Trials@uspto.gov
`571-272-7822
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`Paper No. 31
`Entered: November 25, 2020
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`UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
`____________
`
`BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
`____________
`
`CHEGG INC., MATCH GROUP, LLC.,
`AND RPX CORPORATION,
`Petitioners,
`
`v.
`
`NETSOC, LLC,
`Patent Owner.
`____________
`
`IPR2019-01165
`Patent 9,978,107 B2
`____________
`
`Record of Oral Hearing
`Held: September 9, 2020
`____________
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`
`
`
`Before KALYAN K. DESHPANDE, SHEILA F. MCSHANE, and
`STEVEN M. AMUNDSON, Administrative Patent Judges.
`
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`571-272-7822
`
`
`
`
`Paper No. 31
`Entered: November 25, 2020
`
`UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
`____________
`
`BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
`____________
`
`CHEGG INC., MATCH GROUP, LLC.,
`AND RPX CORPORATION,
`Petitioners,
`
`v.
`
`NETSOC, LLC,
`Patent Owner.
`____________
`
`IPR2019-01165
`Patent 9,978,107 B2
`____________
`
`Record of Oral Hearing
`Held: September 9, 2020
`____________
`
`
`
`
`Before KALYAN K. DESHPANDE, SHEILA F. MCSHANE, and
`STEVEN M. AMUNDSON, Administrative Patent Judges.
`
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`IPR2019-01165
`Patent 9,978,107 B2
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`
`
`APPEARANCES:
`
`ON BEHALF OF THE PETITIONER:
`
`
`NATHAN J. REES, ESQ.
`Norton, Rose, Fulbright U.S., LLP
`2200 Ross Avenue
`Suite 3600
`Dallas, TX 75201
`
`
`
`ON BEHALF OF THE PATENT OWNER:
`
`
`WILLIAM P. RAMEY, ESQ.
`Ramey & Schwaller, LLP
`5020 Montrose Blvd.
`Suite 750
`Houston, TX 77006
`
`
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`
`
`The above-entitled matter came on for hearing on Wednesday,
`September 9, 2020, commencing at 9:00 a.m., EDT, by video.
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`IPR2019-01165
`Patent 9,978,107 B2
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`P R O C E E D I N G S
`- - - - -
`JUDGE MCSHANE: Good morning everyone. We are here to
`
`conduct hearings in Chegg, Incorporated, Match Group, LLC, and RPX
`Corporation v. Netsoc, LLC and these are case numbers IPR 2019-01165
`and 01171. I am Judge McShane and Judge Amundson and Deshpande
`should also be visible to the parties. Let's have appearances please. Who do
`we have representing the Petitioner?
`
`MR. REES: Good afternoon. This is Nate Rees. I'm lead counsel for
`Petitioner and I have with me Robert Greeson. I will be discussing the 1165
`case and Robert will be presenting arguments on the 1171 case.
`
`JUDGE MCSHANE: Okay, thank you. And for Patent Owner?
`
`MR. RAMEY: Good morning Judge McShane, Judge Deshpande and
`Judge Amundson. My name is Bill Ramey and I represent the Patent Owner
`for U.S. 9,978,107 and with me today I have Melissa Schwaller. She will
`not be on camera but she is in the room.
`
`JUDGE MCSHANE: Okay. Thank you very much. So we're going
`to just give you some general guidance. Thank you for your flexibility in
`conducting this oral video hearing today. We know that this is a departure
`from our typical practice and we thank you for your cooperation here in
`getting this set up. Given that, we wanted to just say that our primary
`concern is your right to be heard. If at any time during this proceeding you
`encounter technical or other difficulties, let us know or contact the team
`members who set you up for this video call.
`
`Second, when not speaking please mute yourself. There can be
`background noises that pop up just, as they just did, so just one problem is if
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`you mute yourself you have to remember to unmute yourself, so if you could
`keep that in mind. Third, please try to identify yourself each time you speak.
`This helps the court reporter prepare an accurate transcript. Fourth, we have
`the entire record including the demonstratives so when you're referring to
`the demonstratives, papers or other exhibits please try to do so clearly and
`explicitly by the page number or the slide number. There are some
`documents we recognize that have not been numbered, so for those
`documents, please read off a title or prominent text in the slide to help us
`find the correct page. Please also pause a few seconds after identifying the
`page you want us to go to so that we have time to find it. Again, this is for
`the accuracy of the record.
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`Please be aware that members of the public may be listening to this
`oral hearing and they would not be showing on video. Please do not
`interrupt the other party when that party is presenting arguments. If you
`have an objection, please raise it during your argument time.
`
`Now for specifics here, we sent out a Hearing Order and we asked in
`that Order whether the parties wanted to conduct separate hearings for the
`1165 case and 1171 case, or if you wished them to be consolidated. I don't
`think that we -- we're not aware that we received any communications on
`this specifically but we did get two separate sets of slide decks so we assume
`that you want separate hearings; is that correct, Mr. Ramey and Mr. Rees?
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`MR. RAMEY: Yes, Your Honor. That's correct.
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`MR. REES: Yes, Your Honor.
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`JUDGE MCSHANE: Okay, very good. So what we're going to do
`here is start with the 1165 case that's first in order and we permitted 45
`minutes of argument per party and we included a general order of the
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`IPR2019-01165
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`argument in the Trial Order and the Oral Hearing Order. So Petitioner is
`going to go first and may reserve rebuttal time. Patent Owner may argue its
`opposition and may reserve surrebuttal time, and then we will proceed with
`rebuttal and surrebuttal time. I will be trying to keep time and we'll try to
`inform you when you have five minutes left in the argument time you
`specified, but no guarantees on that. Sometimes we get distracted, so
`apologies in advance. We will probably have a very short break before we
`proceed with arguments in the 1171 case.
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`Also let me comment. We received some objections to some
`demonstratives admitted in the case. Let's say, as you all know, that any
`arguments and evidence that are not in the record will not be considered by
`the panel. However we understand that demonstratives are not evidence and
`are used as visual aids only. We are going to decline to strike some of the
`demonstratives at this time. However to be clear, to the extent that some of
`the characterizations and arguments are not in the record or were
`inappropriately newly brought, they will be disregarded. The Board can
`discern the appropriateness of the arguments and evidence, and counsel can
`use their allotted times as they see fit.
`
`Okay. So that's the end of the introductory remarks. Petitioner, you
`are free to proceed. Do you wish to reserve rebuttal time?
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`MR. REES: Yes. I would like to reserve 20 minutes.
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`JUDGE MCSHANE: Thank you.
`
`MR. REES: All right. Also Judge, should we share the screen of the
`slides or should we just count on you to go over them?
`
`JUDGE MCSHANE: Yes, you can just call them out. You don't need
`to share the screen. I think that would probably complicate things too much.
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`MR. REES: All right.
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`JUDGE MCSHANE: So just call out the slide numbers. We have
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`them.
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`MR. REES: Thank you. All right. So with that I will get started.
`May it please the Court, my name is Nathan Rees. I represent Petitioner.
`We're starting with the 1165 case. In the 1165 case there are two grounds of
`rejection. The majority of the claims are rejected over the Beaudoin
`reference in view of Shubov and claims 4 and 9, it's a single dependent
`claim element that we rely on the Herz reference to fill in a gap.
`
`Because we're doing two different hearings, I figure background will
`be useful on the 107 patent to start. The 107 patent is a method -- is a
`system and method for establishing a central network to facilitate people in
`life issues. Moving to slide 4, the 107 patent is pretty straightforward. What
`it does is it maintains a biographical data base of various participants. The
`participants are allowed to upload data. The participants could be plumbers,
`electricians, you know, various people that might provide a service. It
`maintains a database, allows a user to go up to a user interface and select a
`category, so for example a plumber. When the system receives a service
`request it then goes out to the participants and says here's a service request,
`it gets a bid, it compiles all the data and then it transmits that information to
`the user in response to their request.
`
`If we look at claim 1, I think it's -- going to slide 5, sorry I'll get used
`to that -- moving to slide 5. If we look at claim 1 there's really only two
`limitations at issue today, but I think in this case it's useful to kind of review
`the claim as a whole. The claim recites a method for establishing a social
`network. The method comprises, as we've described, maintaining a list of a
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`plurality of participants. It presents a user interface where the user can make
`a selection of a category. In response to receiving a selection of a category,
`the system will display for the user information associated with multiple
`participants which match the selection, the category selection, but while
`shielding contact information of the participants. The claim requires
`displaying of information. It is based, at least in part, on rating so the
`participants are displayed based on rating. The system enables the user to
`send an inquiry message also while shielding the contact information which
`includes any messaging identifier. It can track the response time of the
`participants and it can update the rating, the rating that was discussed just
`based on the track response time.
`
`Turning to slide 6. The issues here are pretty narrow. Mr. Ramey,
`can I have you mute? I think you changed the screen to -- okay, that's good.
`The claims -- the issues here are pretty narrow. Patent Owner does not
`dispute that the prior art teaches elements [a], [b], [d], [f] and [g], and the
`Patent Owner also does not separately address the dependent claims.
`So we're left here with element [c], whether Beaudoin and Shubov disclose
`element [c] -- sorry moving to slide 7 -- or element [e] and we'll address
`those in this order. So element [c] is in response to receiving a selection of
`the category by a user, displaying information associated with participants,
`and then it also requires shielding contact information associated with the
`multiple participants.
`
`In the petition we laid out that the Beaudoin reference teaches a
`system pretty much exactly like we just described with the 107 patent.
`Beaudoin receives a consumer request, a consumer service request, which
`begins by a consumer selecting a category. It then goes into a matching
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`Patent 9,978,107 B2
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`process where the information from the profiles -- the Beaudoin references
`goes out to the participants and says here's a consumer request. It receives
`bids. It compiles the bids and then it displays the information to the user.
`There's no dispute that this is what Beaudoin teaches -- oh, sorry,
`moving to slide 9 -- there's no dispute as to what Beaudoin teaches and that
`it winds up in the same, to what the 107 teaches. What the Patent Owner is
`disputing is that the claim limitation requires that all this is done in response
`to the selection of a category and Patent Owner is arguing that that requires
`direct response, that the display of the participants has to be immediately
`displayed after the selection, and then any of the intervening steps basically
`make it so that the limitation is not met by the art.
`We have a few arguments about this to go over. First, the claims don't
`require direct responsiveness and the plain and ordinary meaning of "in
`response to" require it. The 107 patent discloses embodiments with
`intervening steps, in fact each embodiment disclosed in the 107 patent
`utilizes intervening steps and third, we'd like to address Patent Owner raised
`a new definition in the surreply that we haven't been able to address or brief
`and we'd like to touch on that --
`JUDGE MCSHANE: Counsel you said that the patent discloses -- all
`the embodiments disclose intervening steps. Was that included in your
`papers? Did you say that in your papers?
`MR. REES: You know, I don't know that I described it that way. We
`described that at least, it would probably be more accurate -- to be accurate
`with the papers it would be that we described and we pointed out
`embodiments that described intervening steps. So I believe if I'm being
`accurate with the papers, I don't know that we said each of them. I know
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`that we said that where it says the term "in response" that it requires
`intervening steps.
`JUDGE MCSHANE: Well again just to, you know, stay within the
`scope of your papers and we'd appreciate that. Thank you.
`MR. REES: I agree. I'm not meaning to stretch beyond it, but yes
`and I think it's enough to say what was said is that the 107 patent describes
`embodiments that are intervening steps that I don't believe were meant to be
`read out by this claim language. So I'm perfectly fine, I apologize if I
`stretched beyond.
`Now going into this, now the Patent Owner did argue this in the
`preliminary response and the PTAB correctly pointed out in the Institution
`Decision that Patent Owner is arguing that intervening process steps
`provides -- I'm sorry, I'll read exactly. Patent Owner is arguing that the
`intervening process steps for service providers who match category prior to
`display preclude Beaudoin's teaching of the claim limitation. We disagree
`with this argument based on limitations that do not appear in the claim and
`the claims do not require direct responsiveness.
`Moving to slide 11. As we noted in the briefs, the 107 patent
`embodiments clearly consider intermediate steps to be present. This quote
`on the bottom is what we used in our response brief. This is Exhibit 1001 at
`6, 33 to 42. This is describing module 210 and module 210 is the only
`hardware that's taught in oy to function in the system and it's described as
`the module that implements each of the flow charts. What this says here is,
`"In response to receiving the input through UI 212 the module 210
`selects participants using the information of database 214. Then the module
`sends messages to the participants. The messages may include the inquiry
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`Patent 9,978,107 B2
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`content or content based on the inquiry."
`Skipping along.
`"In an embodiment the module 210 may receive the bios from the
`recipient to the message and the module may then send a compilation or
`aggregation of the bios to the user."
`This is consistent with the embodiments shown in figures 3 and 4.
`Look at figure 4, we receive a category selection 420. We identify its
`participants based on the category selection, criteria and biographical
`information of all respondents. Those respondents are the people responding
`to the inquiry of the system and then presents the biographical information
`of the matching data to the participants. So if we were to read in response to
`as replying in direct responsiveness we would actually be reading out these
`embodiments of the 107 patent. If we move on --
`JUDGE MCSHANE: So counsel, just to get a little bit more explicit
`on this. When you look at the cite to the 6 column, 33-42, you're saying in
`this cite that the display is the bottom yellowed in portion there that is
`sending the compilation of the bios. You're saying that's a display there?
`MR. REES: Yes, I do believe, so yes, and that's – because when
`you're sending them to the user it's the compilation of bios and if you see
`that document that is sent, that's the information that the user is provided.
`So, and it's consistent with how the flow charts describe it as well, that when
`you identify the matching participants we gather the biographical
`information and we present the biographical information matching the
`participants to the user. So, yes.
`JUDGE MCSHANE: Thank you.
`MR. REES: So moving on, slide 12 here. We wanted to touch on
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`briefly, in the surreply Patent Owner provided a dictionary definition of
`response. It was introduced for the first time in the reply and we didn't have
`a chance to address it, but I don't think it changes anything. I've highlighted
`there it's a reaction to something that has happened. In the system, the user
`selects a category. Everything that happens is a reaction to that selection,
`right? The system then goes on, says okay, a user of this category needs to
`the service, gets the information and displays it and in fact, even I don't
`know what direct responsiveness could mean. Regardless the system would
`have to do some sort of processing before it displayed, right, and whether
`that processing is to go and ping its internal database and output, or whether
`it's send an email off, receive bios and then output, all of that is done in a
`reaction to something that has happened. I would also note that this
`definition that they've brought on is from 2019 and, you know, the period
`that we're talking about I believe is 2003. So it's of little relevance anyway,
`but I don't think if really changes the analysis.
`So moving on to slide 13. The other portion of this element, so we
`have in response displaying the participants which is met by the Beaudoin
`reference. It's displaying the participants has to be done while shielding the
`contact information of the participants. Now in the petition, we noted that
`the Beaudoin reference teaches that the user can select which contact
`information is displayed. So there is functionality to say which contact
`information can be displayed but the Beaudoin reference does not teach
`shielding the contact information and we relied on the Shubov reference to
`teach that.
`In our view, Shubov clearly teaches, we have displayed -- this is the
`Shubov provisional at page 246 and 346 -- Shubov displays information
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`about the participants in response to an inquiry and it shields really any
`identifying information. Shubov teaches that it wants to achieve anonymity
`and the Board construed contact information as information such as email
`address, mailing address, telephone number that permits one to directly
`communicate with another entity and, again, we show here.
`We also provided reasons why one of ordinary skill in the art would
`combine the Beaudoin reference in view of Shubov, noting that -- and
`Shubov actually provides a pretty good example of the reason why you
`might want anonymity. This was to protect attorney/client privilege, but
`according to Dr. Goldberg, there were also other known reasons. They
`wanted to disallow how to ban communications, I mean this is a referral
`network, but wants to get paid for giving referrals and those existed at the
`time as well. So we have provided multiple reasons to combine these
`references and expert testimony saying why one of ordinary skill in the art
`would make those combinations and that expert testimony stands unrebutted.
`JUDGE AMUNDSON: Judge Amundson here.
`MR. REES: Uh-huh.
`JUDGE AMUNDSON: I had a question on this limitation and
`particularly on the contact information. Now in our Institution decision we
`construed that term and I didn't see in the papers any disagreement by the
`Petitioners with our construction; is that accurate?
`MR. REES: That is correct. We believe, because you construed the
`term as email address, mailing address, phone number. The Patent Owner
`has disagreed saying it also includes hiding the identity, so if you were to
`display a name of a person or company or participant, that would also -- that
`should be included, but I think the PTAB correctly pointed out that column 8
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`in the 107 patent describes, it says in some embodiments you can shield
`contact information and in other embodiments you can shield the -- I believe
`it says -- the identity, which is what the PTAB pointed out in the Institution
`Decision. I don't have the exact lines. It is column 8 in the 107 patent. So
`yes, we don't have any issue with the construction that the PTAB made. We
`agree with it.
`JUDGE AMUNDSON: Okay, thank you.
`MR. REES: Thank you. So anyway, moving on to slide 14. The
`Patent Owner did make some statements about how, I mean I'm not exactly
`clear on what the argument is, but basically saying that the Shubov
`provisional that's incorporated by reference into the patent itself is -- it's
`available to the public but it has to be found on PAIR. This appears to be an
`argument that the provisional is somehow not public and Patent Owner cites
`a case. The case that they cite is dealing with a circumstance where you're
`using provisional to establish a 102(e) date. Our case is different. This is --
`we're saying that it's 102(b) art based on the date of the publication of the
`patent. So I believe that the case doesn't apply. Provisional applications
`become public the minute that the underlying application publishes and that
`date, we're not trying to rely on the provisional filing date, we're just relying
`on the date of the publication and that's a 102(b) publication. So I'm not
`exactly clear what their argument is but it is certainly prior art and I would
`also note that that argument was brought up in the preliminary response, so
`we didn't have a chance to discuss that at all either.
`JUDGE AMUNDSON: Judge Amundson here again. On slide 14 --
`MR. REES: Yes, sir.
`JUDGE AMUNDSON: -- in the second bullet point you've got a
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`citation to the C.F.R. Rule 1.14(a)(1)(iii) and when I -- it's a minor point but
`when I looked at that I thought maybe the next section subpart (iv) might be
`more pertinent to a provisional.
`MR. REES: I don't have it up in front of me.
`JUDGE AMUNDSON: Okay.
`MR. REES: I believe you're right. I think regardless the answer is a
`provisional application is just considered public and it's open for inspection
`once the underlying application is published and the underlying application
`incorporates a provisional by reference and so it is also considered part of
`the underlying application and the date that happened was more than one
`year prior, so it is a 102(b) situation. So I appreciate that. So moving to --
`JUDGE MCSHANE: Sorry to interrupt, but on this issue in the case
`that Patent Owner cited, do you know and I don't recall whether there was an
`incorporation by reference there issue?
`MR. REES: I do not believe that there was an incorporation by
`reference. Like I said, what the case they cited was really looking at was
`they were citing a patent and it was a 102(e) issue and because they needed
`the date of the provisional filing under 102(e), right -- it isn't necessarily
`public but it was filed prior -- because they needed the date prior they had to
`prove that the provisional enabled the claims, right? So that was the case. I
`do not believe that there was incorporation by reference. I did see, and there
`was an argument in there that the government put forward that that would be
`a different. This is why I don't believe it's in there because I saw it a clip
`where the government said that that would be a different circumstance. But
`that was not addressed and it's not part of the opinion.
`JUDGE MCSHANE: Okay, thank you. Just to let you know you
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`Patent 9,978,107 B2
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`have about five minutes left in your opening time and that still would be
`with the 20 minutes of rebuttal reserved, okay?
`MR. REES: Okay. I think I can do it. I appreciate it. So moving to
`slide 15. I think we've already discussed this. A person of ordinary skill in
`the art, we've described why they would be motivated to make this
`combination. If we could let's move to element [e], slide 16. So element [e]
`is enabling the user to send an inquiry message while shielding the contact
`information, right? So element [c] said the initial display was done while
`shielding contact information and element [e] is enabling the user to send a
`message while shielding the contact information.
`In our rejection, so we've met this two different ways. In our rejection
`of element [c] we've already described why one of ordinary skill in the art
`would utilize the teachings of Shubov to provide privacy, anonymity and
`there are various reasons why a system will do this. In element [e] we also
`noted that the Beaudoin reference does teach enabling the user to send a
`message while shielding the contact information.
`What we have for you on slide 16 is from column 95. This is an email
`box that's inside their web-based program that allows a user to send an email
`and you can see that there's no email address, no phone number, no other
`contact information. This is what the PTAB said in the Institution Decision
`meets the claim limitation. Patent Owner is stating that, well, in Beaudoin
`they show the contact information earlier. We believe that doesn't matter for
`two reasons. First of all, the limitation [c] we've already addressed that it
`would be obvious to shield the contact information. Second of all, the claim
`limitation doesn't require shielding contact information at all times and at all
`points and in fact eventually all of these systems are going to allow the
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`Patent 9,978,107 B2
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`people to be in contact. Like we say, it just makes sense to shield at least up
`front, but like I said the claim limitation here just requires enabling the user
`to send an inquiry while shielding contact information. Beaudoin teaches
`that, and in the event that you think that for some reason they think the fact
`that they expose the contact information earlier, we've already discussed that
`as well. It would have been obvious to shield that information on the initial
`display. That was element [c].
`JUDGE MCSHANE: Yes. Well counsel, on this one I think that
`Patent Owner's argument -- another way to phrase Patent Owner's argument
`-- is that, you know, that this screen is part of a series of interfaces that a
`user can go to and I'm looking at Beaudoin, just using Beaudoin alone,
`right? So I'm looking at column 93, right? So it says here the consumer has
`the option to view company profiles, send a message to the professional,
`computer websites, and so on and so forth, and so it's saying that you can go
`here, you can go there, right? Fine. So, and if you look at right on 93,
`column 93, there it shows the email address of the company.
`So I guess the point is, or the question is, when you're looking at this
`reference, you can find out what the email address is, right? So it's like
`you're kind of closing the barn doors after the horse is gone so, you know, I
`understand you've got the hyper-technical argument about why the claim
`doesn't require, you know, it discloses this one anonymous communication
`but the reference also discloses non-anonymous information obviously or
`direct email information. So how do you address that?
`MR. REES: Yes. I think, and if you look at slide 17 -- I actually put
`those up there, the columns 93 and 95 -- it does but there's no dispute that
`the Beaudoin reference does show the contact information. That's what we
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`IPR2019-01165
`Patent 9,978,107 B2
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`talked about in element [c] and so yes, maybe if -- you've deemed it as a
`hyper-technical argument -- I don't see it that way because the question is:
`Beaudoin does teach the functionality of allowing to send an email whilst
`enabling a user to send a message while shielding contact information, but
`what we have also stated is that this display here is similar to the display that
`we discussed in element [c].
`One of ordinary skill in the art would -- we've already noted that the
`Beaudoin references teaches the ability to have the user decide what contact
`information is shown and in view of the teachings of Shubov that one of
`skill in the art would understand the concept, you know, in some
`circumstances it might be better to withhold contact information or to shield
`it and so I believe that even if you wanted to say that this disclosure in
`column 93, you know, the horse is already out of the barn if you really
`wanted to think of it that way. If you look at the rejection as asserted, the
`rejection has already taken care of that, that really all we're doing is
`combining the concept of providing the ability to do anonymous or shielded
`communications or shielded returned results up front, right? So in response
`to a user's inquiry we shield the results and it's obvious to shield these
`results, like I said, for various reasons that Goldberg pointed out and is
`unrebutted obvious to shield the results because there might be privacy
`issues. Shubov talks about attorney/client issues, might want to prevent out-
`of-band communications. So I think if you look at the rejection as a whole
`we've still covered it. Even if you were to agree with the Patent Owner's
`argument we've still covered it with the combination of Shubov.
`JUDGE AMUNDSON: Judge Amundson here with a question, as a
`follow-up question. If you didn't modify Beaudoin with Shubov to eliminate
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`the contact information on the screens that lead up to the send message
`screen, okay, if you didn't do that, completely eliminate that contact
`information, wouldn't that undermine your reason, your motivation to
`combine the two references that you've got shown on slide 16, for example,
`to discourage communication outside the system?
`MR. REES: I'm not sure that I understand the question. I don't --
`JUDGE AMUNDSON: Well -- go ahead.
`MR. REES: Well, let me make sure. So I think your question is that
`it's similar to --
`JUDGE AMUNDSON: I'll rephrase here.
`MR. REES: -- Patent Owner's argument that -- go ahead.
`JUDGE AMUNDSON: I'll rephrase here. If you only modified
`Beaudoin to initially not show the contact information, and then at some
`point show the contact information before showing the send message screen,
`right? You got that? You show the contact information some point before
`showing a send message screen. Okay, if that's the modification, doesn't that
`conflict with your argument about the motivation to combine, discouraging
`communication outside the system?
`MR. REES: No. I believe that our combination addresses this. What
`we have said is that one of ordinary skill in the art can understand the
`concept of there might be times -- okay, so we have a system that can put
`participants together and can match based on a service request and we can
`display things to a user.
`Now we have other systems that exist in the prior art that say you
`know what? In these types of systems there might be a reason to keep it
`anonymous up front. The Shubov system does that. They will display
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`information, keep it anonymous. They will allow communications and keep
`it anonymous and then once you decide hey, I'm going to go with that
`lawyer then they expose the contact information, which is similar to how
`even the 107 patent would work is as you go through here, but I think the
`short answer is that Shubov discusses keeping the anonymity all the way
`through the initial showing to the contact and to allow anonymous contact.
`So I don't believe that the
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