible under Section 101. I would vacate the district court’s sum- mary judgment grants, vacate the district court’s legally insufficient claim construction order, and remand for fur- ther proceedings, to include a new construction of “project viewer” in line with our means-plus-function claim con- struction case law. Playtex Prods., Inc. v. Procter & Gam- ble Co., 400 F.3d 901, 909–10 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (vacating summary judgment determination based on flawed claim construction); Nazomi Commc’ns, Inc. v. Arm Holdings, PLC, 403 F.3d 1364, 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (same); Liquid Dynamics Corp. v. Vaughan Co., 355 F.3d 1361, 1371 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (same); Pickholtz v. Rainbow Techs., Inc., 284 F.3d 1365, 1374 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (same). Our case law compels my dissent. Our case law is clear that in order to review a district court’s claim construction, this court “must be furnished sufficient findings and rea- soning to permit meaningful appellate scrutiny.” Nazomi Commc’ns, 403 F.3d at 1371 (citation omitted); Anchor Wall Sys., Inc. v. Rockwood Retaining Walls, Inc., 340 F.3d 1298, 1311 (Fed. Cir. 2003); Gechter v. Davidson, 116 F.3d 1454, 1458 (Fed. Cir. 1997); Graco, Inc. v. Binks Mfg. Co., 60 F.3d 785, 791 (Fed. Cir. 1995); Shuffle Master, Inc. v. VendingData Corp., 163 F. App’x 864, 868–69 (Fed. Cir. 2005). For a means-plus-function claim term, this means that a court must provide sufficient analysis under a two- Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 25 Filed: 07/03/2024
step inquiry. First, a court must identify the claimed func- tion. Williamson v. Citrix Online, LLC, 792 F.3d 1339, 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2015). Second, the court must determine what structure, if any, disclosed in the specification corre- sponds to the claimed function. Id. Stated differently, the written description must recite corresponding structure for the claimed function, otherwise the claim fails as indefi- nite. Id. at 1352. At step two, courts must clearly identify the structure in the specification that corresponds to the claimed function. A court’s failure to do so may result in a construction that inadvertently and inappropriately im- ports structure that is not required for the claimed func- tion. Northrop Grumman Corp. v. Intel Corp., 325 F.3d 1346, 1352 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (“A court may not import into the claim features that are unnecessary to perform the claimed function.”). The district court did not provide a sufficient analysis under this two-step inquiry in its claim construction order, resulting in a seriously deficient and confusing construc- tion of “project viewer.” Impact Engine, Inc. v. Google LLC, No. 19-cv-01301, 2021 WL 9525522, at *3 (S.D. Cal. May 14, 2021) (Claim Construction Order). At step 1, and in one sentence, the district court summarily concluded that a “project viewer” performed the following four functions across all ten asserted “project viewer” claims: rendering a communication, displaying slides, sending a communica- tion; and allowing a user to view templates. Id. This anal- ysis was in error because it was divorced from the claims at issue. The analysis, or lack thereof, did not specify which function was associated with each of the “project viewer” claims but rather associated all four functions with all asserted “project viewer” claims. No party disputes that the function of a “project viewer” differed depending on the claim. Appellant Br. 17; Appellee Br. 21. The district court also erred at step 2. Rather than identify which structure in the specification corresponded to each of the four functions, the district court pointed to Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 26 Filed: 07/03/2024
over three hundred lines of specification, spanning five col- umns, as the corresponding structure for “project viewer” across all asserted claims. Id. (citing ’497 patent, 4:27–9:19). Based on this summary conclusion, the parties nor this court can tell whether the five columns of structure are required for all four functions or whether certain por- tions of these five columns correspond to a specific function. In other words, the district court left it to the parties, and even worse, this court, to sort out which structure corre- sponds to each of the four functions. This is not the parties’ job nor ours. As the majority even noted at oral argument, “[w]hat the district court did here was really confusing by identifying a whole bunch of material without specifically mapping the structure in that to the functions. . . . It is [] not [our] job to read this and figure out what the structure is in the first instance.” Oral Arg. 16:40–17:25 (emphasis added). In sum, the district court’s construction of “project viewer” is inadequate. The district court does not set out any basis for its reasoning sufficient for meaningful appel- late review. This court must therefore vacate and remand for further claim construction and subsequent infringe- ment and Section 101 analyses of the “project viewer” claims. II The district court’s grant of summary judgment of non- infringement of the “project viewer” claims is also improper for a separate, independent reason. Setting aside its un- derdeveloped and insufficient construction of “project viewer,” the district court also conducted a flawed infringe- ment analysis, providing this court with no basis to deter- mine whether there is a genuine factual dispute as to whether Google’s accused products infringed the “project viewer” claims at issue. An infringement analysis involves a two-step frame- work in which the court construes the disputed claim terms Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 27 Filed: 07/03/2024
and then compares the properly construed claims to the ac- cused devices. Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 52 F.3d 967, 976 (Fed. Cir. 1995). Infringement is a question of fact. Medgraph, Inc. v. Medtronic, Inc., 843 F.3d 942, 949 (Fed. Cir. 2016). Thus, a grant of summary judgment of non-infringement is proper when no reasonable fact- finder could find that the accused product contains every claim limitation or its equivalent. Id. Following the district court’s Claim Construction Or- der, Google moved for summary judgment of non-infringe- ment of two “project viewer” claims: claim 9 of the ’497 patent and claim 1 of the ’6,253 patent. In opposing this motion, Impact Engine proposed two separate, alternative infringement theories. The first theory relied on a con- struction of “project viewer” which identified only a portion of the five columns of specification as corresponding struc- ture for the “project viewer” claims at issue. J.A. 9857–60 (summary judgment brief); Appellant Br. 66–67. The dis- trict court rejected this theory because it did not identify all five columns of specification as structure and entered judgment of non-infringement on this ground. Impact En- gine, Inc. v. Google LLC, 624 F. Supp. 3d 1190, 1193–94 (S.D. Cal. 2022) (Summary Judgment Order). In an effort to retroactively clarify its Claim Construction Order, the district court noted in its Summary Judgment Order that the required structure for all “project viewer” claims was contained in the five columns of specification at columns 4:27–9:19 of the ’497 patent. Id. Impact Engine’s second theory, however, relied on a construction of “project viewer” that identified all five col- umns of specification as required structure. J.A. 9860–63 (summary judgment brief). Specifically, Impact Engine’s expert noted that while all five columns of specification were not necessary for the “project viewer” claims at issue, Google’s accused products embodied the claimed “project viewer” “even assuming that each of the nine algorithmic structures described in the identified columns is required Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 28 Filed: 07/03/2024
to be present.” J.A. 8354 ¶255; see also J.A. 8352–53 ¶¶249–51; J.A. 8388–91 ¶¶283–87; J.A. 8395 ¶301; J.A. 8660–69 ¶¶512–21; J.A. 8886–90 ¶¶744–54; J.A. 10217–219 ¶¶151–52. Without explanation, the dis- trict court did not consider this second theory, or the evi- dence submitted by Impact Engine, which was in line with its newly announced construction of “project viewer.” Sum- mary Judgment Order, at 1193–94. This was error. Given that Impact Engine’s second theory aligned with the district court’s construction of “project viewer,” the dis- trict court should have then evaluated the evidence in the record and compared Google’s accused devices to the “pro- ject viewer” claims at issue. The district court’s failure to do so resulted in an incomplete infringement analysis, pre- cluding a grant of summary judgment of non-infringement. Additionally, without any analysis by the district court as to this second step of the infringement analysis, this court has no basis to determine whether there is a factual dis- pute as to whether Google’s accused products infringe the “project viewer” claims at issue. Remand is required under these circumstances. Nazomi Commc’ns, 403 F.3d at 1372. 1
1 The majority errs by not acknowledging Impact Engine’s second theory of infringement. The majority mis- takenly believes that Impact Engine’s infringement case turns solely on its first theory, which applied a construction of “project viewer” that relied on a subset of the five col- umns of specification. The majority considers Impact En- gine’s proposed claim construction in the first instance, rejects it, and affirms the district court’s summary judg- ment grant of non-infringement. Maj. Op. at 16–20. The majority also errs in asserting that Impact Engine does not dispute affirmance of non-infringement if its pro- posed construction of “project viewer” is incorrect. Maj. Op. Case: 22-2291 Document: 48 Page: 29 Filed: 07/03/2024
For these reasons, I respectfully concur in part and dis- sent in part.
at 16. Impact Engine clearly argued in its briefing on ap- peal and at oral argument that a remand is required in light of its second theory of infringement (which relies on all five columns of specification). Appellant Br. 72–74; Re- ply Br. 35–37; Oral Arg. 8:20–41; Oral Arg. 42:20–43:10.