Perfect Web Technologies v. InfoUSA (Fed. Cir. 2009)
Perfect Web's asserted patent covers a method of managing bulk e-mail distribution. Claim 1 of the application (filed in 2000) reads as follows:
1. A method for managing bulk e-mail distribution comprising the steps:
(A) matching a target recipient profile with a group of target recipients;
(B) transmitting a set of bulk e-mails to said target recipients in said matched group;
(C) calculating a quantity of e-mails in said set of bulk e-mails which have been successfully received by said target recipients; and,
(D) if said calculated quantity does not exceed a prescribed minimum quantity of successfully received e-mails, repeating steps (A)-(C) until said calculated quantity exceeds said prescribed minimum quantity. (Pat. No. 6,431,400).
The district court held the claims invalid as anticipated and obvious as well as for failing to claim statutory subject matter under Section 101. On appeal, the Federal Circuit upheld the obviousness finding and left the alternative reasons undecided.
Of course, in 2000, targeted bulk e-mail was already around, and the defendants provided prior art evidence of steps (A)-(C). That is, marketers were already identifying target recipients, sending out e-mails, and calculating the percent received. Missing from the prior art was step (D) - iteratively repeating steps (A)-(C) until the number of recipients reaches the a prescribed quantity.
Evidence of Common Sense: The district court held on summary judgment that KSR style "common sense" would lead one of ordinary skill in the art to perform the iterative step (D). On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed that finding - holding particularly that the finding of common sense does not require "explication in any reference or expert opinion."
Although a court need not have documentary support of its common sense analysis, a court (or patent examiner) must at least clearly explain its reasoning.
We reiterate that, on summary judgment, to invoke “common sense” or any other basis for extrapolating from prior art to a conclusion of obviousness, a district court must articulate its reasoning with sufficient clarity for review.
In this case, the appellate panel agreed that the idea of repeating already known steps until a threshold is met was simply a common sense extension:
Thus, this last step, and the claim as a whole, simply recites repetition of a known procedure until success is achieved. Recognizing this, the district court explained: “If 100 e-mail deliveries were ordered, and the first transmission delivered only 95, common sense dictates that one should try again. One could do little else.”
The court added an interesting caveat regarding expert testimony and the level of one of skill in the art -- noting that expert testimony may well be necessary for "complex" technology.
If the relevant technology were complex, the court might require expert opinions. Here, however, the parties agreed that ordinary skill in the relevant art required only a high school education and limited marketing and computer experience. No expert opinion is required to appreciate the potential value to persons of such skill in this art of repeating steps (A)-(C).
Obvious to Try: As a corollary to its common sense holding, the appellate court also held that the additional step (D) would have been "obvious to try" under KSR. "[S]imple logic suggests that sending messages to new addresses is more likely to produce successful deliveries than re-sending messages to addresses that have already failed. . . . [I]ndeed, the predictable and actual result of performing step (D) is that more e-mail messages reach more recipients."
Long-felt Need: The patentee argued that a nonobviousness conclusion was supported by evidence of the secondary consideration of long-felt need. Particularly, the method helps solve the recognized competing problems of reaching customers without "burning up" the mailing list by oversending.
The Federal Circuit rejected these arguments because the patentee had failed to provide any evidence of improved efficiency beyond "bare assertion." In addition, the court suggested that any proof of long-felt need would be insufficient to "overcome [the] strong prima facie showing of obviousness." (quoting Asyst Techs (2008))
Claim Construction: Interestingly, the court issued its summary judgment order prior to claim construction. The Federal Circuit found no error because construction of the disputed claim terms would not have changed the obviousness outcome.
Notes: The patent was originally titled "Statement regarding federally sponsored research or development." That is apparently a typographical error fixed in a subsequent certificate of correction.
