Wyoming Technology Licensing LLC v. Clinc Inc

I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information

• Parties & Counsel:
  • Plaintiff: Wyoming Technology Licensing, LLC (Wyoming)
  • Defendant: Clinc, Inc. (Delaware)
  • Plaintiff’s Counsel: Garteiser Honea, PLLC
• Case Identification: 5:23-cv-11032, E.D. Mich., 05/02/2023
• Venue Allegations: Plaintiff alleges venue is proper in the Eastern District of Michigan because Defendant has its principal place of business in Ann Arbor, maintains a regular and established business presence, and retains employees within the district.
• Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s "Clinc AI" voice-operated assistant platform infringes a patent related to systems and methods for information discovery and retrieval.
• Technical Context: The technology at issue addresses methods for improving the accuracy and efficiency of voice-command systems that search for and retrieve digital media or other information from remote sources.
• Key Procedural History: The complaint notes that the patent-in-suit was examined by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which considered several prior art references before allowing the claims to issue. No prior litigation or post-grant proceedings are mentioned.

Case Timeline

Date	Event
2007-11-12	U.S. Patent No. 9,824,150 Priority Date
2017-11-21	U.S. Patent No. 9,824,150 Issue Date
2023-05-02	Complaint Filing Date

II. Technology and Patent(s)-in-Suit Analysis

U.S. Patent No. 9,824,150 - Systems and Methods for Providing Information Discovery and Retrieval (Issued Nov. 21, 2017)

The Invention Explained

• Problem Addressed: The patent describes the state of the art in 2008 as being problematic for consumers seeking to find online media. Users had to navigate numerous different interfaces, and natural language speech recognition was "notoriously unreliable and limited in word-scope," particularly on consumer devices with limited processing power (Compl. ¶15-16; ’150 Patent, col. 2:29-43). Existing systems struggled to intuitively handle ambiguous requests or requests for which the user did not have precise identifying information (e.g., an exact song title) ('150 Patent, col. 1:54-65).
• The Patented Solution: The invention proposes a client-server system to improve information retrieval based on user inputs like voice commands ('150 Patent, Abstract). The system receives a request from a client device, decodes it on the server, discovers the relevant information, and sends back instructions for the client to access it. A key aspect of the solution is a method for decoding complex or ambiguous requests by dynamically using a plurality of processor modules, each potentially configured with a different context-specific grammar module, to analyze the request in parallel ('150 Patent, col. 5:55-6:5).
• Technical Importance: This architecture aimed to overcome the processing limitations of consumer devices by offloading the complex task of speech recognition and disambiguation to a more powerful server-side system, thereby making voice-based media retrieval more intuitive and effective ('150 Patent, col. 2:38-43).

Key Claims at a Glance

• The complaint asserts infringement of at least independent method claim 18 (Compl. ¶30).
• The essential elements of Claim 18 include:
  • Receiving an input from a client, including a voice recording.
  • Assigning a virtual machine to process the input, where the allocation of resources is based at least partly on the processing power available on the client.
  • Processing the input into a search criteria, with the amount of processing being dependent on pre-processing that occurred on the client.
  • Searching a media management system for results.
  • Transmitting the search results to the client.
  • Making the assigned virtual machine available for assignment to another client.
• The complaint alleges infringement of "one or more claims," suggesting the right to assert additional claims is reserved (Compl. ¶30).

III. The Accused Instrumentality

Product Identification

The accused instrumentality is Defendant's "voice-operated assistant platform (the 'Clinc AI')" (Compl. ¶25).

Functionality and Market Context

The complaint describes Clinc AI as a platform for "providing search results to a client/customer/user" (Compl. ¶25). It specifically alleges that the accused platform is used to "identify and provide information about drugs" (Compl. ¶30). The complaint does not provide further technical details about the operation of the Clinc AI platform, instead incorporating by reference an unattached claim chart exhibit (Compl. ¶30, ¶35).

IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations

The complaint references a claim chart in "Exhibit B" to detail its infringement theory but does not include the exhibit in the filing (Compl. ¶30, ¶35). The narrative infringement theory alleges that Defendant’s acts of making, using, and selling the Clinc AI platform meet all the limitations of at least Claim 18 of the ’150 Patent (Compl. ¶30). The core of the allegation is that the Clinc AI platform performs a method of receiving a voice input from a user and providing search results, which is asserted to align with the steps of the claimed method (Compl. ¶25, ¶30).

No probative visual evidence provided in complaint.

Identified Points of Contention

• Scope Questions: A central dispute may arise over the claim term "assigning a virtual machine". The infringement case may depend on whether the architecture of the Clinc AI platform, which likely utilizes modern cloud computing infrastructure, can be shown to "assign" a discrete "virtual machine" for processing a single input and subsequently make that same machine "available for assignment to at least one other client" as required by the claim (’150 Patent, cl. 18).
• Technical Questions: The complaint does not provide facts to support the allegation that the accused platform meets the limitation requiring the server-side processing to be dependent on "at least one indication of processing power available on the client" (’150 Patent, cl. 18). Establishing the existence of this specific client-server dependency will be an evidentiary question. A further question is whether providing "information about drugs" (Compl. ¶30) falls within the scope of searching a "media management system," as the patent's specification repeatedly frames this system in the context of entertainment media like music and movies (’150 Patent, col. 6:27-46).

V. Key Claim Terms for Construction

"assigning a virtual machine for processing the input" (Claim 18)

• Context and Importance: This term is critical as it defines a specific server architecture. The viability of the infringement claim hinges on whether Defendant’s system architecture maps onto this language. Practitioners may focus on this term because its meaning is not explicitly defined in the patent and could be distinguished from more common cloud-based resource allocation models like dynamic containerization or serverless functions.
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The patent does not provide a specific definition for "virtual machine." A party could argue it should be given a broad, plain-and-ordinary meaning that encompasses any logically-isolated processing environment created to handle a task.
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The claim’s further requirement that the assigned virtual machine is later made "available for assignment to at least one other client" suggests a persistent, reusable, and discrete software entity (’150 Patent, cl. 18). This could support an interpretation that requires more than just a transient software process spun up to handle a request.

"an amount of processing at least partially dependent on at least some pre-processing of an utterance occurring on the client" (Claim 18)

• Context and Importance: This term requires a specific functional link between client-side activity and the amount of server-side work. Proving this causal link is essential to infringement. Practitioners may focus on this term because it requires evidence of a specific operational dependency that may not be present in all client-server voice processing systems.
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: A party might argue that any client-side action that simplifies the server's task, such as basic audio cleanup or formatting before transmission, constitutes "pre-processing" that affects the "amount of processing" needed by the server.
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The claim links the "amount of processing" on the server to client-side pre-processing that itself is "based, at least in part, on the processing power available on the client" (’150 Patent, cl. 18). This suggests a sophisticated feedback loop where the client's capabilities dictate the nature of the pre-processing, which in turn dictates the server's workload, supporting a narrower and more complex technical interpretation.

VI. Other Allegations

• Indirect Infringement: The complaint alleges both induced and contributory infringement (Compl. ¶30-31, ¶33-34). The factual basis for inducement is the allegation that Defendant distributes "product literature and website materials" that instruct customers on how to use the Clinc AI platform in an infringing manner (Compl. ¶33).
• Willful Infringement: Willfulness allegations are predicated on Defendant's knowledge of infringement, which the complaint asserts exists "at least since being served by this Complaint and corresponding claim chart" (Compl. ¶34). This primarily establishes a basis for potential post-filing willfulness.

VII. Analyst’s Conclusion: Key Questions for the Case

• A core issue will be one of architectural mapping: does the Clinc AI platform's technical architecture practice the specific method of "assigning a virtual machine" for a single task and then making that same resource "available for assignment" to another, as recited in Claim 18, or does it use a fundamentally different model for resource allocation?
• A key evidentiary question will be one of functional dependency: what evidence can be produced to demonstrate that the server-side processing in the accused system is directly dependent on "pre-processing ... occurring on the client" which is itself based on the "processing power available on the client"?
• The case may also involve a question of definitional scope: can the term "media management system," described in the patent primarily in the context of entertainment content, be construed broadly enough to encompass a system that provides "information about drugs," as alleged in the complaint?