United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________

AI VISUALIZE, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS, INC., MACH7 TECHNOLOGIES, INC., Defendants-Appellees ______________________

2022-2109 ______________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware in No. 1:21-cv-01458-RGA, Judge Richard G. Andrews. ______________________

Decided: April 4, 2024 ______________________

RAJKUMAR VINNAKOTA, Cole Schotz P.C., Dallas, TX, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by TIMOTHY J.H. CRADDOCK, VISHAL H. PATEL.

ANISH R. DESAI, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, New York, NY, argued for all defendants-appellees. Defendant- appellee Nuance Communications, Inc. also represented by DAVID JASON LENDER; AMANDA BRANCH, PRIYATA PATEL, Washington, DC; DAVID GREENBAUM, Greenbaum Law LLC, Englewood, NJ. Case: 22-2109 Document: 61 Page: 2 Filed: 04/04/2024

2 AI VISUALIZE, INC. v. NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS, INC.

ALAN RICHARD SILVERSTEIN, Connolly Gallagher LLP, Wilmington, DE, for defendant-appellee Mach7 Technolo- gies, Inc. ______________________

Before MOORE, Chief Judge, REYNA and HUGHES, Circuit Judges. REYNA, Circuit Judge. AI Visualize, Inc. sued Nuance Communications, Inc. and Mach7 Technologies, Inc. in the District of Delaware for patent infringement. Nuance and Mach7 moved to dis- miss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for fail- ure to state a claim. They argued that the asserted patent claims were directed to patent-ineligible subject matter and therefore invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The district court granted the motion, finding the asserted claims were directed to an abstract idea and failed to provide an in- ventive step that transformed that abstract idea into a pa- tent-eligible invention. The district court entered judgment and dismissed AI Visualize’s case. For the rea- sons below, we affirm. BACKGROUND A. The Asserted Patents The four patents at issue are U.S. Patent Nos. 8,701,167 (’167 patent), 9,106,609 (’609 patent), 9,438,667 (’667 patent), and 10,930,397 (’397 patent). They are part of the same patent family and share substantially the same specification. 1 The field of the asserted patents generally relates to visualization of medical scans. Each patent is titled “Method and system for fast access to advanced vis- ualization of medical scans using a dedicated web portal.”

1 We refer to the ’609 patent specification for all four asserted patents. Case: 22-2109 Document: 61 Page: 3 Filed: 04/04/2024

AI VISUALIZE, INC. v. NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS, INC. 3

According to the patents, medical imaging systems like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans typically create a collection of two-dimensional cross-section images of a pa- tient’s body or organ. ’609 patent, 1:27–32. These images are often stored together at a centralized server as a three- dimensional collection of data representing the scanned area, referred to as a “volume visualization dataset” or “VVD”. Id. at 1:30–35. At the time of the invention, “[t]ech- nology exist[ed]” to use these VVDs “to present rich[] three- dimensional (3D) views from existing two-dimensional (2D) scans that may lead to better diagnosis and prognosis.” Id. at 1:22–25; see also id. at 1:35–46. But the inventors recognized complications with at- tempts to view portions of these large VVDs at a client com- puter. To look at a three-dimensional view, “either the user’s computer or a dedicated server need[ed] to be pow- erful enough to support [the] process