GeoSymm Ventures LLC v. Cipherhealth Inc

I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information

• Parties & Counsel:
  • Plaintiff: GeoSymm Ventures LLC (Texas)
  • Defendant: CipherHealth Inc. (Delaware)
  • Plaintiff’s Counsel: Rabicoff Law LLC
• Case Identification: 1:24-cv-06232, S.D.N.Y., 08/19/2024
• Venue Allegations: Venue is alleged to be proper based on Defendant maintaining an established place of business within the Southern District of New York and committing alleged acts of infringement in the district.
• Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s software products infringe a patent related to an "assistive agent" that processes natural language user requests and interacts with various web services via an Application Programming Interface (API) to provide a response.
• Technical Context: The technology concerns the field of automated digital assistants, which interpret user commands to orchestrate tasks across multiple, often independent, applications and data sources.
• Key Procedural History: The complaint does not reference any prior litigation, Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceedings, or licensing history related to the patent-in-suit.

Case Timeline

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

U.S. Patent No. 9,130,900 - "Assistive agent", issued September 8, 2015

The Invention Explained

• Problem Addressed: The patent asserts that prior personal information managers (PIMs) were limited because they failed to "take full advantage of the information" available to them across different applications, requiring significant manual user intervention to combine functions (e.g., setting a calendar reminder that accounts for current traffic) (’900 Patent, col. 1:21-31).
• The Patented Solution: The invention describes an "assistive agent" system that acts as an intelligent intermediary. It receives a user request, determines the underlying "semantics" (domain, task, and parameters), and then accesses one or more "semantic web services" through an API to gather data and provide a comprehensive response or perform a task (’900 Patent, Abstract; Fig. 2). This framework is designed to integrate disparate data sources and services to fulfill complex user requests in a unified manner (’900 Patent, col. 3:1-9).
• Technical Importance: The described technology represents a conceptual framework for creating more contextually aware and integrated digital assistants capable of understanding natural language and orchestrating actions across third-party services.

Key Claims at a Glance

• The complaint alleges infringement of "exemplary claims" without identifying specific claim numbers, but reserves the right to assert additional claims (Compl. ¶11).
• Independent Claim 1 is a method claim comprising the key elements of:
  • Receiving a user request for assistance from a mobile device
  • Determining the semantics of the request by parsing it to identify meaning, along with location and personal information (including telephone, texting, and user activity) captured by the mobile device
  • Accessing one or more semantic web services via an API to retrieve matching data
  • Identifying or generating personalized recommendations
  • Presenting possible responses by interacting with the web services and confirming user responses by accessing a text messaging or phonebook API
  • Determining a responsive answer
  • Responding to the user request

III. The Accused Instrumentality

Product Identification

The complaint does not name specific accused products. It refers to "the Defendant products identified in the charts incorporated into this Count" and "Exemplary Defendant Products" detailed in Exhibit 2, which was not filed with the complaint (Compl. ¶11, ¶16).

Functionality and Market Context

The complaint alleges that the accused products "practice the technology claimed by the '900 Patent" but provides no specific details regarding their functionality, operation, or market context, instead incorporating by reference the non-provided claim charts in Exhibit 2 (Compl. ¶16).

IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations

The complaint incorporates infringement allegations by reference to an external Exhibit 2, which was not provided with the public filing (Compl. ¶17). Therefore, a claim chart summary cannot be constructed. The complaint's narrative infringement theory states that the "Exemplary Defendant Products incorporated in these charts satisfy all elements of the Exemplary '900 Patent Claims" (Compl. ¶16). No probative visual evidence provided in complaint.

Identified Points of Contention

• Technical Questions: A central question will be whether Plaintiff can produce evidence that the accused products perform the specific, multi-part function of "parsing the user request to identify representations of meaning or interpretation of the user request along with location and user personal information captured by the mobile device including telephone, texting, and user activity," as required by claim 1. The claim recites a specific and broad set of data inputs for the semantic analysis step.
• Scope Questions: The dispute may turn on the scope of "semantic web services." It raises the question of whether this term, as used in the patent, requires a structured, ontology-based service as detailed in the specification (e.g., Fig. 7; col. 15:64-16:7), or if it can be read more broadly to cover any third-party service accessible via a standard API.

V. Key Claim Terms for Construction

"determining semantics of the user request" (from Claim 1)

• Context and Importance: This term defines the core intelligence of the claimed invention. Its construction will be critical for determining whether a system that performs basic intent recognition infringes, or if infringement requires a more sophisticated, model-driven analysis as described in the patent.
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The patent states the system can "interpret user intent" and "disambiguate among candidate interpretations," language that could support a general-purpose meaning not tied to a specific implementation (’900 Patent, col. 5:13-16).
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The specification extensively discusses using "explicit models of domains, tasks, services, and dialogs" and a "semantic database" to understand requests, suggesting a structured, ontology-based approach is integral to determining "semantics" (’900 Patent, col. 9:51-55; Fig. 3). Figure 7 details an "Active Ontology" that links various data models, which may support a narrower construction (’900 Patent, Fig. 7).

"user personal information captured by the mobile device including telephone, texting, and user activity" (from Claim 1)

• Context and Importance: This limitation specifies the types of data that must be "captured" and used in the "determining semantics" step. Infringement of this element will require proof that an accused system captures and analyzes this combination of data sources. Practitioners may focus on this term because it sets a high evidentiary bar for the plaintiff.
• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:
  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The use of "including" may suggest the list is non-exhaustive, and the term "user activity" is not explicitly defined, potentially allowing for a broad reading.
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: A defendant may argue that the claim requires the semantic analysis to be based on data from all three specific categories listed (telephone, texting, user activity). The patent describes these as distinct types of input data, which could support an interpretation that all must be present for infringement (’900 Patent, col. 6:32-37).

VI. Other Allegations

Indirect Infringement

The complaint alleges induced infringement, stating that Defendant distributes "product literature and website materials inducing end users and others to use its products in the customary and intended manner that infringes the '900 Patent" (Compl. ¶14-15).

Willful Infringement

The complaint alleges that service of the complaint itself provides "Actual Knowledge of Infringement" and that Defendant's subsequent infringing activities are performed despite this knowledge, which may form the basis for a claim of post-suit willful infringement (Compl. ¶13, ¶14).

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

• A key evidentiary question will be one of functional proof: What evidence can Plaintiff offer to demonstrate that the accused products perform the specific, multi-source data analysis recited in claim 1, particularly that the system's semantic determination utilizes information "captured by the mobile device including telephone, texting, and user activity"?
• A core issue will be one of definitional scope: Can the term "determining semantics," in the context of the patent's detailed disclosure of ontologies and explicit models, be construed to cover more conventional natural language processing systems, or is there a fundamental mismatch in the required technical approach?