United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________

HARRIS BRUMFIELD, TRUSTEE FOR ASCENT TRUST, Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

IBG LLC, INTERACTIVE BROKERS LLC, Defendants-Appellees ______________________

2022-1630 ______________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in No. 1:10-cv-00715, Judge Virginia M. Kendall. ______________________

Decided: March 27, 2024 ______________________

MICHAEL DAVID GANNON, Baker & Hostetler LLP, Chi- cago, IL, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by JENNIFER KURCZ, LEIF R. SIGMOND, JR.; ALAINA LAKAWICZ, Philadelphia, PA.

STEFFEN NATHANAEL JOHNSON, Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, PC, Washington, DC, argued for de- fendants-appellees. Also represented by KELSEY CURTIS; GRANVILLE CLAYTON KAUFMAN, NATALIE J. MORGAN, San Diego, CA; MICHAEL BRETT LEVIN, Palo Alto, CA; MICHAEL S. SOMMER, New York, NY; NAOYA SON, Los Angeles, CA. Case: 22-1630 Document: 92 Page: 2 Filed: 03/27/2024

2 BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC

______________________

Before PROST, TARANTO, and HUGHES, Circuit Judges. TARANTO, Circuit Judge. Trading Technologies International, Inc. (TT)—whose successor is the plaintiff-appellant named in the caption— brought this action against IBG LLC and its subsidiary In- teractive Brokers LLC (together, IBG) in 2010 in the Northern District of Illinois, alleging infringement of sev- eral TT-owned patents. 1 Four of TT’s patents are at issue in this appeal: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,766,304 (issued July 20, 2004); 6,772,132 (issued August 3, 2004); 7,676,411 (issued March 9, 2010); and 7,813,996 (issued October 12, 2010). The district court held the asserted claims of the ’411 and ’996 patents invalid, and a jury found the asserted claims of the ’304 and ’132 patents infringed (and not proved in- valid for obviousness) and awarded $6,610,985 in damages, resulting in the final judgment now before us. Only TT, not IBG, appeals. TT challenges three rulings of the district court. First, on cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court held that the asserted claims of the ’411 and ’996 patents were invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101, while rejecting the § 101 challenge to the asserted claims of the ’304 and ’132 patents (with the resulting trial limited to a subset of such claims). Trading Technologies International, Inc. v. IBG, LLC, No. 10 C 715, 2021 WL

1 Plaintiff-Appellant Harris Brumfield was the pri- mary investor in and majority shareholder of TT, which was sold in December 2021, with the rights to the patents here at issue assigned to a trust, Ascent Trust. Mr. Brum- field, as the sole trustee for Ascent Trust, was then substi- tuted for TT as the plaintiff in this action. Like the parties and the district court, we refer throughout to plaintiff-ap- pellant as Trading Technologies (TT). Case: 22-1630 Document: 92 Page: 3 Filed: 03/27/2024

BRUMFIELD v. IBG LLC 3

2473809, at *5, *7 (N.D. Ill. June 17, 2021) (101 Opinion). Second, the district court, acting under Federal Rule of Ev- idence 702, excluded one of the damages theories, concern- ing foreign activities, proposed by TT’s damages expert. Trading Technologies International, Inc. v. IBG LLC, No. 10 C 715, 2021 WL 5038754, at *2 (N.D. Ill. July 23, 2021) (FRE 702 Opinion). Third, the district court denied TT’s post-verdict motion for a new trial on damages, a motion in which TT alleged that IBG had misrepresented, by state- ment or omission, how it was calculating the damages fig- ures it presented to the jury. Brumfield, Trustee for A