Representativeness is the bête noir of almost every 101 motion. This is especially true early in the case, when the Court might rightly ask why it should bother invalidating 1 of 2,312,419 currently asserted claims.
This quandary is especially troublesome for defendants because its often quite difficult to brief representativeness of a large number of claims in the necessary detail.
Later in the case, things are a bit different. For one, there's a lot fewer claims at issue (hopefully) so knocking out just a few can make a big difference. More over, having a bit of discovery under your belt can make those representativeness arguments easier to make.
Caddo Systems, Inc. et al v. Jetbrains Americas, Inc., C.A. No 22-1033-JLH-LDH (D. Del. Feb. 25, 2025) (Report and Recommendation) had an interesting bit of argument along these lines that I hadn't seen before. The patents at issue there were all directed for a system to "allow a user to more easily navigate a file structure that may have many layers and options."
The parties disputed representativeness (quelle surprise!). One of the disagreements was whether claim limitations that required a user to select (or have preselected) a menu item by different means. Plaintiff argued that these different means added something to claims that affected the 101 analysis.
Unfortunately for plaintiff, their expert had submitted an expert report on the doctrine of equivalents, where he had opined that all of these different means actually performed the same function, in the same way, to reach the same result. Judge Hatcher, granting the motion for summary judgment, found this fact persuasive and cited it as an example of how the differences between the claims "do not prevent the Asserted Claims from being conceptually equivalent."
Its a possible contradiction that hadn't occurred to me before, and something to keep in mind when working with your own experts.
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