PTAB

PGR2025-00066

Election Systems & Software LLC v. Hart Intercivic Inc

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Optical Character Recognition of Voter Selections for Cast Vote Records
  • Brief Description: The ’319 patent relates to electronic voting systems using printed vote records (PVRs). The technology involves generating a PVR with both voter-readable text and encoded data, scanning the PVR, comparing the two data sources to confirm accuracy, and then generating a cast vote record (CVR) for tabulation.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Patent Ineligibility under §101 - Claims 1-40 are directed to an abstract idea.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Not applicable.
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Petitioner argued that all challenged claims are directed to the abstract idea of organizing human activity, specifically the long-standing process of voting: printing a vote record, verifying its accuracy, and tabulating the vote. This fundamental process, Petitioner asserted, is a judicial exception to patentability under 35 U.S.C. §101, citing Federal Circuit precedent in Voter Verified, Inc. v. Election Systems & Software LLC.
    • The claims allegedly fail to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, instead merely reciting the use of generic, conventional computer components (e.g., a printer, scanner, and processor) to automate the manual process. Petitioner contended that the claims do not improve the functioning of the computer itself or any underlying technology, but only use computers as a tool to perform the abstract voting process.
    • Under the second step of the Alice test, Petitioner argued the claims lack an "inventive concept." The ordered combination of elements—printing, scanning, performing optical character recognition (OCR), comparing data, and generating a record—were all well-understood, routine, and conventional activities in the field of electronic voting. Dependent claims adding limitations for barcodes or hash functions were argued to be similarly conventional and insufficient to transform the abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.

Ground 2: Obviousness under §103 - Claims 1-20, 23-27, 29, 31, 34, 35, 39, and 40 are obvious over Brockhouse, Nadaf, and Schneier.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Brockhouse (Application # 2014/0231513), Nadaf (Certified Translation of BR102013018558A2), and Schneier (a 1996 book on applied cryptography).

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner asserted that the combination of references taught all elements of the independent claims. Brockhouse disclosed a voting system that prints a PVR with both voter-readable text and barcodes, scans the PVR, and uses OCR on the readable text to generate a CVR for tabulation. Nadaf disclosed a similar system that also prints a PVR with readable text and a barcode, but specifically taught comparing the OCR-generated data with the decoded barcode data to perform a "comparative audit" and verify accuracy. Schneier taught the use of hash functions and digital signatures to authenticate documents and ensure data integrity in computerized systems, including voting systems.
    • Motivation to Combine: A person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine these references to improve the reliability and security of a voting system like Brockhouse's. A POSITA would have known that OCR processes are inherently error-prone and would have been motivated to incorporate Nadaf's verification step—comparing the OCR data against the more reliable barcode data—before generating the CVR for tabulation. To further enhance security against tampering, a POSITA would have been motivated to incorporate the hashing and digital signature techniques taught by Schneier and Nadaf to ensure the authenticity and integrity of the PVR.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination involved applying known verification and security techniques to a known voting system to achieve the predictable results of increased accuracy and integrity. No aspect of the combination was technically difficult, and a POSITA would have reasonably expected the integrated system to function as intended.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted that claims 21, 22, 28, 30, 32, 33, and 36-38 are invalid under §112 for lack of written description and enablement regarding the term "recursively modifying." Petitioner also asserted a further obviousness challenge against claims 30, 32, 33, and 36-38 over the primary combination in view of Heilper (Patent 7,406,201) for its teachings on iterative OCR correction.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Petitioner argued that the term "recursively modifying," which appears in claims 21, 22, 28, 30, 32, 33, and 36-38, should be construed to mean "modifying by a computational procedure that calls itself."
  • This construction was proposed because the term does not appear in the ’319 patent's specification. Petitioner contended that a POSITA would rely on the term's plain and ordinary meaning in computer science, as supported by technical dictionaries. This construction is central to Petitioner's argument that these claims lack written description support and are not enabled under §112, as the specification allegedly provides no disclosure of any such recursive process.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of post-grant review (PGR) and cancellation of claims 1-40 of the ’319 patent as unpatentable.