Sas Institute, Inc. v. Complementsoft, LLC.

825 F.3d 1341, 119 U.S.P.Q. 2d (BNA) 1031, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 10508, 2016 WL 3213103
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
DecidedJune 10, 2016
Docket2015-1346, 2015-1347
StatusPublished
Cited by43 cases

This text of 825 F.3d 1341 (Sas Institute, Inc. v. Complementsoft, 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
Sas Institute, Inc. v. Complementsoft, LLC., 825 F.3d 1341, 119 U.S.P.Q. 2d (BNA) 1031, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 10508, 2016 WL 3213103 (Fed. Cir. 2016).

Opinions

Opinion coneurring-in-part and dissenting-in-part filed by Circuit Judge NEWMAN.

STOLL, Circuit Judge.

SAS Institute, Inc. filed an inter partes review (“IPR”) petition with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) to review the patentability of ComplementSoft’s U.S. Patent No. 7,110,936. The Board instituted an IPR proceeding on some, but not all, of the ’936 patent claims challenged in SAS’s petition. The Board ultimately found all of the instituted claims, except for claim 4, unpatentable in view of the .prior art. SAS argues on appeal that the Board misconstrued a claim term and that the Board erred by not addressing in the final written decision claims SAS petitioned against, but that the Board did not institute as part of the proceeding. ComplementSoft cross-appeals two of the Board’s claim constructions. For the reasons below, we agree with the Board on all of the challenged constructions and determine that the Board did not need to address in its final written decision claims it did not institute. We also vacate the Board’s determination that claim 4 is patentable and remand so that the parties may address a new construction that the Board adopted in its final written decision after interpreting the claim differently before.

Background

I.

ComplementSoft is the assignee of the ’936 patent, issued September 19, 2006, and directed to an “Integrated Development Environment for generating and maintaining source code ... in particular, programmed in data manipulation languages.” ’936 patent col. 2 ll. 8-11. The patent characterizes a development environment as comprising a set of software tools allowing users to develop, edit, and debug software for a particular programming language or set of programming languages. Id. col. 1 ll. 32-48. The development environment contemplated by the ’936 patent utilizes a graphical user interface and is particularly designed for data manipulation languages, including SAS®, which is developed by the appellant. Id. col. 1 l. 64 — col 2 l. 3, col. 2 1. ll. The specification describes that the development environment of the ’936 patent serves three primary functions: (1) it allows users to locally edit code stored on a central server; (2) it detects a user’s programming language and parses code accordingly; and (3) it generates representative visualization of such code, which can be directly edited to effect a change to the underlying code. Id. col. 2 l. 8 - col. 3 1. 20.

The specification describes that four major components of the ’936 patent design environment are a document manager, an editor, a parser layer, and a visualizer. The document manager is a program that performs enhanced file management functions. Id. col. 6 ll. 22-42. The editor allows a user to edit and debug source code using standard text-editing functions. Id. col. 7 l. 3 — col. 8 l. 7. The parser layer examines source code, detects which programming language is being used in the code, and applies rules and logic corresponding to that programming language. Id. col. 9 ll. 38-53, col. 17 ll. 30-45. Finally, the visualizer works in conjunction with the parser layer to parse the code and display it graphically using icons connected with arrows. Id. col. 8 ll. 8-12.

[1344]*1344The ’936 patent discloses two types of visualizations, those for program flows and those for data flows. Program flow diagrams contain programming block icons, which represent sections of source code, linked with arrows that depict the overall flow of the program. Id. col. 2 ll. 38-40, col. 15 ll. 56-59. Figure 9 of the ’936 patent depicts a program flow.

[[Image here]]

Data flow diagrams, the other visualization disclosed by the ’936 patent, “are comprised of icons depicting data processing steps and arrows to depict the flow of the data through the program.” Id. col. 2 ll. 40-42. Figure 17 of the ’936 patent depicts a data flow.

[1345]*1345[[Image here]]

During prosecution, the patentee added the “data manipulation languages” limitation to the claims in response to a prior art rejection based on U.S. Patent No. 6,851,-107 to Coad (“the Coad patent”). The Coad patent generally describes a design environment for purely object-oriented programming languages, such as Java and C + +. In response to the patentee’s amendment, the examiner allowed the claims to issue, stating that the Coad patent does not disclose “that the detected language is a data manipulation language.” J.A. 528.1

The claims at issue in this appeal are independent claim 1 and dependent claim 4. They recite:

1. An integrated development environment, comprising:
a document manager for retrieving source code programmed using one of a plurality of types of data manipulation languages-,
an editor for displaying the retrieved source code and providing a means for a user to edit the retrieved source code;
a parser layer which detects the one of the plurality of types of data manipulation languages in which the retrieved source code is programmed and which activates rules and logic applicable to the detected one of the plurality of types of data manipulation languages; and
[1346]*1346a visualizer dynamically linked to the editor for displaying graphical representations of flows within the retrieved source code using the rules and logic applicable to the detected one of the plurality of types of data manipulation languages and activated by the parser, wherein the editor, parser layer and visualizer cooperate such that edits made to the source code using the editor are automatically reflected in the graphical representations of flows displayed by the visualizer and edits made to the graphical representations of flows in the visualizer are automatically reflected in the source code displayed by the editor. 4. The integrated development environment as recited in claim 1, wherein the graphical representations of data flows are expandable and collapsible.

Id. col. 18 ll. 19 — 43, 50-52 (emphases added).

II.

SAS petitioned for IPR of the ’936 patent, alleging that all sixteen of the patent’s claims were unpatentable as anticipated under 35 U.S.C. § 102 or as obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.2 The Board instituted IPR for claims 1 and 3-10 on obviousness grounds, but did not institute IPR for claims 2 and 11-16. Relevant to this appeal, the Board’s institution decision construed “data manipulation language” as “a programming language used to access data in a database, such as to retrieve, insert, delete, or modify data in the database,” and “graphical representations of flows within the retrieved source code” as “a diagram that depicts a map of the progression (or path) through the source code.” SAS Inst., Inc. v. ComplementSoft, LLC, IPR2013-00226, 2013 WL 8595939, at *4-6 (PTAB Aug. 12, 2013) (Institution Decision). The institution decision also interpreted “graphical representations of data flows” to mean “a depiction of a map of the path of data through the executing source code.” Id. at *12.

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825 F.3d 1341, 119 U.S.P.Q. 2d (BNA) 1031, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 10508, 2016 WL 3213103, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/sas-institute-inc-v-complementsoft-llc-cafc-2016.