Wildseed Mobile LLC v. Google LLC

676 F.Supp.3d 766

WILDSEED MOBILE LLC, Plaintiff, v. GOOGLE LLC, et al., Defendants.

Case No. 22-cv-04928-WHO

United States District Court, N.D. California

Signed June 7, 2023

Andrew Hamill, Pro Hac Vice, David Alberti, Pro Hac Vice, Marc Belloli, Pro Hac Vice, Zachariah A. Higgins, Pro Hac Vice, Robert F. Kramer, Pro Hac Vice, Robert Y. Xie, Pro Hac Vice, Russell Steven Tonkovich, Sal Lim, Pro Hac Vice, Andrew Grant Hamill, Larry Gordon McDonough, Zachariah Allen Higgins, Jerry D. Tice, II, Feinberg Day Kramer Alberti Lim Tonkovich & Belloli LLP, Burlingame, CA, Margaret Elizabeth Day, Pro Hac Vice, Bunsow De Mory LLP, Redwood City, CA, James P. Barabas, Pro Hac Vice, Allen Overy LLP, New York, NY, Deron R. Dacus, The Dacus Firm, PC, Tyler, TX, for Plaintiff.

Anjali Srinivasan, Pro Hac Vice, David Jason Silbert, Kristen Elizabeth Lovin, Morgan Elizabeth Sharma, Paven Malhotra, Pro Hac Vice, Catherine Porto, Eric B. Hanson, Pro Hac Vice, William Sellers Hicks, Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP, San Francisco, CA, Paige Arnette Amstutz, Scott, Douglass & McConnico, LLP, Austin, TX, for Defendants.

ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS' MOTION FOR PARTIAL JUDGMENT ON THE PLEADINGS AS TO CLAIMS II, III, AND IV

Re: Dkt. No. 92

William H. Orrick, United States District Judge

INTRODUCTION

Defendants Google LLC and YouTube LLC move to dismiss three of five patent infringement claims brought by plaintiff Wildseed Mobile LLC ("Wildseed"), arguing that they are directed to abstract ideas and fail to claim patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. I agree that the '960,'021, and '040 patents are directed to patent-ineligible abstract ideas, do not improve device functionality, and do not contain any inventive concepts. These patents are invalid under § 101. Accordingly, defendants' motion for partial judgment on the pleadings is GRANTED, and Claims II, III, and IV of the First Amended Complaint ("FAC") are dismissed with prejudice.

PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Wildseed filed this action against defendants in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas and filed the operative first amended complaint on May 9, 2022. See First Amended Complaint [Dkt. No. 46] ("FAC"). In that complaint, Wildseed accused defendants of infringing five of its patents. The parties stipulated to transfer the case to this District in August 2022.

Defendants bring a motion for judgment on the pleadings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c), contending that three of the five asserted patents are invalid because they are directed at unpatentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Dkt. No. 92 ("Mot."). The patents at issue in this motion are U.S. Patent Nos. 9,141,960 (the "'960 patent"), 10,251,021 (the "'021 patent"), and 10,959,040 (the "'040 patent").

Although claim construction is sometimes necessary to resolve whether a patent claim is directed to unpatentable subject matter, the Federal Circuit has clarified that "claim construction is not an inviolable prerequisite to a validity determination under § 101." Bancorp Servs., L.L.C. v. Sun Life Assur. Co. of Can. (U.S.), 687 F.3d 1266, 1273-74 (Fed. Cir. 2012). Where the court has a "full understanding of the basic character of the claimed subject matter," the question of patent eligibility may properly be resolved on the pleadings. Content Extraction, 776 F.3d at 1349. The parties agree that no claim construction is required to resolve this motion.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

The Wildseed patents claim priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/945,677, filed on June 22, 2007 (See Ex. A, the '677 Application), with the earliest non-provisional filing date of June 23, 2008. An analysis of the validity of these patents focuses on the state of the art at that time. "The Court need not individually analyze every claim under the Alice rubric if certain claims are "representative." " Esignature Software, LLC v. Adobe Inc., No. 22-CV-05962-JSC, 656 F.Supp.3d 1041, 1047 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 21, 2023) (citing Twilio, 249 F. Supp. 3d at 1141). While each patent contains multiple independent claims, at this procedural posture, I will treat Claim 1 of the '960 patent as representative because the claims are substantially similar and are all linked to the same abstract idea.¹ Each patent at issue is directed at using information about the media contained on a user's mobile device and the user's location to recommend nearby venues or events that would appeal to the user.

1. Claim

Claim 1 of the '960 patent claims portable media players that utilize (1) what a person likes (preferences) and (2) where a person is (location) to (3) recommend a venue/event: It recites a method comprising:

[a] retrieving, by a server, a plurality of media stored on or accessed using a portable media player device, or information about said plurality of media;

[b] inferring, by the server, based at least in part on the retrieved plurality of media or the retrieved information about said plurality of media, one or more entertainment preferences of a user of the portable media player device;

[c] accessing, by the server, one or more sources of information about venues or events proximal to a current location of the user;

[d] identifying, by the server, at least one of said venues or events as being of interest to the user based at least in part on the one or more entertainment preferences inferred by the server and the current location of the user;

[e] generating, by the server, a recommendation indicating the identified venue or event as a venue or event of interest to the user; and

[f] communicating, by the server, the recommendation to the user.

U.S. Patent No. 9,141,960 [Dkt. No. 46-2] Ex. B at 8:5-25.

2. Specification

The specification of the '960 patent describes how a user's location could be inferred:

The server may estimate the current location of the portable media player device based on a location of a wireless access point through which the portable media player device establishes a network connection to the server. Or, the server may estimate the current location of the portable media player device based upon the results of triangulating signals from various signal towers or based upon the server's communication with other portable media player devices having known current locations. The server might also receive the current location of the portable media player device from a global positioning system (GPS) module located within the portable media player device.

Id. at 4:39-51.

The specification also elaborates on how the user's entertainment interests are inferred:

In various embodiments, the server can analyze the media and the information about the media stored on or accessed using the portable media player device to identify user preferences for particular genres of media. Thus, in various embodiments, the server may analyze e.g. the meta data associated with a wide variety of media stored on or accessed using the portable media player device such as music, podcasts, books or audiobooks, video, photos or other images for various trends that can be translated into user preferences for a particular genre of music, film, video or art. The meta data may include data about the media title, media type, artist, subject matter, and so forth. For example, the server may determine that the user has a preference for a jazz music genre if the portable media player device stores or has been used to access a substantial amount of music by famous jazz artists such as Ella Fitzgerald or Louis Armstrong. What constitutes a substantial amount may be evolved dynamically overtime based on feedback on the relevance, success or usefulness of the recommendation and/or information provided to the user or a group of users. The server may also determine that the user has a preference for film genres related to science fiction if a significant number of science fiction movies such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Star Wars are stored as video media in or accessed using the portable media player device.

Id. at 5:22-46.

LEGAL STANDARD

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c), judgment on the pleadings is proper when, accepting all material allegations in the nonmoving party's pleadings as true, the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Chavez v. United States, 683 F.3d 1102, 1108 (9th Cir. 2012). Defendant argues that the '960,'021, and '040 patents are ineligible for patent protection under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as a matter of law. See In re Roslin Inst. (Edinburgh), 750 F.3d 1333, 1335 (Fed. Cir. 2014) ("Section 101 patent eligibility is a question of law").

35 U.S.C. § 101 "defines the subject matter that may be patented under the Patent Act." Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593, 601, 130 S.Ct. 3218, 177 L.Ed.2d 792 (2010). Under § 101, patentable subject matter includes "any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof." 35 U.S.C. § 101. "These categories are broad, but they are not limitless." Twilio, Inc. v. Telesign Corp., 249 F. Supp. 3d 1123, 1136 (N.D. Cal. 2017). "Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable." Alice Corp. Pty. v. CLS Bank Int'l, 573 U.S. 208, 216, 134 S.Ct. 2347, 189 L.Ed.2d 296 (2014) (internal citation omitted). This is so because "they are the basic tools of scientific and technological work," which are "free to all men and reserved exclusively to none." Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66, 70, 132 S.Ct. 1289, 182 L.Ed.2d 321 (2012) (quotation marks omitted). Allowing patent claims for such purported inventions "would tend to impede innovation more than it would promote it." Id. But Courts must "tread carefully in construing this exclusionary principle lest it swallow all of patent law." Alice Corp., 573 U.S. at 217, 134 S.Ct. 2347. "At some level, all inventions embody, use, reflect, rest upon, or apply laws of nature, natural phenomena, or abstract ideas." Id. Accordingly, ...