Video processing claims that recite conversion with unspecified parameters are abstract

2023-02-17Fed. Cir.

Hawk Technology Systems, LLC v. Castle Retail, LLC, 60 F.4th 1349 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 17, 2023) (precedential) (Reyna, J., joined by Hughes and Cunningham, JJ.), affirming Hawk Technology Systems, LLC v. Castle Retail, LLC, No. 2:20-cv-02766-JPM-tmp (W.D. Tenn. Sept. 15, 2021) (McCalla, C.J.)

United States Patent No. 10,499,091 claims a method of viewing multiple simultaneously displayed and stored video images on a remote viewing device of a video surveillance system: receiving video from a plurality of cameras at a personal computer based system, digitizing it, displaying it using a first set of temporal and spatial parameters, converting it into a selected format using a second set, storing a subset, and transmitting requested streams to a remote device at less than substantially 24 frames per second using a third set. Hawk sued Castle Retail, and the Western District of Tennessee dismissed under Rule 12(b)(6). The Federal Circuit affirmed in a precedential opinion by Judge Reyna, joined by Judges Hughes and Cunningham. At step one the court held the claims are directed to receiving, displaying, converting, storing and transmitting digital video "using result-based functional language," that "the claims themselves do not disclose performing any 'special data conversion,'" and that neither the claims nor the specification explain "what th[e] [claimed] parameters are or how they should be manipulated." At step two the parameters "at most concern abstract data manipulation" on components Hawk conceded were conventional. The court also held that the district court erred under Rule 12(d) by not excluding or converting outside materials from a technical briefing, but found the error harmless because the decision did not depend on them.

What it changesComputer vision and video analytics claims fail this way constantly: receive, convert, display, store and transmit, with the technical contribution hidden behind a word like "parameters." The claim that survives recites what the conversion does and how, meaning the specific operations that produce the asserted improvement, and the specification has to describe those operations, because the court read the specification and found no explanation of what the parameters were. For a machine learning application, the independent claim should name the input representation, the transformation the model performs and the output the system acts on in terms that no generic format conversion satisfies, and the specification should carry the same detail. A reduced-bandwidth or reduced-storage benefit asserted in the briefing but absent from the claim counts for nothing. The decision is precedential, and its Rule 12(d) holding means a technical tutorial at the pleading stage will not by itself convert the motion into one for summary judgment.

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Burbage Law is the practice of Jon Burbage, a registered patent attorney. 342 United States patents have issued from applications he wrote; the full list is on the Patents page. More about Jon Burbage.

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