`
`IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF FEDERAL CLAIMS
`
`Plaintiffs,
`
`
`E-NUMERATE SOLUTIONS, INC. and
`E-NUMERATE, LLC,
`
`
`
`
`
`THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
`
`
`Defendant.
`
`
`
`
`v.
`
`
`
`
`Civil Action No.: 19-859-RTH
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`[PROPOSED] THIRD AMENDED COMPLAINT
`
`Plaintiffs e-Numerate Solutions, Inc. (“ESI”) and e-Numerate, LLC (together, the
`
`“Plaintiffs”), bring this action for reasonable and entire compensation for the United States
`
`Government’s infringement of eight patents owned by ESI. In support of this action, Plaintiffs
`
`aver as follows:
`
`THE PARTIES
`
`1.
`
`Plaintiff ESI is a corporation organized and existing under the laws of the State of
`
`Delaware with its principal place of business located in Great Falls, VA.
`
`2.
`
`Plaintiff e-Numerate, LLC is a limited liability corporation organized and existing
`
`under the laws of Delaware with its principal place of business located in Reston, VA.
`
`3.
`
`ESI is the owner of record and assignee of United States Patents 7,650,355 (“the
`
`‘355 patent”); 8,185,816 (“the ‘816 patent”); 9,262,383 (“the ‘383 patent”); 9,262,384 (“the ‘384
`
`patent”); 9,268,748 (“the ‘748 patent”); 9,600,842 (“the ‘842 patent”); and 10,223,337 (“the ‘337
`
`patent”); (collectively, “the Asserted Patents”).
`
`4.
`
`Plaintiff e-Numerate, LLC is the exclusive licensee of the Asserted Patents and
`
`has the exclusive right to pursue this lawsuit based on infringement of the Asserted Patents.
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 2 of 54
`
`5.
`
`Defendant is the United States of America, acting through its various agencies
`
`including, but not limited to, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), the Federal
`
`Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”), the Federal Financial Institutions Examining Council
`
`(“FFIEC”), the United States Department of the Treasury (“USDOT”), the Office of
`
`Management and Budget (“OMB”), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) and
`
`the United States Department of Energy (“DOE”).
`
`JURISDICTION AND VENUE
`
`6.
`
`This is an action for patent infringement arising under the patent laws of the
`
`United States, 35 U.S.C. § 271, et seq.
`
`7.
`
`This Court has subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1491 and
`
`1498(a).
`
`PRIOR LITIGATION INVOLVING THE ‘355, ‘816, ‘383 AND ‘748 PATENTS
`
`8.
`
`On July 11, 2017, Plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for
`
`the District of Delaware against Mattress Firm Holding Corp. (“Mattress Firm”). Plaintiffs
`
`alleged infringement of the ‘355, ‘816, ‘383 and ‘748 patents. The case was assigned Civil
`
`Action No. 17-933-RGA (“the 933 action”).
`
`9.
`
`On September 18, 2017, Plaintiffs amended the Complaint in the 933 action to
`
`add Merrill Communications LLC (“Merrill Communications”) and Merrill Corporation
`
`(“Merrill Corp.”) (collectively “Merrill”) as defendants.
`
`10.
`
`On October 19, 2018, the United States of America filed a “Statement of Interest”
`
`in the 933 action. The Statement of Interest provided:
`
`Accordingly, by this Statement of Interest, the United States hereby confirms that
`the United States has granted its authorization and consent to the extent the
`Defendants use XBRL to file documents with the SEC pursuant to federal
`regulation.
`
`2
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 3 of 54
`
`Id. at 3. A true and correct copy of the Statement of Interest is attached hereto as Exhibit A.
`
`11.
`
`By virtue of the Statement of Interest, the United States has assumed all liability
`
`for patent infringement by all companies that use XBRL to file documents with the SEC,
`
`FDIC/FFIEC, and FERC/DOE pursuant to federal regulation.
`
`12.
`
`By virtue of the Statement of Interest, the United States has assumed all liability
`
`for patent infringement by third-party vendors such as Merrill Corp. that use, sell, license,
`
`provide third party services and/or host software used to assist companies that file documents
`
`using XBRL with the SEC.
`
`13.
`
`By virtue of the Statement of Interest, the United States has assumed all liability
`
`for patent infringement by third-party vendors that use, sell, license, provide third party services
`
`and/or host software used to assist companies that file documents using XBRL with the
`
`FDIC/FFIEC and FERC/DOE.
`
`BACKGROUND OF THE TECHNOLOGY
`
`14.
`
`Inventor Russell T. Davis pioneered several inventions related to Reusable Data
`
`Markup Language including, but not limited to, the Asserted Patents. As discussed below, these
`
`patents provided numerous advantages over prior art Markup Languages.
`
`15.
`
`In the late 1990s when numbers were treated the same as letters (text) in software
`
`programs, both online and offline, e-Numerate’s key technical advancements allowed numbers to
`
`be substantively treated as the numerical values they represent. This opened the computer world,
`
`both online and offline, to vastly improve a user’s ability to identify, manipulate, compare,
`
`convert and process numbers in software like never before. The technical innovations of the
`
`patents-in-suit are embodied in software that improves and enhances the functionalities of
`
`3
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 4 of 54
`
`computer systems over the prior art. The problem that they solve relates to the need for the
`
`intelligent identification and processing of numerical information on the Internet.
`
`16.
`
`THE PROBLEM: In the late 1990s, the Internet was replete with numerical data
`
`but (i) there was no way of distinguishing this numerical data from text, (ii) data and analytic
`
`routines were not standardized, and (iii) calculations occurred at too low a conceptual level.
`
`a. The advances of the inventions claimed in the patents-in-suit relate to deficiencies
`
`in the prior-art markup languages that existed at the time of the invention. These were Hyper
`
`Text Markup Language (HTML) and Extensible Markup Language (XML).
`
`b. Internet browsers interpret and display documents formatted in HTML. In order
`
`to distinguish the text characters to be displayed from the information describing how the text
`
`characters are to be formatted, “annotations” that are not visible to the viewer of the displayed
`
`document are added to the document. The HTML specification describes the use of a markup
`
`language to include these non-displayed annotations. A markup language is a system for
`
`inserting information about the formatting and display of a group of text characters by placing
`
`non-displayed “markup” text before and after the group of text characters. These markups,
`
`commonly known as “tags” in online and other documents in digital format, describe the
`
`structure and formatting of digital documents and instruct computer systems on how to display
`
`them.
`
`c. HTML works only with text and images. Numbers in HTML documents are read
`
`and displayed as text characters. There is no HTML tag capable of annotating the context or
`
`meaning of numerical data appearing in a markup document for computer systems to interpret
`
`these numerical data as numbers representing a particular type of information instead of a simple
`
`string of text characters. At most, HTML tags can be used only to indicate the display format
`
`4
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 5 of 54
`
`(e.g., font, size, color, alignment) of numerical data. For example, a financial statement showing
`
`numbers could be displayed by computer systems running browsers, but HTML cannot be used
`
`to annotate a given number as “revenue” or “expense,” or as “dollars” or “Euros,” or as
`
`representing “thousands” or “millions,” but rather only as a text character to be displayed in a
`
`certain way according to embedded formatting tags. Consequently, computer systems running
`
`web browsers could use HTML tags to display documents containing numbers, but the HTML
`
`tags do not enable computer systems to run analytical applications that read, manipulate,
`
`combine, compare, transform or analyze the numbers, load them into a spreadsheet, or display
`
`them in a graph, directly from multiple online sources.
`
`d. XML version 1.0 was developed in the mid-to-late 1990s to help overcome some
`
`of HTML’s limitations. XML, itself, does not include a set of pre-defined tags, but rather is a
`
`specification that governs the creation of tags by particular users or groups. The XML
`
`specification allows developers to create customized tags that, via a glossary of terms, describe
`
`the structure and meaning of online content. In other words, XML allows developers to create
`
`their own individual markup languages. Thus, a user can use XML to create their own markup
`
`tags that annotate data characteristics that are meaningful to that particular user. But at the time
`
`of the inventions of the patents-in-suit, no set of XML tags had been promulgated for general
`
`use, so any XML tag taxonomy created by one user would not be compatible with the
`
`taxonomies created by other users. One user’s XML tag taxonomy, whether individuals or
`
`groups, is not ordinarily available to any other users or groups of users. XML’s lack of
`
`standardization, and its separation of data from its annotations (metadata), left users with no way
`
`to manipulate, combine, compare, transform or analyze numerical data from singular or multiple
`
`5
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 6 of 54
`
`online sources using differing custom-created XML tag taxonomies. The only way to correct the
`
`deficiency of XML was to convert unrelated documents by hand.
`
`17.
`
`THE INVENTION: In contrast to XML, the Reusable Data Markup Language
`
`(“RDML”) represented a significant advance over HTML and XML. The patents-at-issue in this
`
`case solved these HTML- and XML-related problems with unique tools that allowed users for
`
`the first time to easily view, compare and analyze numerical data on the Internet. The Reusable
`
`Data Markup Language (“RDML”) and RDML companion innovations include:
`
`a. Pairing the metadata directly with the numerical data in machine-readable form so
`
`the numerical data could be easily identified and used in different program applications. This
`
`was a dramatically different approach than previously used, which was to keep document
`
`metadata and data itself separate from each other. Without the pairing of metadata directly with
`
`the numerical data as described in the patents-in-suit, the capabilities presented in the XBRL
`
`standard would not be possible.
`
`b. Define standards for both data formats and analytic routines.
`
`c. Enhance analytical calculation power by creating data objects at the line item and
`
`document levels. This overcame the limitations of traditional spreadsheets which operate only at
`
`the cell (single number) level.
`
`i.
`
`Reusable Data Markup Language provided RDML tags for data
`
`characteristics that HTML lacked and supplied a set of tags for content and meaning of numbers
`
`for general use missing in XML.
`
`ii.
`
`A suite of software applications was developed to create
`
`documents with RDML tag markups, read or parse the RDML documents, display them as
`
`graphs or in tree views, combine and compare data from multiple online sources, and
`
`6
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 7 of 54
`
`manipulate, transform and analyze numerical data from multiple online sources. RDML permits
`
`the browsing and manipulation of numbers, and allows the “RDML Data Viewer” to act as a
`
`combination Web browser and spreadsheet/analytic application that automatically reads numbers
`
`from multiple online sources, understands their meaning, and manipulates them without human
`
`intervention.
`
`iii.
`
`RDML encodes information about numbers in tags that relate to
`
`each number. The encoded information is connected with the numbers themselves and the tags
`
`move with the numbers when the numbers are ported. By associating the numbers with the
`
`numbers’ attributes and making it machine-readable, RDML facilitates browsing for and
`
`processing numbers.
`
`iv.
`
`The RDML Data Viewer is an “Application” in accordance with
`
`the XML Specifications. The RDML Data Viewer accesses information contained in an XML-
`
`formatted document by invoking the XML Processor to obtain individual data elements based on
`
`their “extended” tags that have been defined in accordance with the “extensibility” features of
`
`XML. The RDML Data Viewer automates the process of merging the tagged elements derived
`
`from documents written in different formats and languages into a single, standardized data set.
`
`Where there are conflicts, the RDML Data Viewer automatically resolves the conflicts between
`
`the characteristics of the varying documents to create a standard set of tags using the RDML
`
`taxonomy. The RDML Data Viewer also provides a macro development and management
`
`scheme that allows users to create reusable custom routines for the manipulation, transformation
`
`and display of RDML-formatted data. By defining standards for data characteristics and content-
`
`analysis, RDML addresses the problems caused by XML’s use of customized tagging making
`
`RDML applicable for general use.
`
`7
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 8 of 54
`
`18.
`
`The impact of the improvements of the patents-in-suit are as follows:
`
`a. “Pairing the metadata directly with the numerical data in machine-readable form
`
`so the numerical data could be easily identified and used in different program applications.”
`
`This had never been done before the inventions claimed in the patents-in-suit.
`
`The inventions claimed in the patents-in-suit were invented prior to the creation of the
`
`XBRL standard. Prior art, as embodied in HTML and XML at the time of the filing of the
`
`patents-in-suit, did not provide any metadata (i.e., information about the attributes or
`
`characteristics of a data element) beyond simple display formatting. Without these attributes and
`
`characteristics, it was not possible for a human or a computer to select, process, combine or
`
`output data elements without resorting to human intervention to find, associate and take into
`
`account how the appropriate attributes and characteristics would affect the selection, processing,
`
`combination and outputting activities. For example, financial statements, such as those
`
`submitted to the SEC by Mattress Firm, contain numeric values for typical accounting data items
`
`types such as “Assets,” “Balances,” “Cash,” etc. To organize the multiple occurrences of these
`
`items, accountants would create financial statements such as “Balance Sheets,” “Income
`
`Statements,” etc., that typically have formats that hierarchically display and summarize these
`
`accounting items in a manner that reflects how the individual organization or organizational unit
`
`represents its financial condition. Before the introduction of the inventive concepts contained in
`
`the patents-in-suit, there were no tools that could automatically associate individual accounting
`
`data items with the appropriate sections of the organization’s financial statements. Typically, the
`
`organization would have to rely on its senior financial accountants to manually select, analyze,
`
`combine, and format accounting items in a manner that corresponded to that organization’s
`
`Financial Statement situation. Thus, each iteration of Financial Statement preparation required a
`
`8
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 9 of 54
`
`large amount of human intervention to create a Financial Statement that faithfully adhered to the
`
`“letter” and “intent” of the generally accepted accounting standards due to the lack of a means to
`
`capture and utilize the required metadata. The patents-in-suit provide these capabilities which
`
`are not addressed by either HTML or XML. The continuing significant efforts by the Financial
`
`Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the XBRL International organization to grow and
`
`expand the Extensible Business Reporting Language are a testament to the necessity and value of
`
`the inventions contained in the patents-in-suit. The SEC is currently performing cross-financial
`
`entity and cross-industry “data mining” activities to better understand financial trends and to
`
`better discover improprieties by comparing financial entities. These activities would not be
`
`possible without the ability of different program applications to utilize the inventions contained
`
`in the patents-in-suit.
`
`b. “Define standards for both data formats and analytic routines.”
`
`Before the introduction of the inventions contained in the patents-in-suit, the
`
`preparation of financial statements involved the manual selection, analysis, combination and
`
`outputting of numerical data items based on the best efforts of the organization’s senior
`
`accountants and later accepted as appropriate by Certified Public Accountants. Without defined
`
`standards for capturing and accessing both numerical data attributes and characteristics, the
`
`selection of appropriate data formats and analytic routines could not be performed automatically
`
`by either human or machine. The patents-in-suit provide a mechanism to capture the metadata
`
`required to identify the attributes and characteristics of each numerical data element, and thereby
`
`allow the automated selection of the appropriate analytic routines based on the metadata
`
`associated with those analytical routines. For example, an international organization may
`
`operate in several political jurisdictions, each having their own financial regulations, reporting
`
`9
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 10 of 54
`
`formats and analytical processing procedures. For the international organization to produce a
`
`combined Financial Statement of Condition, the financial statement within each jurisdiction must
`
`first be created and then combined into a consolidated financial statement. To facilitate this
`
`consolidation, senior international accountants would have to manually identify the variations
`
`associated with each jurisdiction and determine how these diverse statements of financial
`
`condition could be combined. The inventions contained in the patents-in-suit provide a
`
`mechanism to capture the necessary numerical data, item metadata, and analytical processing
`
`routine metadata to facilitate the required association of numerical data to routines needed to
`
`automatically produce combined financial statements without manual human intervention.
`
`c. “Enhance analytical calculation power by creating data objects at the line item
`
`and document levels.”
`
`Prior art at the time of the filing of the patent-in-suit only provided for the automated
`
`display of structured data using HTML or XML. While these display structures provided an
`
`elementary “visual” representation of the relationship between the data elements, there was no
`
`standard way of capturing these relationships in a manner that this information could be stored
`
`and accessed by human or automated processes. The patents-in-suit provide a mechanism to
`
`capture and utilize these types of relationships. For example, financial transactions typically
`
`might consist of a date, description, multiple account identifiers (e.g., debit, credit, distribution,
`
`etc.) and amounts for each. In a manual or automated accounting system, these components of a
`
`financial transaction would typically be stored together in an information processing system
`
`(e.g., “data base”). Without the inventions contained in the patents-in-suit, there would be no
`
`automated way of unambiguously capturing these elements presented in an HTML or XML
`
`document due to the lack of the necessary metadata.
`
`10
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 11 of 54
`
`19.
`
`Further impacts of the key inventions embodied in the Reusable Data Markup
`
`Language (RDML) are identified as follows:
`
`a. “A set of tags to encode attributes and meaning of numbers. RDML encodes
`
`information about numbers in tags that relate to each number. The encoded information is
`
`connected with the numbers themselves and the tags move with the numbers when the numbers
`
`are ported.”
`
`Prior art at the time of the filing of the patents-in-suit did not provide a mechanism to
`
`identify numerical data element attributes, characteristics, formats or relationships. For example,
`
`an information system would typically store structured data, such as financial transactions, in a
`
`“database” system that preserves record or “line item” relationships for a collection of related
`
`transactions (i.e., a business document). Typically, the metadata describing these record and data
`
`element characteristics would be stored in the “schema” subsystem of the database system.
`
`However, there was no universal mechanism to store and share the metadata describing the
`
`structure of the records, the metadata of the individual data elements within each record, the
`
`metadata describing the relationship among different records representing a transaction, nor the
`
`semantic meaning of the data elements. For example, an “invoice” might consist of various
`
`information about the supplier (e.g., name, address, tax id, etc.), consumer (e.g., name, address,
`
`tax id, etc.), and individual invoice line items (e.g., item identifier, description, dimensions, cost,
`
`etc.). Without RDML’s encoding of attributes and meaning, each time information from one
`
`information system (manual or automated) was to be shared with another information system, a
`
`“mapping” of all of these data elements had to be manually created. The inventions in the
`
`patents-in-suit provide for automated sharing of the metadata necessary for information to be
`
`shared among information systems without manual intervention.
`
`11
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 12 of 54
`
`b. “A suite of applications that create documents with RDML tag markups, read or
`
`parse the RDML documents, display them as graphs or in tree views, combine and compare data
`
`from multiple online sources, and manipulate, transform and analyze numerical data from
`
`multiple online sources.”
`
`The patents-in-suit include the specifications for the implementation of automated
`
`information application systems to provide the benefits of the inventions, and the implementation
`
`specifications for the “RDML Data Viewer” describe the mechanisms necessary to provide the
`
`benefits of these inventions. Just as the “dial telephone” enhanced the efficiency and ease of use
`
`of the telephone system beyond that experienced when human operators were necessary to make
`
`a telephone call, the RDML Data Viewer provides for the automated creation and sharing of the
`
`metadata necessary for information systems (manual or computerized) to more efficiently share
`
`and use complex structured information without the necessity for manual creation of “mappings”
`
`each time a new pair of information systems need to share information.
`
`20.
`
`The inventions of the patents-in-suit have numerous advantages over prior art
`
`systems such as Excel. For example, if a person had an Excel spreadsheet with a column entitled
`
`“Pound” along with numbers in that column, the disadvantages of prior art systems are manifest.
`
`For example, without additional metadata, it would not be clear whether the column heading
`
`“Pound” was a unit of measure for the weight of an object or a unit of measure for British
`
`currency. All the ways in which this information in the “Pound” column could be combined for
`
`use in conjunction with other data in the spreadsheet is not indicated since metadata about its
`
`semantic meaning is not available in the spreadsheet itself. While Excel spreadsheets can encode
`
`formulas, formats and relationships, the encoding of this information is unique to the layout of
`
`each individual spreadsheet. When new or different analyses or outputs are required, the
`
`12
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 13 of 54
`
`spreadsheet must be manually modified in structure and analytical content to provide the desired
`
`results. While “templates” were available to define generic documents, such as invoices, these
`
`must be manually revised to deal with each specific situation since the spreadsheet structure is
`
`not based on the semantic meaning of the numerical data elements nor universal concepts of how
`
`the data elements in a specific template can be selected, analyzed, combined and output. The
`
`patents-in-suit provide the ability to analyze and share this information among manual and
`
`automated information systems by recording both semantic meaning and macros that embody
`
`logical tests to select the appropriate processing based on this and other data elements contained
`
`in the document.
`
`21.
`
`The patents-in-suit have particular advantages when dealing with macros. Some
`
`analysts considered a macro a “shortcut” which appears to imply the “recorded series of steps”
`
`required to achieve a given computation or formatting result. For example, such a “shortcut”
`
`might be recorded in spreadsheet “formula” to sum a column of numbers and combine that sum
`
`with other sums. However, that formula would be only related to the set of cells that the analyst
`
`identified during the construction of the formula, and the rationale used in creating that formula
`
`would not be recorded in a way that a human or automated process could access or evaluate.
`
`RDML standardizes the recording of these steps in a “macro” that includes the identification of
`
`the specific data items that these steps apply to by specifying the data element metadata needed
`
`to determine which data elements are to be selected and how they are to be processed given their
`
`individual attributes and characteristics. Further, RDML stores this information in a “Second
`
`Document” (i.e., external file) that is accessible on the Internet so that it can be used by any
`
`process related to the specific data elements involved. For example, XBRL uses such external
`
`“linkbase” files containing “rules” (i.e., “Macros”) that perform “recorded series of steps” (i.e.,
`
`13
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 14 of 54
`
`“shortcuts” or “calculations”) but also contain rules for data validation, data element
`
`combination and transformation that are based on metadata that identify the attributes and
`
`characteristics of the data element (e.g., “Fixed Asset” vs. “Financial Asset”) rather than the
`
`specifics of a spreadsheet template. The patents-in-suit invent the solution to the data sharing
`
`problem by storing semantically sensitive Macros in universally accessible “second documents”
`
`available to all human and automated processors on the Internet.
`
`22.
`
`The inventions of the patents-in-suit cannot simply be performed “by hand.” The
`
`patents-in-suit address the problem of combining information from data elements that are in
`
`different formats and units of measure in two different documents. For example, the financial
`
`statement for a company’s U.S. and Canadian divisions might record information related to fixed
`
`assets in different formats and units of measure. Prior art before the filing of the patents-in-suit
`
`would not encode the metadata necessary for a human or automated process to unambiguously
`
`identify the attributes and characteristics of similarly named numerical data elements so that
`
`these differing data elements could be combined to yield an identified result. The inventions
`
`contained in the ‘816 patent together with the other patents-in-suit provide for the encoding of
`
`the attributes and characteristics in the “First Document” and a mechanism to access the
`
`selection, analysis, processing and output formatting information contained in a “Second
`
`Document” on the Internet. For a human to perform the required process “by hand,” the human
`
`would have to have access to the specific set of instructions that would apply to the specific
`
`document and data elements to be processed. Without the semantic relationship capabilities
`
`invented by the patents-in-suit, a human could not unambiguously locate these recorded steps by
`
`hand. Even if a human was provided with a document containing the processing steps, prior art
`
`did not provide for the encoding of the necessary metadata needed to ensure that, based on the
`
`14
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 15 of 54
`
`attributes and characteristics of the data elements to be combined, they would qualify for the
`
`application of the selected process.
`
`23.
`
`The use of semantic tags in the inventions of the patents-in-suit is a major
`
`breakthrough of the patented inventions. As used in the patents-in-suit, the term “semantic tags”
`
`indicates that, in addition to the association of a descriptive “name” with a data item (e.g.,
`
`“Pounds”), additional attributes and characteristics information is recorded. These additional
`
`attributes and characteristics provide semantic meaning, allowing the RDML Data Viewer to
`
`select, analyze, process and output results based on information stored in universally accessible
`
`“Second Documents” stored on the Internet. While the patents-in-suit do not claim the invention
`
`of semantic tags, RDML invented the use of semantic tags to enable the unambiguous selection,
`
`analysis, processing and outputting of information based on the information contained in the
`
`semantic tags that were not prior art at the time of patent filing.
`
`24.
`
`The inventions of the patents-in-suit are more than merely XML. XML’s
`
`specifications define a syntax for writing documents containing “character data entities” and
`
`associated “markup entities.” This syntax for writing serves the same purpose English grammar
`
`provides as a syntax for writing prose. XML by definition is extensible, allowing the creation of
`
`XML-compliant documents that can be accessed by any human or automated process that has
`
`access to the Internet. The inventions contained in the patents-in-suit utilize XML-compliant
`
`document formats to ensure that all available Internet “Applications” can interface with the
`
`“XML Processor” described in the XML specifications to “read” the document’s contents.
`
`Using the XML-compliant document formats, the patents-in-suit implement the inventions for
`
`using semantic tags to select, analyze, process and output results claimed and not within the
`
`capabilities provided by the XML specification.
`
`15
`
`
`
`Case 1:19-cv-00859-RTH Document 122-1 Filed 08/12/24 Page 16 of 54
`
`25.
`
`The patents-in-suit use the XML syntax and the “XML Processor” as an
`
`established and universal method of accessing formatted information on the Internet. Each of the
`
`patents-in-suit utilize semantic tags defined using the extensibility features of XML to record
`
`information used by the “RDML Data Viewer” to provide the invented capabilities for selecting,
`
`analyzing, processing and outputting information based on the values of those semantic tags and
`
`the information contained in “Second Document(s)” as described in the patents-in-suit. The
`
`patents-in-suit are not simply a “dialect” of XML, rather they utilize the XML-compliant
`
`document format as a platform for deploying the inventive concepts in a manner that is
`
`universally accessible on the Internet. XML’s limitation to providing an extensible syntax for
`
`accessing “character data entities” and “markup entities” through the XML Processor does not in
`
`any way support the implementation of these inventions.
`
`26.
`
`Further Points Regarding Technical Advancement of the claimed invention:
`
`These patented inventions represent a significant advance over XML and HTML since they
`
`invent the ability to:
`
`a. View and select data through semantic tags identifying attributes and
`
`characteristics beyond the limited formatting capabilities of HTML and XML.
`
`b. Automatically invoke processing procedures (“Macros”) that are stored in
`
`external “Second Documents” accessible on the Internet. Note that these Macros embody
`
`procedures that would be necessary for processing by a human or computer.
`
`c. Compare, combine and analyze numerical data on the Internet.
`
`27.
`
`The patents are not simply XML inventions. The claims do not use “XML
`
`elements.” Although the preferred embodiment of the patents-in-suit is XML-com