Okay. We don't hear that very often. I'm very. Yeah, you don't hear it from me very often. All right. The next case before the court is Stevenson versus Game Show Network LLC. Case number 151359. That is a case on appeal from the patent trial and appeal board. Mr. McDonald. You want to reserve four minutes for a bottle? Yes, sure. Thank you. And I won't. I won't favor you solely because that was my maiden name, but. I'm not going to be a lawyer. You know, please, the court, good morning. The despasitive issue here is whether these claims of the Stevenson patent are all directed to a tournament involving two rounds of play with claim specifically calling out playing a game of skill
. I thought the despasitive issue was whether it was a and under any turn of events. It could be a cooperative relationship between the player and the computer or whether it had to always be a competitive relationship. Do I misunderstand the case, which is very likely? Well, you're on. I think that's a partial understanding. The board didn't so much put it in those terms as putting in terms of including at least administer with playing. Game show network, GSN here has kind of reformulated it and talked a lot about that issue, but. But I certainly compared to talk about it in terms of cooperative versus competitive gaming. And that what I was going to say about the issue thought that was the heart of the issue that I mean, I think that's important. Judge Plager's question is important. Are you saying there's some other issue that we should be focusing on? Well, the board's actual construction doesn't talk about correct cooperative versus competitive. They use that phrase wherein the playing is at least administering. And so we are saying at least that's part of the issue here that that is wrong. That's that's something in addition to playing. It's overbroad that certainly brings in this cooperative issue into the construction of between. Well, of the whole Frazier or the playing game of skill. I'm taking the phrase administer
. Doesn't it turn on whether that whole phrase sets up a possible cooperative relationship? Well, I guess I'll look at in terms of walker, which is the prior art that there's an anticipation. That's the only issue here. I asked to most of the question. There's a couple of depenals with obviously what the core issue is whether walker actually anticipates that limitation. That that finding of anticipation was based on walker having the computer asked the questions to the human player. So if you really want to get down to it, I would say that's really the issue is whether this playing a game of skill between the single player and the computer in these two rounds. Does that specifically include just the computer asking questions to the human player? If I really want to get it down to what it is, that's what it is. Because if it's yes, then walker anticipates and if it's no walker doesn't, then it should be reversed. I had pitch 36 in a heading. You said parties agree that playing between quote playing between close-line and quote playing against close-line. Are used interchangeably in the specification. And it seems to me that that is in direct conflict with the P-taps decision where they expressly declined to treat the two as synonymous. It j9 claim one resides between not against. And they say Mr. Seaman says not shown that he'd find the term between in the specification with reasonable clarity, deliberately deliberateness and precision to mean against. So how is it that the parties both agree to that? Well, the parties did what the board didn't
. That's what happened. The experts did agree on that. Now, they would say, well, the expert, their expert agreed more that playing against is like between. And we argued that between includes against. But the board basically kind of disregarded both experts saying that they thought those terms were interchangeable. That's what happened there, your honor. I think. But if we could talk about the. If the board's claim construction of between is correct, do you concede the anticipation? Yes. Okay. So one of the ones that sort of jumped out at me, I know you had your debate about whether solitary could be only a solitary version with two people, even though that's not what it says. But how do you play trivia against a computer? Well, it would be like a jeopardy sort of game. And you can control the level that the computer plays. That's very common. Various computer games where you can play against the computer. The computer could cream you, I suppose, if you had the highest speed computer
. Well, how are you testing your role? You can adjust the timing of how long. How do you test your own level if you dumb down the computer? Well, you dumb down the computer to the same level for every human player. The computer asks answers questions within a certain amount of time. Maybe it gets a certain percentage wrong in the same way when it's playing each individual person. That's how you get that reliable. And where does it say in this specification that that's how that happens? Well, I would say you're one of the key places for that would be found at the end of the background of the invention at the bottom of column one. Where it talks about the prior art and what it doesn't have. This is the last paragraph then going into what the invention is. So it's early team up what the invention is. These the prior art does not allow a player to gauge his level of performance by allowing the player to test his skill and ability against the tournament sponsor, which is the host computer and other players during the same tournament. So there you have test against both. And that's the key thing that goes on talk about that reliable index is in the next sentence there as it tees up the description of the invention when you go to that next section. And moreover you have the fact that we have only one figure in the pan figure one that sets forth the the process for all games including trivia. And it starts off with the player plays game up skill versus host computer versus that's again so that's made clear when column three talks about that exact same square at line 26. And that's referring to that same paragraph there in column three beginning at 26, but that's about games of skill. Listen at least example ones and it says includes the trivia games that includes guard games that even include solitary all of those games involve the player playing versus or against the host computer
. So that's that's pretty unequivocal here in terms of the specification that talks about playing against about 12 times I believe throughout the pattern here. The only part of the spec that that GSN in the board really try to say goes to the contrary is come to beginning at about line 15 or 17 where we have that paragraph where it talks about the qualifying round is played between a single player through a computer terminal and a host computer. The host computer has the ability to act as a game sponsor by keeping score operating the game monitoring the players progress and distributing awards. So they're saying that means sponsoring us within point I think it's very clear from the spec that as well as the claims themselves that those sponsoring activities are separate thing are separate bucket from playing you look at claim one it's got two playing steps to it. And it's also got you value waiting to evaluate three evaluating steps and then distributing award steps all of those other steps that are playing are the ones that come to their list as sponsorship sort of activities though those are the keeping score monitoring progress and distributing awards. So so we're clearly putting those in two different buckets playing is one thing those acts of sponsorship are different and then we have one other one in here in that list of acts of sponsorship operating the game. I would say that's exactly what you would say the computers doing when it poses the questions to the human play. So what you're saying is that the claim really should have used the word against and that's something that you tried in your reexample to amend to say against did you file a motion to amend in this proceeding. We did not file a motion to amend in this proceeding or on or at the time we had that opportunity the board had never granted one in the board specifically said in their order giving us leave that we did have the option of bringing either a reexample or reissue and that's what we do have pending as a reissue at this point. So you're saying because the board had never granted a motion to amend in other IPRs you didn't ask in this one. Well, we think it was a reasonable decision that the board actually embraced is one of the options that you have they told us you couldn't seek amendment here but you can also seek amendment through those other means so there was no waiting of one over the other here necessarily. Are you in? That the proposed amendment represents a significant change from the original claims of the 237 had? Well, that was in the context. We're immediately adjacent to that as we pointed out in our brief we were saying if you assume the construction of the claim in the plain between language specifically as the board has stated which we disagree with. So that's what happened there by the way the re examination was rejected by it was was to see us but then we did file a reissue that's what's currently pending this patent you know it does go until it was filed in 1999 so it doesn't have that many years left so we do think it's important that you know the original claims be construed appropriately so we don't lose any opportunity to get passed to you. Mr. McDonald this case illustrates in your argument illustrates the basic nature of many of our claim construction cases
. You cherry pick all the material in this specification in written description that supports your viewpoint my guess is that Mr. Babcock is going to come up here and cherry pick all those provisions in the written description. That go the other way and when we get all done we're still left with total ambiguity as to what is the right answer and whether that right answer should have fallen to your applicant and your patent to have made clear in his application. And in the patent process as to exactly what he's talking about judge or Mally highlights the exact problem did you mean between or did you mean against and the answer to that is you say against he's going to say between and between means this and what are we supposed to do with that other than perhaps to say to you patent ease you guys got to make these things clearer. Or you stand a substantial chance of losing as you did before the p tab. I would say to that your honor the board's construction or playing is including administer there is nothing in the specification or any of the prosecution history that really supports that idea. I don't think the patent applicant you'll be called Mr. Babcock when he gets up. Well we'll see how much he depends on before he does let me let me point you to something the key portion I think that the p tab relied on and that's column two at lines 15 to 21 through 21. It says the host computer has the ability to act as game sponsor by keeping score operating the game monitoring the players progress and to distribute awards when appropriate. Also the host computer has the ability to act as another player if the game requires more than a single player. So if that's the case how do you how do you continue to assert that all of these games have to have more than one player. Well we write the immediate before line talks about the coughing right around played between a single player through a terminal and a host computer. So it sets up a single player to talk about the sponsor and activities separately in that third category as they as they mentioned our our expert explain that that would be things like bridge which is specifically called out in the spec in clean 10 where you have multiple players and I have to have a partner. You can you can read those as three different things if the game requires more than a single player. Yeah so if you've got a single player how are you playing against the computer
. Well the single player in that context your honor I would submit that with that's a single player as a plane by themselves versus do they have a partner. That's what our expert showed would be the distinction there but clearly there aren't you know you have to have competition here for this these claims it's a tournament with a qualifying round. The playoff wrong where you have a winner determined this idea that is there anything in the specification that describes a process by which the computer through some algorithm or otherwise is. Set at a particular level of human fly. It doesn't go into detail enough that you clearly have games like bridge and gin rumbian things like that sure on where that you're playing between the player in the human and the computer at that point you you've got to have the computer engaging in play clearly in games like that there's no doubt about it and that that's really the it's the same thing that's being described throughout this figure one applies to all those games whether it's bridge and gin rumbia or these other games and it talks about all of those. Games is being against the computer and every one of those games can be played against the computer in solitaire. Absolutely run also that's a multiplayer game both sides and the board of knowledge that I played solitaire all by myself sure but that's not enough to undermine the meaning of claim one here in the North American vaccine case is a good example of that where the independent claim included I'll call it a. And the federal circuit limited to a party said we're going to depend and claim actually would be limited to be and that's so that you have to include be here to and the federal circuit said no for two reasons one the dependent claim to tail does not wag the independent claim dot into particularly relevant here they said more over that dependent claim there was evidence that said well that be that claim could include be but it could also include a there are barriers. In that case it was molecules but that so long as that dependent claim could include version a that was that was consistent wouldn't give us a reason to not limit the independent claim to that version a very analogous to what we have here I please don't ask me what an analogy is after that last argument but but you have both kinds of solitaire you can reconcile that that's with North American vaccine said so long as I can reconcile that there are some variance of solitaire that are consistent with playing against and claim one I don't prolly not claim one just to grab those other variants of solitaire. Okay you used up your buttock time but will give you two minutes. Good morning your honors and we have pleased the court. Mr. Beb cut or are you both an agreement? That playing between playing against or use interchangeably in the specifically you're not your honor? I didn't think so. No we're not. That whole argument is based upon a gotcha where, in a deposition or expert, they ask that question with the enemy and he said, yeah, and they go, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, everything he said. Why
... Wait, wait, how's that a gotcha? They ask him a question under oath and he says yes. Because they didn't say... I mean, is that house supposed to work? His entire testimony. No, no, no. I'm saying it's out of context. A gotcha means it's a statement that doesn't have context and didn't allow him to explain his answer. His entire testimony in his deposition throughout his declaration was that the claims require cooperative play or competitive play. They allow for both. And he was his testimony is that even against can mean cooperative, if you say, or if you say I'm playing against the house or I'm playing a, playing against the, running against the clock. That's still not necessarily, you're not competing with the clock, you're not competing with the house. So his view is even against could be cooperative, it doesn't have to be competitive head to head. And so they never asked him to explain it
. And against the house, the house isn't a computer. I mean, I don't really understand that. A house is playing with the same cards. Correct. I mean, they may be cheating, but that's, you know, I'm not adding it. So his view, his, the testimony throughout throughout this case was that the claims are broad enough to encompass cooperative gameplay. And the fact that at the end of a deposition, they, they, they, says, interchangeable. Yeah, you could, you know, against could be used as cooperative as well. And that was, that was the extent of, of his, of that gotcha. Now, suddenly that, that escalates into, oh my gosh, Gage Schoenewergens conceded that this claim is limited. That's not, that's not the fact here. But let's, you know, let's look at the background of the invention, the bottom of, of column one, says the prior games of skill or tournaments have not been successful. These references do not allow a player to gauge his level of performance by allowing the player to test his skill and ability against the tournament sponsor. And then the next paragraph talks about the need for a tournament which allows a player to compete and obtain a reliable index as to his skill, as compared to other competitors competing under the same game conditions. I mean, that's sort of just defining exactly what your friend on the other side says this invention is supposed to be. Well, no question preferred embodiment is a head head competition
. But I think Judge Plager's query was, was the right query, except I want to refocus it a little bit because if this were an appeal from a district court where you're looking at a Phillips construction, maybe this notion of ambiguity is, is a little harder to resolve. Here, you're not dealing with a Phillips construction, you're dealing with the broadest, reasonable interpretation in view of the spec from the board. And that's still the state of law as we know here. And so the question isn't, well, if it could be one or the other, which one should we choose, it could be both. And the passage that you pointed to Judge Amali isn't just some obscure, and we point to column two and the lines that you pointed to earlier, which is lines around eight, starting at line 14, 15, 16. That isn't some obscure passage that we picked and cherry picked out of the specification. This is at the beginning of the description of the invention. And this is the only place where it describes the role of the player and the computer. So it's not some place that we found online on column 64 buried somewhere or some strange embodiment. This is the key, this is the key discussion. Would your position survive if we applied Phillips construction? It would, your honor. It still would. But you don't have to do that. I'm just giving you, you suggested that it was maybe a difficult issue to turn to decide if it's ambiguous. I'm saying here, if it's ambiguous, we get the benefit. We get the benefit because it's broadest reasonable. And the judge, the board here said, look, it's got to at least include what's disclosed reasonably and under broadest reasonable. This, this, I didn't, you're up, did you finish your point from before? So the point is this passage that we point to is the defining passage about the role of the player and the computer. And it says very clearly, we're talking about the qualifying round. And it says very clearly, the qualifying round is played between the word that the patent D chose. The patent D does use the word against. It does use the word versus in the spec, but the patent D claimed between. So here's the word, the qualifying round is played between a single player through a computer terminal and a host computer. Now it describes further how that action takes place. The host computer has the ability to act as a game sponsor, keeping score, operating the game, monitoring the player's progress. So that's clearly not being a competitive head to head player. Right, but that, I mean, that also still has to occur, regardless of whether you're playing against the computer or, or simply using the computer, right? I mean, even in the against scenario, you need to have the, the somebody monitoring how you're doing and, and keeping score. True, but I wasn't quite finished with the passage because the next sentence says also, the host computer has the ability to act as another player if, if the game requires more than a single player. I can't you go back and say that that phrase to a single player relates back to the reference to a single player earlier in that same paragraph. It's, it's, it's the, the, the, single player is the person that's interacting with the computer. And they, and that reference, the second reference to single player, it means if you need more than the one human being. That's, you're reading words into what this says
. And the judge, the board here said, look, it's got to at least include what's disclosed reasonably and under broadest reasonable. This, this, I didn't, you're up, did you finish your point from before? So the point is this passage that we point to is the defining passage about the role of the player and the computer. And it says very clearly, we're talking about the qualifying round. And it says very clearly, the qualifying round is played between the word that the patent D chose. The patent D does use the word against. It does use the word versus in the spec, but the patent D claimed between. So here's the word, the qualifying round is played between a single player through a computer terminal and a host computer. Now it describes further how that action takes place. The host computer has the ability to act as a game sponsor, keeping score, operating the game, monitoring the player's progress. So that's clearly not being a competitive head to head player. Right, but that, I mean, that also still has to occur, regardless of whether you're playing against the computer or, or simply using the computer, right? I mean, even in the against scenario, you need to have the, the somebody monitoring how you're doing and, and keeping score. True, but I wasn't quite finished with the passage because the next sentence says also, the host computer has the ability to act as another player if, if the game requires more than a single player. I can't you go back and say that that phrase to a single player relates back to the reference to a single player earlier in that same paragraph. It's, it's, it's the, the, the, single player is the person that's interacting with the computer. And they, and that reference, the second reference to single player, it means if you need more than the one human being. That's, you're reading words into what this says. It says if the game requires more than a single player. I, it, if, if you further read through the specification and the claims, we have such, we have examples of games. Now, these are the, the, the, the, the patent on here says that we cherry picked trivia. We picked one game out of 50. 40. If you look at that same place just above where we're looking at column two, we define, we define six types of games. Not, not 50, six, chess, poker, bridge, hearts, blackjack. And question to answer, answer trivia games, which that last one is at least typically considered a single player game. Question answer, the computer asks the question that the user answers the question. We have on the next column, column three, we have listed trivia. Again, we have solitaire. We have crosswords. Yeah, but with solitaire, you've got the problem that solitaire, that, that those things are listed in claim independent claim 10. That's not a problem for us. Well, shouldn't, though, shouldn't we interpret that claim consistent with the reference to a game of skill identified in independent claim one? Sure. Solitaire is a, is a, is a game of skill
. It says if the game requires more than a single player. I, it, if, if you further read through the specification and the claims, we have such, we have examples of games. Now, these are the, the, the, the, the patent on here says that we cherry picked trivia. We picked one game out of 50. 40. If you look at that same place just above where we're looking at column two, we define, we define six types of games. Not, not 50, six, chess, poker, bridge, hearts, blackjack. And question to answer, answer trivia games, which that last one is at least typically considered a single player game. Question answer, the computer asks the question that the user answers the question. We have on the next column, column three, we have listed trivia. Again, we have solitaire. We have crosswords. Yeah, but with solitaire, you've got the problem that solitaire, that, that those things are listed in claim independent claim 10. That's not a problem for us. Well, shouldn't, though, shouldn't we interpret that claim consistent with the reference to a game of skill identified in independent claim one? Sure. Solitaire is a, is a, is a game of skill. It's called a game of chance. Why is not his point valid that it's in, it's a dependent claim that we don't need to read into the independent claim? So the doctrine of claim differentiation is not a requirement that it must happen when our position isn't that you must construe these claims and lie the dependent claims. But the axiom is that when you construe claims, you should look at not only the claim meeting and the specification, but you can look at the other claims as well. Those provide guidance, those provide input into the kind of think instruction process. And if you've got dependent claims, which we have here, which are all traditionally single player games, and we're not just talking about trivia, the dependent claims say, say solitaire, they say crosswords, they say word search, they say word scramble, they say word match, they have maze games, pinball. Those are all dependent claims, which are dependent upon claim one. So, broadest reasonable, is it reasonable into construe claim one to allow for single player games? Certainly, particularly in line with the spec, which says, hey, the computer can act as a sponsor or it can be a participant either way. Like, you keep going back to broadest reason when I keep coming back. Wouldn't you lose under Phillips? Would I lose under Phillips? Yeah. I don't think so, Your Honor. Because I think the construction, that the proper construction, even under Phillips, is that both corrupt, because we're looking at the word between. Between is acknowledged by the parties to mean jointly engaging. jointly engaging. They provided that definition, the board adopted it. They also provided the definition of against, which means competitive. Now, if they had claimed competitive, we'd lose
. It's called a game of chance. Why is not his point valid that it's in, it's a dependent claim that we don't need to read into the independent claim? So the doctrine of claim differentiation is not a requirement that it must happen when our position isn't that you must construe these claims and lie the dependent claims. But the axiom is that when you construe claims, you should look at not only the claim meeting and the specification, but you can look at the other claims as well. Those provide guidance, those provide input into the kind of think instruction process. And if you've got dependent claims, which we have here, which are all traditionally single player games, and we're not just talking about trivia, the dependent claims say, say solitaire, they say crosswords, they say word search, they say word scramble, they say word match, they have maze games, pinball. Those are all dependent claims, which are dependent upon claim one. So, broadest reasonable, is it reasonable into construe claim one to allow for single player games? Certainly, particularly in line with the spec, which says, hey, the computer can act as a sponsor or it can be a participant either way. Like, you keep going back to broadest reason when I keep coming back. Wouldn't you lose under Phillips? Would I lose under Phillips? Yeah. I don't think so, Your Honor. Because I think the construction, that the proper construction, even under Phillips, is that both corrupt, because we're looking at the word between. Between is acknowledged by the parties to mean jointly engaging. jointly engaging. They provided that definition, the board adopted it. They also provided the definition of against, which means competitive. Now, if they had claimed competitive, we'd lose. If they had claimed against, yes, under Phillips, we'd lose. But even under Phillips, you're still looking at the construction in light of the ordinary meeting and the specification in transit record. And all of the spec suggest that it could be both. And I think the best part we're looking at is column two, where it says it can be either. It can be a host or it can be, it can also be a player. If the game requires more than one player, the ordinary understanding of that is if you have a game that requires more than one player, say, you know, if you have solitaire as one player, word search as one player, crosser as one player, if you have again, it requires more than one player, then the computer can step up and be a contestant itself. Single player, not one player. Single player. Sorry, be true to the claim. So I think in this case, the answer is fairly straightforward. Brought us reasonable. There's only really one issue here. Can it be competitive? Or does it require to be combative or head-to-head? And I think you gauge your talent, your performance level, if you are playing solitaire, and all the computer doing is keeping track of the fact that you're playing solitaire. Because solitaire is a game of skill and you can improve, right? So if you, depending on how good you are and how fast you are and getting to completing the deck, getting all the cards locked up, you can get a score. So you can, a beginner player maybe will take more time and maybe not never be able to eliminate all the cards, right? So what the computer there is going is just evaluating how good you are as an individual, as a single player, as a playing solitaire. And that ranks you in this tournament
. If they had claimed against, yes, under Phillips, we'd lose. But even under Phillips, you're still looking at the construction in light of the ordinary meeting and the specification in transit record. And all of the spec suggest that it could be both. And I think the best part we're looking at is column two, where it says it can be either. It can be a host or it can be, it can also be a player. If the game requires more than one player, the ordinary understanding of that is if you have a game that requires more than one player, say, you know, if you have solitaire as one player, word search as one player, crosser as one player, if you have again, it requires more than one player, then the computer can step up and be a contestant itself. Single player, not one player. Single player. Sorry, be true to the claim. So I think in this case, the answer is fairly straightforward. Brought us reasonable. There's only really one issue here. Can it be competitive? Or does it require to be combative or head-to-head? And I think you gauge your talent, your performance level, if you are playing solitaire, and all the computer doing is keeping track of the fact that you're playing solitaire. Because solitaire is a game of skill and you can improve, right? So if you, depending on how good you are and how fast you are and getting to completing the deck, getting all the cards locked up, you can get a score. So you can, a beginner player maybe will take more time and maybe not never be able to eliminate all the cards, right? So what the computer there is going is just evaluating how good you are as an individual, as a single player, as a playing solitaire. And that ranks you in this tournament. And if you're really good, you'll finish all the deck quickly and you'll get a good score. And as you improve, I think we've all played solitaire, you learn how to play, you get better and you can do it more quickly, you can see the combination more quickly and you can play quick more quickly. So that kind of game, it's very simple. That's how you would be scored. There's like any crossword or any kind of word search, there's skill games and the more you play, the faster you are in the computer can score you on. And I do want to point out one more final thing. And I think besides the intrinsic record, which I think is this is dispositive here, if you look at the reexam, which Judge Wallach pointed to, I think that's quite telling because in this scenario, this wasn't a situation where part to tell whether your compatriots argument about that is correct or not since the record doesn't include the prior page. I'll have to, yeah, it may not. It may not. It's not. So the part that, but I think the part that we cited, I guess we should have been more liberal in our joint appendix to provide context. I know the board rules, the courts rules are, don't throw in stuff that you're not setting to and sometimes when we put those together, you know, we put those fairly literally, we should have done a few extra pages plus or minus. But if you do look at even that page, it's in the record, you'll see that the caveat is sentence, we didn't decide. The caveat is sentence is toward the top of that statement. You look at the sentence we cited, there is no caveat. They don't say, oh, in light of the current construction, they just say this new claim, which requires head-and-competition is different than the current claim
. And if you're really good, you'll finish all the deck quickly and you'll get a good score. And as you improve, I think we've all played solitaire, you learn how to play, you get better and you can do it more quickly, you can see the combination more quickly and you can play quick more quickly. So that kind of game, it's very simple. That's how you would be scored. There's like any crossword or any kind of word search, there's skill games and the more you play, the faster you are in the computer can score you on. And I do want to point out one more final thing. And I think besides the intrinsic record, which I think is this is dispositive here, if you look at the reexam, which Judge Wallach pointed to, I think that's quite telling because in this scenario, this wasn't a situation where part to tell whether your compatriots argument about that is correct or not since the record doesn't include the prior page. I'll have to, yeah, it may not. It may not. It's not. So the part that, but I think the part that we cited, I guess we should have been more liberal in our joint appendix to provide context. I know the board rules, the courts rules are, don't throw in stuff that you're not setting to and sometimes when we put those together, you know, we put those fairly literally, we should have done a few extra pages plus or minus. But if you do look at even that page, it's in the record, you'll see that the caveat is sentence, we didn't decide. The caveat is sentence is toward the top of that statement. You look at the sentence we cited, there is no caveat. They don't say, oh, in light of the current construction, they just say this new claim, which requires head-and-competition is different than the current claim. And I think this is telling because what happened, and I think this is in the record, is that under the board rules, you have to seek authorization to seek a motion to amend. They sought a motion to amend. During that conference call, the judge said, hey, are you going to put head-to-head in the claim? Is that what you're going to do in your amendment? And they said, yeah, that's what planning to do. The death of the board said, okay, go ahead and do that. That's what the IPI process is for. You've got little amendments thrown in now. They chose not to do that. They said, you know what? Let's not do a motion to amend, which is an inner parties process, where we can attack that. They said, let's do an X party, and therefore we have a fallback. In case this claim goes down, we're going to have another claim that we can survive. So I think here it's quite telling that they knew how to claim it with head-to-head, and they just chose not to. And they shouldn't get the benefit of that decision in this case. Okay. Thank you. Before you get to your substance, and I won't eat up your time for this, but there's a lot of games in here I'd never heard of. And so I tried to figure out just because I was curious
. And I think this is telling because what happened, and I think this is in the record, is that under the board rules, you have to seek authorization to seek a motion to amend. They sought a motion to amend. During that conference call, the judge said, hey, are you going to put head-to-head in the claim? Is that what you're going to do in your amendment? And they said, yeah, that's what planning to do. The death of the board said, okay, go ahead and do that. That's what the IPI process is for. You've got little amendments thrown in now. They chose not to do that. They said, you know what? Let's not do a motion to amend, which is an inner parties process, where we can attack that. They said, let's do an X party, and therefore we have a fallback. In case this claim goes down, we're going to have another claim that we can survive. So I think here it's quite telling that they knew how to claim it with head-to-head, and they just chose not to. And they shouldn't get the benefit of that decision in this case. Okay. Thank you. Before you get to your substance, and I won't eat up your time for this, but there's a lot of games in here I'd never heard of. And so I tried to figure out just because I was curious. But what is foosball trivia? I guess is the S should have been a T. The answer is I don't know your honor. I just can't imagine what trivia would exist about a game foosball. Me either. Okay. I was wondering about Bible trivia, but I'm not going to go there. Okay. Go ahead. Thank you. I know I don't get the benefit of Phillips because it's just of IPR, but I do get the benefit of proxy common street path in these other cases that have been coming up in the IPR context. They all say we begin with the claims. The claims here separately call out the step of playing from administrative steps like evaluating and distributing awards. The very same steps that are in that sponsor sentence. That is the only sense you heard you you're under said, you know, they're both here a lot of stuff. They only had that one sentence to try to support their position. And that sentence actually when you read it in you have claim one, which is the starting point clearly puts sponsorship in a different bucket from playing
. But what is foosball trivia? I guess is the S should have been a T. The answer is I don't know your honor. I just can't imagine what trivia would exist about a game foosball. Me either. Okay. I was wondering about Bible trivia, but I'm not going to go there. Okay. Go ahead. Thank you. I know I don't get the benefit of Phillips because it's just of IPR, but I do get the benefit of proxy common street path in these other cases that have been coming up in the IPR context. They all say we begin with the claims. The claims here separately call out the step of playing from administrative steps like evaluating and distributing awards. The very same steps that are in that sponsor sentence. That is the only sense you heard you you're under said, you know, they're both here a lot of stuff. They only had that one sentence to try to support their position. And that sentence actually when you read it in you have claim one, which is the starting point clearly puts sponsorship in a different bucket from playing. And sponsorship is evaluating. It's distributing awards and it's operating the game, which would be asking questions in trivia. So in the IPR context, we'll follow that real clearfully here. Start with the claims and really end with the claims and say that playing a game of skill in a qualifying round between a single player and a host computer is certainly competitive. If you have a game of football in a playoff room between Washington and Dallas, that is competitive. There's no way anybody would say a plain meaning of that would include cooperation between Dallas and Washington in the game. That's the context. These old footballers and games at the end. They all shook hands. That's nice. After the game. But you know, they say that's not a good example. Well, there are examples in column three, including sporting events and things like that. That's certainly your view that they would lose under a philips interpretation. Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's that's the the easier part
. And sponsorship is evaluating. It's distributing awards and it's operating the game, which would be asking questions in trivia. So in the IPR context, we'll follow that real clearfully here. Start with the claims and really end with the claims and say that playing a game of skill in a qualifying round between a single player and a host computer is certainly competitive. If you have a game of football in a playoff room between Washington and Dallas, that is competitive. There's no way anybody would say a plain meaning of that would include cooperation between Dallas and Washington in the game. That's the context. These old footballers and games at the end. They all shook hands. That's nice. After the game. But you know, they say that's not a good example. Well, there are examples in column three, including sporting events and things like that. That's certainly your view that they would lose under a philips interpretation. Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's that's the the easier part. But I think when you see proxy kind of street path, they don't really have a dramatically. They're not saying just ignore philips and go off and come up with your own things. They still are adopting cannons of clean construction in those decisions for IPR. The Archie Khan says that a broadest reasonable interpretation cannot be unreasonable, which it seems to me is a very obvious statement. A broadest reasonable interpretation cannot be unreasonable. But it certainly can be broader than what we think of as a philips interpretation can. I think in the abstract, you're under that. That's right. It's going to be a case by case thing. I kind of know it when I see it because I think a lot of cases, they wouldn't be different because you'd hope that you do when you start with the claims and go through those cannons of construction, you'd have a relatively clear answer. I think you do. They have one here when you clearly have plain separately claimed from evaluating and distributing those things that are put in that sponsorship bucket. In the only sense, column two, they're about line 20, but they really cited to the court here to support their construction. The claim would include at least a few things. Also, the other argument is that their broadest reasonable interpretation is unreasonable on the in light of the total written description. I'm going to give you over the claims and specifications
. I would just point out that you have a jeopardy as a trivia game. You know, it definitely is competitive, but it's answering questions about trivia. All these games can be, and you heard them explain that even solitary can have these scores. They're basically admitting, whenever you've got a score, my score can be higher than your score. And now you can be in a competitive situation. They really have trouble decoupling any of these games from a competitive context here when you have to read them and you have claimed. Thank you