All posts by Dennis Crouch

About Dennis Crouch

Law Professor at the University of Missouri School of Law.

Federal Circuit Narrows Scope for Copyrighting Software Function

Patent, ,

by Dennis Crouch

The copyright lawsuit between the data-software company SAS Institute and its scrappy copycat World Programming has been interesting to follow over the past several years, and the Federal Circuit has now issued a controversial opinion in the case.  SAS Inst. v. World Programming Ltd., --- F.4th --- (Fed. Cir. 2023).  The majority opinion authored by Judge Reyna and joined by Judge Wallach affirmed the lower court ruling that SAS failed to establish copyrightability of its claimed program elements.  Writing in dissent, Judge Newman argued that the majority's rejection of copyrightability represents a "far-reaching change" not supported by either precedent or good policy.  I called this outcome controversial. The outcome would also be controversial had Judge Newman's position prevailed.

The case is properly seen as an extension of the Supreme Court's decision in Google
LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., 141 S. Ct. 1183 (2021).  In that case, the Court found that Google's use of Java API naming conventions in its Android operating system was fair use under copyright law.  Because its fair use decision decided the case, the court did not rule separately on whether the API was even copyrightable in the first place.  In SAS v. WPL, the Federal Circuit squarely addressed the copyrightability question.

To be clear, computer software can still be copyrightable.  But, parties asserting protection will need to do a much better job of showing how their creative authorial input survives the "abstraction-filtration-comparison test," which the Federal Circuit  applied in its decision.

Copyright law's abstraction-filtration-comparison (AFC) test is used to determine whether a particular work is entitled to copyright protection. The AFC test involves breaking down a work into its constituent parts, abstracting the unprotectable elements, filtering out any remaining unoriginal or unprotectable elements, and then comparing the remaining protectable elements to the allegedly infringing work. The AFC test has been previously adopted by the Second, Fifth, and 10th Circuits.

Here, the court did not delve into the comparison step -- and instead simply held that there was nothing left to infringe after abstraction & filtration.

The decision is also substantially procedural.  The district court held a copyrightability hearing and followed a burden shifting procedure created by the 11th Circuit in Compulife Software Inc. v. Newman, 959 F.3d 1288 (11th Cir. 2020).  In particular, the court first assumed that the work was copyrightable based upon the registration documents.  It then allowed the defense to present its filtration argument to show a lack of copyrightability.  If that evidence is sufficient (as it was here), the burden then shifts back to the copyright holder to rebut -- and "to establish precisely which parts of its asserted work are, in fact, protectable."   The difficulty for SAS is that it offered no rebuttal and instead "refused to engage in the filtration step and chose instead to simply argue that the SAS System was 'creative.'" Slip Op. SAS presented an expert witness on copyrightability, but the district court found it extremely unreliable and thus excluded the testimony.  (The expert had not seen anything to filter out -- even clearly unprotectable elements).

The majority walked through each of these issues and ultimately affirmed on all grounds.

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Some background: SAS makes data analysis software. A key feature of the SAS product is that folks can write programs using SAS syntax in order to get certain results. Thus there are a number of data jockeys who are experts in SAS code.  WPL is a UK based software company who obtained several copies of SAS statistical software and made their own clone version by rewriting the code and by relying upon an early version of SAS that is not protected by copyright.  The WPL version allows folks to use SAS language to get the same results -- but at a much lower price.   When I sa "same results" -- the clone pretty much identically copied output styles so that a chart made with WPL looks basically identical to a chart made in SAS using the same code.

SAS sued in E.D.Tex for copyright infringement.  Judge Gilstrap dismissed the copyright claims — holding that the software was unprotectable.  Copyright infringement appeals are ordinarily not heard by the Federal Circuit, but in a case of what appears to be appellate-forum shopping, SAS had also included patent infringement allegations that they eventually stopped pursuing.  Under the rules of procedure, if patent claims were raised in the case at some point, then the appeal heads to the Federal Circuit.

The copyright case is not about copying code.  It appears rather to be about copying the input syntax format used by individuals to input their programs and the output design styles for outputting data in some particular style. In the filtration analysis, WPL provided a host of evidence to show that these features should be "filtered out" of the SAS copyrights.

  • WPL established that an earlier version of the SAS System, "SAS 76," was in the public domain.
  • WPL showed that many Input Formats and Output Designs in the current SAS System are identical or nearly identical to those in SAS 76 and should be filtered.
  • WPL demonstrated that the SAS Language should be filtered because it is open and free for public use.
  • WPL's expert identified various allegedly copied materials that contained unprotectable elements such as open-source, factual, data, mathematical, statistical, process, system, method, and well-known and conventional display elements.

Bringing these together the Federal Circuit concluded that the defense had presented sufficient evidence to show uncopyrightability and that the district court was justified in requiring SAS to directly and particularly rebut the evidence rather than simply allowing a trial on the copyright as a whole.

The district court was correct to exercise its authority and require SAS to articulate a legally viable theory on which it expected to base its copyright infringement claims. Conversely, it would be improper for a district court to permit a matter to proceed to trial on the basis of vague and unidentified theories.

Slip Op.

Writing in dissent, Judge Newman argued that Fifth Circuit law protects this sort of computer software architecture even from non-literal copying.  The key citation is likely to a the Fifth Circuit's 1994 Engineering Dynamics case:

Most courts confronted with the issue have determined that copyright protection extends not only to the literal elements of a program, i.e., its source code and object code, but also to its “nonliteral” elements, such as the program architecture, “structure, sequence and organization,” operational modules, and computer-user interface.

Eng’g Dynamics, Inc. v. Structural Software, Inc., 26 F.3d 1335 (5th Cir. 1994).   Judge Newman noted that "computer programs" are expressly protected within the Copyright Act

Copyright protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship . . . including . . . (5) computer programs.

17 U.S.C. 102. As the Nimmer treatise explains, this 1980 amendment to the laws "dispels any lingering doubts as to the copyrightability of computer programs. It is
therefore now firmly established that computer programs qualify as work of authorship in the form of literary works, subject to full copyright protection."
1 NIMMER ON COPYRIGHT § 2A.10(B) (2022 ed.).

Here, Judge Newman particularly noted that the collection of the various input functions and output designs is easily copyrightable. And, this is the same analysis done by the Federal Circuit in its original Oracle v. Google decision.

Judge Newman also concluded that the district court improperly shifted the burden of proof to the copyright holder.

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Only Some of the Claims are Invalid

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by Dennis Crouch

Hantz Software v. Sage Intacct (Fed. Cir. 2023) (non-precedential) 

The district court sided with the defendant Sage, dismissing the complaint for lack of eligibility.  In a short opinion, the Federal Circuit has largely affirmed, but made an important caveat -- that the district court held only that claims 1 and 31-33 are invalid.

[W]e agree that the operative complaint asserted infringement of only claims 1 and 31–33 of each asserted patent, and because Sage did not file any counterclaim of its own (instead, it simply moved to dismiss Hantz’s complaint), we conclude that the ineligibility judgment should apply to only claims 1 and 31–33 of the asserted patents. We therefore vacate the district court’s judgment insofar as it held any claim other than claims 1 and 31–33 of each asserted patent ineligible and affirm in all other respects.

Slip Op.  Despite the limit here, claim preclusion will prevent Hantz from reasserting any of the remaining claims against Sage. Non-mutual collateral estoppel should also apply here to to prevent Hantz from asserting any of the claims against a third party -- unless the claims are meaningfully distinct on eligibility grounds from those already adjudged to be invalid.  Normally, collateral estoppel only applies to issues actually litigated, but in the patent context, the Federal Circuit has ruled that it may also apply to non-litigated claims when the differences do not "materially alter the question of invalidity." Ohio Willow Wood Co. v. Alps South, LLC, 735 F.3d 1333, 1342 (Fed. Cir. 2013); MaxLinear, Inc. v. CF CRESPE LLC, 880 F.3d 1373, 1377-78 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (Asking “whether the remaining claims present materially different issues that alter the question of patentability”).

 

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Issue its “Mandate and Opinion”

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by Dennis Crouch

The Federal Circuit regularly affirms PTAB judgments without issuing any explanatory opinion to justify the result.  Although not found in the Rules of Appellate procedure, the court has created its own local rule allowing itself to "enter a judgment of affirmance without opinion."  In a 2017 paper, I argued that these no-opinion affirmances violated both the spirit and letter of 35 U.S.C. 144, which requires the court to issue a "mandate and opinion" in cases appealed from the USPTO.  Since that time, the Federal Circuit has continued its practice, issuing hundreds of no-opinion judgments.  Throughout this time, dozens of losing parties have petitioned for en banc rehearing with the Federal Circuit or certiorari to the Supreme Court.  Up to now, both courts have remained silent and have refused to address the issue.

A new pending petition raises the issue once again. Virentem Ventures v. Google (Supreme Court 2023).  Virentem sued Google for patent infringement, and Google responded with a set of Inter Partes Review (IPR) petitions.  The PTAB eventually sided with Google and invalidated the claims of all seven challenged patents.  Virentem appealed; but the Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB's judgement without opinion under its local Rule 36.

The new petition to the Supreme Court asks four related questions:

  1. Does the Federal Circuit’s use of Rule 36 to affirm without opinion PTAB invalidity determinations that are challenged based on pure questions of law violate a patentee’s due process rights through arbitrary or disparately applied results?
  2. Did the Federal Circuit’s use of Rule 36 to affirm without opinion PTAB invalidity determinations of Virentem’s patents violate its due process rights?
  3. Did the PTAB’s adoption, and Federal Circuit’s summary affirmance, of broad constructions of Time Scale Modification and other claim terms over Virentem’s explicit narrowing definitions, violate the Federal Circuit’s own law and precedents on claim construction in such circumstances?
  4. Does the Federal Circuit’s use of Rule 36 to affirm without opinion decisions from the PTAB violate the requirement of 35 U.S.C. § 144 that the Federal Circuit “shall issue to the Director its mandate and opinion”?

The Virentem patents relate to time-scale modification -- the speeding-up or slowing-down of media.  You may remember Alvin, Simon, and Theodore -- the Chipmunks.  That unintelligible high pitch arguably is not really time-scale modification because it is such a failure.  Rather, TSM modern impliedly requires maintaining pitch and intelligibility.  In this case though, the PTAB broadly interpreted the term to include any system that speeds-up or slows-down media.  With that broad interpretation, the tribunal then was able to find prior art rendering the claims obvious.   Virentem argued that its patents would be seen as valid under the narrower construction.  The PTAB's response: If you wanted that limitation in the claim, you should have added it to the claim.

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Eligibility for Dummies; Benson Redux

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by Dennis Crouch

I've become somewhat callous toward patent eligibility jurisprudence and so was surprised when I read the Federal Circuit's decision in ADASA Inc. v. Avery Dennison Corp., 55 F.4th 900 (Fed. Cir. Dec 16, 2022). The case concluded that constructively dividing a fixed-length binary number into different sub-portions was not an abstract idea.  Now, the accused infringer has asked the Supreme Court for review.

ADASA's US Patent 9,798,967 is directed toward an RFID chip "encoded with a unique object number."  This object number as various blocks pre-allocated to identify the selling-company, product reference, and serial number as shown below.  The serial number has a unique feature of being divided into a section of "most significant bits" (MSBs) and "least significant bits" (LSBs). This division between MSBs and LSBs help in the allocation of unique serial numbers in a distributed production system.  The basic approach:

  • A product-line will be exclusively allocated a particular MSB and all possible accompanying LSBs. It will then enable RFID chips using the allocated MSB and then sequentially incrementing the LSB.
  • A separate product line might also be simultaneously enabling other other chips. To ensure no overlap in serial numbers, the second-line will be allocated a different MSB.
  • The result then is that we can guarantee that each chip has a unique serial number despite parallel production lines.

The claims do not appear to include any novel features other than this constructed division between bits in a binary number.  (Claim 1, is reproduced below). In its petition, the adjudged infringer relies heavily on the old cases of Benson and Flook to argue that the setup here lacks eligibility.

Question presented:

Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) tags are encoded with lengthy serial numbers that uniquely identify particular items. The patent at issue in this case designates the leading bits in a binary serial number as “the most significant bits,” and directs that all serial numbers in an allocated block begin with the same “most significant bits.”

The question presented is whether that claim, by subdividing a serial number into “most significant bits” that are assigned such that they remain identical across RFID tags, constitutes patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

Avery Dennison Petition.

Chief Judge Moore wrote the opinion and concluded that the claims were not directed to an abstract idea but rather provides a novel data structure within a serial number.  Here, the idea is that the patentee was able to create a new data field that was "not a mere mental process, but a hardware-based data structure focused on improvements to the technological process by which that data is encoded;" and an improvement with "important technological consequences."

An interesting feature is that the general idea presented by the patentee was already identified and discussed in the book RFID for Dummies.  If Avery Dennison loses here, then the district court will hold a trial on anticipation.  Still, the "for Dummies" label has strong rhetorical appeal -- should everything in that book title be considered an abstract idea?  The petitioner writes:

“[A]bstract ideas are not patentable.” ... It is hard to imagine a more blatant transgression of that rule than the claim in this case, which sought a patent monopoly over the simple concept of treating one long serial number as the combination of two shorter numbers, and then [requiring] blocks of RFID tags all start with the same shorter number. At bottom, that claim is no different from a direction to mentally subdivide all telephone numbers into two component parts and then assign the same leading part to an allocated block of numbers (e.g., all telephone numbers in the District of Columbia start with 202). That may be a good idea (indeed, the concept in ADASA’s patent appears in the pages of RFID for Dummies), but it is no more patentable than the other good but abstract ideas that this Court has held unpatentable for more than 150 years.

Id.  I'm confident that if the Supreme Court takes this case, it would even further expand eligibility doctrine.

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