DCT
3:25-cv-01026
Gongio Inc v. Hyperdoc Inc
I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information
- Parties & Counsel:
- Plaintiff: Gong.io, Inc. (Delaware)
- Defendant: Hyperdoc Inc. d/b/a Recall.ai (Delaware)
- Plaintiff’s Counsel: Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP
- Case Identification: 5:25-cv-01026, N.D. Cal., 06/27/2025
- Venue Allegations: Venue is alleged to be proper as Defendant is headquartered in the Northern District of California and has allegedly committed acts of infringement within the district.
- Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s service, which provides an API for bots to join and record online conferences, infringes a patent related to recording web conferences using a "virtual participant" that emulates a human attendee.
- Technical Context: The technology operates in the enterprise software market for conversation intelligence, where automated recording and analysis of sales and customer calls is a key function.
- Key Procedural History: The complaint alleges that Plaintiff provided Defendant with notice of infringement via a letter on September 20, 2024, followed by a draft complaint on December 20, 2024. This history is presented to support allegations of willful infringement.
Case Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2016-02-17 | ’409 Patent Priority Date |
| 2017-07-04 | ’409 Patent Issue Date |
| 2023-02-06 | Defendant publishes tutorial "How to clone Gong's bot recorder" |
| 2024-09-20 | Plaintiff sends infringement notice letter to Defendant |
| 2024-12-20 | Plaintiff sends draft complaint to Defendant |
| 2025-06-27 | First Amended Complaint Filing Date |
II. Technology and Patent(s)-in-Suit Analysis
U.S. Patent No. 9,699,409 - Recording Web Conferences (Issued Jul. 4, 2017)
The Invention Explained
- Problem Addressed: The patent and complaint describe prior art methods for recording online meetings as suffering from significant drawbacks, including being manual and error-prone, consuming excessive processing power on a user's machine, failing to capture all audio streams reliably, and creating privacy risks by capturing a user's entire screen, including private messages or notifications (Compl. ¶¶22-28). The patent notes the general "need to document virtual meetings" (Compl. ¶17; ’409 Patent, col. 1:35-36).
- The Patented Solution: The invention addresses these problems with a system where a "virtual participant"—a software bot—joins a web conference as if it were a human attendee ('409 Patent, Abstract). This virtual participant, operating on a separate server, can "unintrusively record" the meeting "transparently to the participants" by capturing the audio and video streams presented during the conference (Compl. ¶18; ’409 Patent, col. 1:44-56). By operating independently from any single participant's computer, this method avoids performance degradation and privacy issues associated with local screen recording (Compl. ¶¶38-40).
- Technical Importance: This approach automated and centralized the conference recording process, making it more reliable and scalable for enterprise use across various third-party conferencing platforms (Compl. ¶37).
Key Claims at a Glance
- The complaint asserts infringement of at least independent Claim 1 (Compl. ¶¶49, 68).
- The essential elements of independent Claim 1 include:
- Identifying a plurality of virtual conferences being operated by a conferencing system connected to a communications network, the virtual conferences having human participants;
- Executing a plurality of virtual participant processes in a processor;
- Registering the virtual participant processes with the conferencing system as co-participants in the virtual conferences by emulating human interactions with a graphical user interface; and
- Recording information streams of the human participants using the virtual participant processes.
- The complaint reserves the right to assert other claims of the ’409 patent (Compl. ¶68).
III. The Accused Instrumentality
Product Identification
- The accused instrumentality is the Recall.ai service, which includes its Application Programming Interface (API), bots, and related software and hardware (Compl. ¶68).
Functionality and Market Context
- Recall.ai is marketed as a "universal API for meeting bots," allowing developers to programmatically instruct bots to join and record video conferences on platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet (Compl. ¶¶50, 54-55). The service enables developers to create bots, send them to meetings, and retrieve the resulting recording as a video file (Compl. ¶55). The complaint alleges that Recall.ai directly competes with Plaintiff's products and has published marketing materials on how to "replicate Gong's recording bot with Recall.ai" (Compl. ¶7). To illustrate the concept of a visible virtual participant, the complaint includes a screenshot of a video conference participant list showing a bot named "Hack The Box Notetaker" (Compl. p. 10).
IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations
’409 Patent Infringement Allegations
| Claim Element (from Independent Claim 1) | Alleged Infringing Functionality | Complaint Citation | Patent Citation |
|---|---|---|---|
| identifying a plurality of virtual conferences being operated by a conferencing system... the virtual conferences having human participants | Recall.ai instructs customers to integrate its bots with user calendars (Google, Microsoft Outlook), which contain information about upcoming virtual conferences with human participants on systems like Zoom or Teams, to determine which meetings to record. | ¶¶73-74 | col. 6:31-34 |
| executing a plurality of virtual participant processes in a processor | The Recall.ai service supports the execution of multiple bots, which can be deployed on-demand or scheduled to join future meetings. Each bot is alleged to be a "virtual participant process." | ¶75 | col. 1:60-62 |
| registering the virtual participant processes with the conferencing system as co-participants... by emulating human interactions with a graphical user interface | For platforms without a formal API, Recall.ai's bots allegedly join meetings by interacting with the web-based version of the conferencing client. This is done by scanning and manipulating the webpage’s Document Object Model (DOM), which the complaint alleges constitutes "emulating human interactions with a graphical user interface." The complaint provides a screenshot of the Microsoft Teams application running in a web browser, allegedly to show the graphical user interface that a web bot would interact with (Compl. p. 25). | ¶¶76-89 | col. 11:24-29 |
| recording information streams of the human participants using the virtual participant processes | Recall.ai's bots are documented to record video conferences. The complaint reproduces a "Quickstart" guide from Defendant's website, which allegedly instructs users how to command a bot to record a meeting and retrieve the resulting file (Compl. p. 17). | ¶¶90, 17 | col. 1:62-65 |
- Identified Points of Contention:
- Scope Questions: A central dispute, highlighted in the complaint itself, concerns the claim term "emulating human interactions with a graphical user interface" (Compl. ¶¶64-65). The case may turn on whether this language can be construed to cover programmatic interaction with a web application’s Document Object Model (DOM). Defendant may argue its API-driven service does not "emulate" "human interactions" with a "GUI" in the manner described by the patent, which also discloses mimicking physical mouse clicks and keystrokes.
- Technical Questions: The complaint focuses on how Recall.ai allegedly works with platforms that lack a formal API (Compl. ¶¶84-87). A key factual question will be what specific technical methods the accused bots employ to join and record meetings across different platforms, particularly those like Zoom that do offer official APIs. The infringement analysis could differ depending on whether the accused system uses a platform's backend API or the alleged GUI-emulation techniques for a given conference.
V. Key Claim Terms for Construction
- The Term: "emulating human interactions with a graphical user interface"
- Context and Importance: The definition of this term appears to be the crux of the infringement dispute. The complaint alleges that this is the only limitation Defendant has contested (Compl. ¶64). Whether Recall.ai's methods of joining meetings—particularly by controlling a web browser and interacting with a web page's DOM—fall under this definition will be critical to determining infringement.
- Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
- Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The patent specification discloses that "when the conferencing software runs within a web browser, the information can be gathered by scanning its document object model (DOM)" and that "[t]he DOM can also be manipulated to emulate user interaction with the application" (’409 Patent, col. 11:24-29). This language may support Plaintiff's position that interacting with a web-based GUI via its DOM constitutes the claimed "emulation."
- Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The patent also describes emulating "a set of mouse clicks, key strokes and other actions that mimic a human participant joining a virtual conference" (’409 Patent, col. 6:65-67). Defendant may argue that this language, along with figures depicting traditional desktop application GUIs (e.g., ’409 Patent, Fig. 3), limits the claim's scope to mimicking direct physical inputs, as opposed to programmatic API calls or DOM manipulation.
VI. Other Allegations
- Indirect Infringement: The complaint alleges both induced and contributory infringement. Inducement is based on allegations that Recall.ai provides customers with an API, documentation, and tutorials that instruct them on how to perform the allegedly infringing steps of recording meetings with bots (Compl. ¶¶70, 72). Contributory infringement is based on the allegation that the bot software is a material component of the invention, is not a staple article of commerce, and has no substantial non-infringing use (Compl. ¶69).
- Willful Infringement: The complaint alleges willful infringement based on Defendant’s alleged continued infringement after receiving pre-suit notice from Plaintiff, including a detailed infringement letter dated September 20, 2024 (Compl. ¶¶57-58, 66).
VII. Analyst’s Conclusion: Key Questions for the Case
- A core issue will be one of definitional scope: can the claim term "emulating human interactions with a graphical user interface," which has roots in mimicking mouse clicks and keystrokes, be construed to cover programmatic manipulation of a web application's Document Object Model (DOM) as alleged for certain conferencing platforms?
- A key evidentiary question will be one of technical implementation: what are the precise mechanisms the accused bots use to join and record conferences across the full range of supported platforms? The resolution may depend on the degree to which Recall.ai is proven to rely on the alleged GUI-emulation techniques versus official, non-GUI-based platform APIs.