BillSure LLC v. VMware Inc

I. Executive Summary and Procedural Information

• Parties & Counsel:
  • Plaintiff: BillSure LLC (New Mexico)
  • Defendant: VMware, Inc. (Delaware)
  • Plaintiff’s Counsel: Rabicoff Law LLC
• Case Identification: 7:25-cv-00016, W.D. Tex., 01/15/2025
• Venue Allegations: Venue is alleged to be proper in the Western District of Texas because Defendant maintains an established place of business in the district and has allegedly committed acts of infringement there.
• Core Dispute: Plaintiff alleges that certain unspecified VMware products infringe a patent related to a method and system for verifying network resource usage records to prevent billing fraud.
• Technical Context: The technology addresses the problem of fraudulent usage reporting in environments where a network access provider is a separate entity from the service that bills the end-user.
• Key Procedural History: The complaint does not mention any prior litigation, inter partes review proceedings, or licensing history related to the patent-in-suit. The allegations of knowledge for indirect and willful infringement are based on the filing of the complaint itself.

Case Timeline

II. Technology and Patent(s)-in-Suit Analysis

U.S. Patent No. 8,005,457 - "Method and system for verifying network resource usage records"

• Patent Identification: U.S. Patent No. 8,005,457, “Method and system for verifying network resource usage records,” issued August 23, 2011.

The Invention Explained

• Problem Addressed: The patent describes a problem in network environments, such as public Wi-Fi "hotspots," where the network operator (Access Gateway Operator) is a different entity from the user's billing provider (Billing Service Provider) ( Compl. ¶9; ’457 Patent, col. 2:10-21). This separation creates an incentive and opportunity for the hotspot operator to fraudulently inflate usage data—such as connection time or data volume—to receive inflated payments from the billing provider, a type of fraud that is difficult to detect with prior art systems (’457 Patent, col. 2:10-35).
• The Patented Solution: The invention proposes a system where the network user's device periodically generates its own "Billing Data" and sends it to the Access Gateway during an active session (’457 Patent, Abstract). The Access Gateway compares this user-generated data with its own usage records; if the records "correlate," the session continues, but if they diverge, the gateway can terminate the connection (’457 Patent, col. 6:49-54). The user-generated billing data is cryptographically encoded, preventing the Access Gateway from tampering with it before it is ultimately forwarded to the Billing Service Provider for settlement, thus creating a verifiable and trustworthy audit trail (’457 Patent, col. 6:33-39; Fig. 3).
• Technical Importance: The system provides a method for real-time, independent verification of network usage in a "trustless" environment, aiming to mitigate billing fraud between independent network operators and billing providers (’457 Patent, col. 4:30-38).

Key Claims at a Glance

• The complaint asserts "one or more claims" without specifying them, but independent claims 1, 6, 11, and 16 appear to cover the core aspects of the invention (Compl. ¶11).
• Independent Claim 1 (a system claim) includes these essential elements:
  • An access gateway device for coupling to a network user device and a billing service provider's system.
  • The network user device generates billing data based on its actual network resource usage.
  • The access gateway device is configured to compare the received billing data from the user device with its own corresponding billing data.
  • If the received and generated billing data correlate, the access gateway device stores predetermined portions of the received billing data.
• The complaint does not explicitly reserve the right to assert dependent claims but refers generally to "one or more claims" (’457 Patent, col. 9:18-38; Compl. ¶11).

III. The Accused Instrumentality

Product Identification

The complaint does not identify any specific accused products by name (Compl. ¶11). It refers to "Exemplary Defendant Products" that are identified in charts contained within an "Exhibit 2" attached to the complaint; this exhibit was not publicly available for analysis (Compl. ¶11, ¶16).

Functionality and Market Context

The complaint does not provide sufficient detail for analysis of the accused products' specific functionality or market context. It alleges generally that the "Exemplary Defendant Products practice the technology claimed by the '457 Patent" (Compl. ¶16).

IV. Analysis of Infringement Allegations

The complaint incorporates infringement allegations by reference to claim charts in an external exhibit (Exhibit 2), which was not provided (Compl. ¶17). In lieu of a claim chart, the narrative infringement theory is summarized below.

The complaint alleges that VMware’s "Exemplary Defendant Products" perform the functions recited in the claims of the ’457 Patent (Compl. ¶11, ¶16). This suggests the accused products are alleged to constitute or be part of a system that receives usage data from an end-user device, compares it against separate records, and acts based on that comparison. The complaint alleges that these products satisfy all elements of the asserted claims, either literally or under the doctrine of equivalents (Compl. ¶16). No probative visual evidence provided in complaint.

• Identified Points of Contention:
  • Architectural Mapping: A primary question will be whether the architecture of the accused VMware products can be mapped onto the three-party structure (User Device, Access Gateway, Billing Service Provider) described in the ’457 Patent. The defense may argue that the accused enterprise software products operate in a fundamentally different context than the public hotspot roaming scenario that motivated the invention (’457 Patent, col. 2:50-61).
  • Technical Questions: What evidence does the complaint provide that the accused products perform the specific function of comparing user-device-generated "billing data" with gateway-generated data? The infringement analysis will likely focus on whether any data exchanged within the VMware ecosystem meets the definition of "billing data" and whether any system health or integrity check constitutes the "correlation" and "storing" steps required by the claims (’457 Patent, col. 10:2-6).

V. Key Claim Terms for Construction

• The Term: "billing data"

• Context and Importance: This term is the central object of the claimed method. The outcome of the case may depend on whether data handled by the accused products qualifies as "billing data." Practitioners may focus on this term because its construction will define whether the patent covers only explicit invoicing data or extends to other forms of usage-related system data.

• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:

  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The patent provides a broad definition: "any data, however encoded, that could be used as the basis for invoicing or otherwise charging a User of Network Resources" (’457 Patent, col. 1:31-36).
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The claims and specification consistently tie the term to specific metrics like "an amount of time of connection" and "a volume of data caused to be transferred" (’457 Patent, col. 9:27-31). The specification also describes this data as being generated by the "Network user device" and cryptographically encoded to ensure its integrity, suggesting it is more than a simple system log (’457 Patent, col. 6:4-7, col. 8:26-29).

• The Term: "correlates"

• Context and Importance: This term defines the standard for the comparison step that determines whether a session continues or is terminated. The infringement question will turn on whether the accused system's comparison meets the standard of "correlation."

• Intrinsic Evidence for Interpretation:

  • Evidence for a Broader Interpretation: The term itself is general and could be argued to encompass any logical check for consistency between two data sets.
  • Evidence for a Narrower Interpretation: The detailed description suggests a specific technical process, stating the Access Gateway may "take into account the latency involved" and determine if a received value is "within the specific range of values that would be expected" (’457 Patent, col. 6:18-26). This could support a narrower definition requiring a numerical comparison with a defined tolerance, rather than a simple binary match/mismatch.

VI. Other Allegations

• Indirect Infringement: The complaint alleges that since the filing of the lawsuit, VMware has induced infringement by selling the accused products and distributing "product literature and website materials" that instruct customers on their infringing use (Compl. ¶14, ¶15). The complaint states that Exhibit 2 contains references to these materials (Compl. ¶14).
• Willful Infringement: The willfulness allegation is based entirely on post-filing conduct. The complaint asserts that the service of the complaint itself provides "actual knowledge" of infringement and that any continued infringing activity by VMware thereafter is willful (Compl. ¶13, ¶14).

VII. Analyst’s Conclusion: Key Questions for the Case

• A key evidentiary question will be one of architectural analogy: can the plaintiff demonstrate that the components, data flows, and commercial relationships within the accused VMware enterprise environment are analogous to the distinct three-party (User, independent Hotspot Operator, Billing Provider) trustless framework for which the '457 patent was explicitly designed? The complaint provides no details on how this mapping is achieved.
• The case will also likely turn on a question of definitional scope: does the term "billing data" as used in the claims, which is described in the patent as being generated by a user's device to verify charges, read on the type of operational, security, or performance data that is likely exchanged within a VMware software ecosystem? The answer will likely dictate whether the patent's reach extends beyond its core use case of preventing third-party billing fraud.