115 steven m. mello - 7766223 - method and system for mobile services
Versata's Sur-Reply re Patent Eligibility
1. 1
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS
VERSATA SOFTWARE, INC., et al.
Plaintiffs,
v.
ZOHO CORPORATION
d/b/a MANAGEENGINE
Defendant.
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CIVIL ACTION NO. 1:13-cv-00371-SS
JURY TRIAL DEMANDED
VERSATA’S SUR-REPLY TO ZOHO’S MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT
Pursuant to ¶ 32 of the Court’s Policies and Procedures,1
plaintiff Versata respectfully
submits this brief addressing certain errors in the Reply (Dkt. 99) filed by Zoho Corporation.
I. THE REPLY MISCHARACTERIZES FACTS AND IGNORES KEY EVIDENCE
First, Zoho represents to the Court that its accused “mobile client is simply a website that
can be viewed using a mobile device.”2
This is misleading. Like the accused iPhone and Android
apps, Zoho’s Mobile Clients are separate programs from Zoho’s standard web clients and are
contained in distinct code files.3
Zoho’s Mobile Clients do not simply display Zoho’s standard
websites on a mobile device. Rather, as Versata’s Infringement Contentions clearly depict, they
present interfaces specifically configured for mobile displays.4
Zoho’s own internal documents
confirm this feature in both the ServiceDesk Plus and Applications Manager products:
The Mobile Client is compatible with mobile devices such as Blackberry and
iPhone, and is accessed through the mobile browser on typing the URL
1
Fact Sheet for Judge Sam Sparks ¶ 32, at http://www.txwd.uscourts.gov/General/Judges/judge_policy.asp
2
Zoho Corporation’s Reply in Support for Motion for Summary Judgment (Dkt. 99) (“Reply”) at 3.
3
In keeping with common industry practice, the code files for the mobile applications are generally designated by
terms such as “mobile,” “iOS” (for iPhone operating systems), “iphone” or “android” in the filepath name.
4
See Att. 1, Infringement of U.S. Pat. 7,092,740 by ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, and Att. 3, Infringement of
U.S. Pat. 7,092,740 by ManageEngine Applications Manager (“Infringement Contentions”). The fact that Zoho
develops and advertises these software features tends to belie any claim that they are not technologically important.
Case 1:13-cv-00371-SS Document 100 Filed 08/31/15 Page 1 of 8
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http://<machine-name>:<port-number>, which redirects to the ‘mc’ context.5
Optimized for all types of smart phones available in the market, the
Applications Manager Mobile Client provides a convenient method to track critical
applications, perform actions, receive alerts and identify issues quickly and easily
from any location….The mobile client is adapted for efficiency on
smartphones....6
The methods used by these applications to optimize for mobile displays infringe the ’740 patent.
Second, Zoho’s repeated insistence that “mobile devices are generic computing
equipment”7
ignores the extensive evidence of record that mobile displays (the element recited in
the claims) are not.8
Thus, even if (as Zoho alleges) the computing properties of mobile phones
could be considered generic at the time of the ’740 application, the use of – and presentation of
information on – mobile displays certainly was not generic. Despite thirty pages of briefing,
Zoho presents no factual evidence to the contrary.
Third, Zoho’s Reply repeats the erroneous assertion that the ’740 invention does not
5
See Att. 2, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus User Guide at 79, cited in Att. 1 at D-19 (emphasis added). Zoho’s
reply brief quotes this same language, but omits the clause “which redirects to the ‘mc’ context.” Reply at 3.
6
See Att. 4, “Mobile Client for Applications Manager,” cited in Att. 3 at B-2 (emphasis added, para. break omitted).
7
Reply at 6, 10.
8
E.g., the following documents cited in and attached to Versata’s Response (Dkt. 97) demonstrate the non-
conventional nature of mobile displays and of the application of the ’740 techniques to them:
• U.S. Pat. 7,092,740 (“the ’740 patent”) at 1:12-20, 1:30-33, 7:21-37, 7:41-50 (Att. 1 to Resp.) (Dkt. 97-1);
• Navrátil Decl. ¶ 17-18, 22-29, 44-46 (Att. 2 to Resp.) (Dkt. 97-2);
• A. Neibauer, How to Do Everything with Yahoo! (2000) at 170 (Fig. 7-12), 171 (Att. 8 to Resp.) (Dkt. 97-8);
• P. Campbell, Mobile Web Design: Getting to the Point - Part I (Oct. 29, 2008) (Att. 4 to Resp.) (Dkt. 97-4);
• M. Homann et al., “Towards User Interface Patterns for ERP Applications on Smartphones,” Business
Information Systems: 16th International Conference, BIS 2013 at 14-15 (Att. 5 to Resp.) (Dkt. 97-5).
See also Att. 5, C. Zwick et al., Designing for Small Screens (2005) at:
• 012/013 (“The strategies of software design can only be transferred from the ‘big’ devices to their ‘small’
counterparts to a very limited extent. This means that the development of the user interface is the crucial factor
in the design process.”)
• 040/041 (“The lack of space on smaller screens means that the quest for the dynamic organisation of space is
one of the most challenging aspects associated with the design process.”)
• 048/049 (“Interaction with small screens is typically characterised by greater user impatience and shorter
reading times or attention spans than with large screens. The interaction scenario must take this into account by
displaying legible text in small and easily manageable portions only.”)
Case 1:13-cv-00371-SS Document 100 Filed 08/31/15 Page 2 of 8
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“improve[] the performance of a mobile device.”9
The ’740 patent shows that this assertion is
untrue,10
and Zoho provides neither evidence nor argument that the improvements described in
the patent are illusory. The patent’s improvements in usability, coding efficiency and bandwidth
are pragmatic advantages that compare favorably with the patents upheld in DDR Holdings
(which addressed “a specific way to automate the creation of a composite web page by an
‘outsource provider’ that incorporates elements from multiple sources in order to solve a
problem faced by websites on the Internet”)11
and Trading Techs. (which “eliminated some
problems of prior GUIs [graphical user interfaces] relating to speed, accuracy and usability”).12
Zoho also complains that the ’740 claims “do not provide sufficient instruction to direct
the practitioner how to carry out the claims.”13
But tellingly, Zoho has not alleged that a person
of ordinary skill would be unable to implement the claimed method. Like the Trading Techs.
claims which this Court reviewed approvingly in Affinity/Amazon,14
the ’740 claims adequately
describe the claimed display techniques, while leaving software coding and other specific design
choices to the practitioner. None of Zoho’s cases require the inventor to provide specific design
choices or code as part of the patent disclosure.
9
Reply at 6; see also Zoho Corporation’s Motion for Summary Judgment (Dkt. 93) (“Zoho Br.”) at 17.
10
See, e.g., ’740 patent at:
• 7:17-20 (“data encodings of such display indications may be encoded in a few bytes if necessary or desirable.
Consequently, the described techniques can facilitate display updates over even low bandwidth networks.”)
• 7:21-26 (“In contrast with existing text-based linking techniques, which in most practical cases could support
no more than 4 links on a screen, some implementations support a dense grid of display indictions [sic] which
could easily support 20 to 50 links in the same space.”)
• 7:45-50 (“For example, the state information for a 32-cell data grid could be stored in just 4 bytes (compare this
to 2 KB for even the smallest web graphics, or about 64 bytes for text). Consequently, the described techniques
may continue to work well, even under extremely bandwidth constrained situations.”)
To the extent Zoho contends that such advantages must be recited in the claims, such is not the law.
11
DDR Holdings LLC v. Hotels.com, 773 F.3d 1245, 1259 (Fed. Cir. 2014).
12
Trading Technologies Int’l Inc. v. CQG Inc., 2015 WL 774655 *5 (N.D. Ill. 2015).
13
Reply at 7.
14
Affinity Labs of Texas v. Amazon.com Inc., 2015 WL 3757497 *12 (W.D. Tex. 2015), citing Trading Techs. at *5.
Case 1:13-cv-00371-SS Document 100 Filed 08/31/15 Page 3 of 8
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II. THE REPLY REPEATS FATAL FLAWS IN ZOHO’S ALICE ANALYSIS
A. Zoho erroneously presumes an overly-abstract purpose
Zoho wrongly alleges that “Versata does not dispute that the ’740 patent is directed to an
abstract idea” and that “Versata Concedes that the Purpose of the Claims Is Abstract.”15
Neither
of these statements is true. In fact, § IV(A)(1) of Versata’s Response contends in detail that
“Zoho cannot show that the claims are directed to an ‘abstract idea’.”
Next, Zoho repeats its assumption that the purpose of the patent extends beyond mobile
displays to “any way of using symbols on a display to represent information and updating these
symbols as information changes,” and then argues that this purpose is “ancient” and “abstract.”16
Zoho’s assumption has multiple flaws. First, by framing the purpose of the patent as broadly as
possible, it presumes the abstraction it seeks to prove, committing exactly the error of over-
generalization that the Supreme Court warned against in Alice.17
Such caution is especially
important with respect to software, which inherently addresses problems that can be stated
conceptually and provides solutions for particular applications.18
Second, Zoho’s description
cannot be squared with the ’740 claims or disclosure, every aspect of which expressly directs the
invention to mobile displays and nothing else.19
In essence, Zoho pretends that the mobile
display limitations are not present – even though they are the raison d’etre of the invention.
15
Reply at 1.
16
Id. at 1-2.
17
Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S.Ct. 2347, 2354 (2014) (“At some level, all inventions embody, use,
reflect, rest upon or apply laws of nature, natural phenomena or abstract ideas. Thus, an invention is not rendered
ineligible for patent simply because it involves an abstract concept”) (internal citations and punctuation omitted); see
also Versata Resp. at 6.
18
California Inst. of Tech. v. Hughes Communications, 59 F.Supp.3d 974, 990 (C.D. Cal. 2014) (“Caltech”) (“most
inventions today build on what is known in the art, and an improvement to software will almost inevitably be an
algorithm or concept which, when viewed in isolation, will seem abstract. This analysis would likely render all
software patents ineligible, contrary to Congress’s wishes.”)
19
See, e.g., ’740 patent at Abstract, 1:12-14, 1:45-50, 2:27-31; see also Navrátil Decl. ¶ 21.
Case 1:13-cv-00371-SS Document 100 Filed 08/31/15 Page 4 of 8
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Third, Zoho’s theory ignores the Supreme Court’s principle, followed by this Court, that merely
employing an abstract idea “does not render a claimed method unpatentable where the method
improves upon an existing technological process.”20
B. Zoho’s misapplies this Court’s holding in Affinity/Amazon
Zoho cites Affinity/Amazon for the theory that mobile phones are “generic” devices,
noting the Court’s reference to “a generic, electronic device – in this case, a wireless handheld
device….”21
However, the case made no finding regarding mobile displays, which were not at
issue. Moreover, the “wireless handheld device” mentioned in the Affinity/Amazon patent22
was
“generic” only because it was “operating as a ‘ubiquitous information-transmitting medium, not
a novel machine’….”23
The patent-in-suit was not tied in any way to the particular constraints of
such a device, but relied only on the device’s general computing capabilities. In contrast, the
’740 patent, far from treating mobile devices as generic, makes clear that the differences between
mobile and conventional displays (including screen size, line count and pixel count) are the very
reason for the invention. More generally, although Zoho offers the Affinity/Amazon patent as its
best analogy to the claims at bar,24
a closer look shows that nothing in the patent at issue there
20
Wavetronix LLC v Iteris Inc., 2015 WL 300726 (W.D. Tex. 2015) *6, citing the Supreme Court’s decisions in
Alice, 134 S.Ct. at 2358 and Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175 (1981). Zoho’s attempts to distinguish Wavetronix are
unavailing. Just as the Wavetronix claims were, in Zoho’s words, directed to a “specific unsolved problem” (Reply
at 10) in traffic signaling, the ’740 claims are directed to a specific and well-documented problem in mobile
displays. Similarly, while the Wavetronix claims recited “specialized sensors” (Reply at 10), they did so in the same
way that the ’740 claims recite mobile displays: as the reason for and implementation of the subsequently described
technique.
21
Reply at 6, citing Affinity/Amazon at *10 (W.D. Tex. 2015).
22
Att. 6, U.S. Pat. 8,688,085.
23
Affinity/Amazon at *10 (italics added), quoting Ultramercial Inc. v. Hulu LLC, 772 F.3d 709, 716-717 (Fed. Cir.
2014). The italicized clause, which is the latter part of this Court’s finding cited by Zoho, is missing from
Zoho’s quotation.
24
Reply at 8-9. Notably, the “case law” discussion in Zoho’s Reply does not dispute Versata’s case-by-case
analysis distinguishing Zoho’s other references, nor does it dispute any of the cases cited by Versata upholding
patents similar to the ’740. Cf. Versata Resp. at 17-20, Zoho Reply at 8-9.
Case 1:13-cv-00371-SS Document 100 Filed 08/31/15 Page 5 of 8
6. 6
linked the invention to a particular problem in the prior art or a specific improvement in
performance. As detailed in Versata’s Response, the ’740 patent is exactly the opposite: it
addresses a known technological problem of mobile displays compared to conventional displays,
and the claimed techniques achieve concrete technical advantages in this context.25
C. Zoho’s preemption arguments are unsupportable
Zoho states that “Versata mischaracterizes the preemption doctrine when it suggests that
a claim must cover ‘all uses of an abstract idea’ for it to raise preemption concerns.”26
But the
“all uses” language about which Zoho complains was not Versata’s phrasing – it was Zoho’s
own argument, which alleged that the ’740 claims “threaten to pre-empt all uses of the abstract
idea.”27
More fundamentally, Zoho’s Reply disputes neither the principle that preemption claims
are to be viewed warily28
nor any of Versata’s examples showing that Zoho has exaggerated the
preemption concern.29
Zoho has not met its burden of showing that the ’740 claims improperly
tie up the field of mobile display design, much less that they pre-empt “too much.”
For the foregoing reasons, as well as the reasons stated in Versata’s Response, the Court
should reject Zoho’s request for summary invalidation of the ’740 patent.
DATED: August 31, 2015 Respectfully submitted,
/s/ George W. Webb III
Demetrios Anaipakos
Texas Bar No. 00793258
25
See, e.g., Versata Resp. at 9-12, 14-15; Navrátil Decl. at ¶¶ 17-30.
26
Reply at 9, citing Versata Resp. at 15.
27
See Zoho Br. at 13 (emphasis in original), Reply at 9 (“Patents such as the ’740…risk burdening all present and
future ways of doing so”).
28
Alice, 134 S.Ct. at 2354 (“we tread carefully in construing this exclusionary principle lest it swallow all of patent
law”); see also the Enfish and Kenexa cases cited in Versata Resp. at 16.
29
Cf. Versata Resp. at 15-16, Reply at 9. In addition, the ’740 claims do not foreclose other techniques of small-
screen design, such as use of color or highlighting. See, e.g., Att. 4, Designing for Small Screens at 048/049,
144/145.
Case 1:13-cv-00371-SS Document 100 Filed 08/31/15 Page 6 of 8
7. 7
danaipakos@azalaw.com
Amir Alavi
Texas Bar No. 00793239
aalavi@azalaw.com
Steven J. Mitby
Texas Bar No. 24037123
smitby@azalaw.com
Alisa A. Lipski
Texas Bar No. 24041345
alipski@azalaw.com
George W. Webb III
Texas Bar No. 24003146
gwebb@azalaw.com
AHMAD, ZAVITSANOS, ANAIPAKOS, ALAVI &
MENSING, P.C.
1221 McKinney Street, Suite 3460
Houston, TX 77010
Telephone: 713-655-1101
Facsimile: 713-655-0062
Travis C. Barton
Texas Bar No. 00790276
tcbarton@mcginnislaw.com
Patton G. Lochridge
Texas Bar No. 12458500
Richard D. Milvenan
Texas Bar No. 14171800
MCGINNIS, LOCHRIDGE & KILGORE LLP
600 Congress Avenue, Suite 2100
Austin, TX 78701
Telephone: 512-495-600
Facsimile: 512-495-6093
ATTORNEYS FOR PLAINTIFFS
Case 1:13-cv-00371-SS Document 100 Filed 08/31/15 Page 7 of 8
8. 8
ATTACHMENTS
Attachment
to this
Response
Description Short Reference
Previous
Exhibit No.
(if applicable)
1
Infringement of U.S. Pat. No. 7,092,740 by
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus (served
3/02/2015 as Att. D to Versata’s First
Supplemental Response to Zoho’s
Interrogatory No. 6)
ServiceDesk Plus
Infringement
Contentions
Zoho Reply,
Sacksteder
Decl. Ex. A
(Dkt. 99-2)
2
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus User
Guide at 79-84, cited in Infringement of
U.S. Pat. No. 7,092,740 by
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus at D-19
ServiceDesk Plus
User Guide
3
Infringement of U.S. Pat. No. 7,092,740 by
ManageEngine Applications Manager
(served 3/02/2015 as Att. B to Versata’s
First Supplemental Response to Zoho’s
Interrogatory No. 6)
App. Mgr.
Infringement
Contentions
4
“Mobile Client for Applications Manager,”
cited in Infringement of U.S. Pat. No.
7,092,740 by ManageEngine
Applications Manager at B-2
“Mobile Client
for App. Mgr.”
5
Carol Zwick, Burkhard Schmitz & Kerstin
Kuhl, Designing for Small Screens (2005)
(selected pages)
Designing for
Small Screens
6
U.S. Pat. 8,688,085 (patent-in-suit in
Affinity/Amazon)
’085 patent
7
Declaration of George W. Webb III to
Accompany Versata’s Sur-Reply to
Zoho’s Motio for Summary Judgment
Webb Sur-Reply
Decl.
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
The undersigned hereby certifies that all counsel of record who are deemed to have consented to
electronic service are being served on August 31, 2015, with a copy of this document via the
Court’s CM/ECF system per Local Rule CV-5(b)(1).
/s/ George W. Webb III
4833-9831-6071, v. 3
Case 1:13-cv-00371-SS Document 100 Filed 08/31/15 Page 8 of 8