PTAB

DER2022-00002

Tencent Technology Shenzhen Co Ltd v. Rathod YoGesh

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Application Program Interface or Page Processing Method and Device
  • Brief Description: The ’265 patent describes methods and systems for information processing on a terminal device. The core technology involves executing a primary "parent" application program that provides a running environment for a secondary "sub-application" program, managing the logic and view processes between them.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Derivation of Claims 1-18 under 35 U.S.C. § 135

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Tencent Application (Application # 2019/0213019).
  • Core Argument for this Ground: Petitioner argued that the named inventor of the ’265 patent, Yogesh Rathod, did not invent the subject matter of claims 1-18 but instead derived it directly from Petitioner’s publicly available application. The argument is based on a timeline of events showing conception by Petitioner, communication to the Respondent, and unauthorized filing of the derived invention.
    • Petitioner's Prior Conception and Communication: Petitioner asserted it conceived the invention and filed its ’019 application, which published on July 11, 2019. This publication served as a communication of the complete invention to the public, including the Respondent.
    • Respondent's Acknowledged Access and Copying: Petitioner provided evidence that the Respondent was aware of its published ’019 application prior to filing his own application. An email from the Respondent to Petitioner dated August 17, 2020, allegedly acknowledged awareness of "Tencent’s pending US16354371...related to mini apps." Subsequently, on August 25, 2020, Respondent filed the application that led to the ’265 patent. Petitioner argued that the Respondent copied the claims and abstract from the published ’019 application nearly verbatim, failed to disclose the ’019 application to the USPTO, and passed the invention off as his own.
    • Evidence of Derivation: Petitioner presented side-by-side claim charts comparing independent claims 1, 10, and 18 of the ’265 patent with independent claims 1, 11, and 20 of its own pending ’019 application. The comparison demonstrated that the Respondent’s claims were almost identical, with only minor, non-substantive word substitutions, such as changing "view" to "presentation" and "page" to "interface." Petitioner further showed that the abstract of the ’265 patent was also substantially copied from the abstract of its ’019 application.

4. Key Technical Contentions (Beyond Claim Construction)

  • Lack of Written Description Support: A central technical argument was that the Respondent is not the true inventor because the specification of the ’265 patent and its three priority applications completely fail to provide written description support for the claimed invention as required by 35 U.S.C. §112. Petitioner argued that the Respondent’s specification contains only broad, generic lists of technological elements and functions that do not describe or enable the specific claimed process of executing a second application within the environment of a first. This lack of possession of the invention, Petitioner contended, is definitive proof that the Respondent could only have obtained the claims through direct copying and derivation, not through his own inventive act. Petitioner systematically dismantled the Respondent's own purported written description support chart, arguing that the cited paragraphs and figures are non-specific and unrelated to the actual claim limitations.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested the institution of a Derivation Proceeding and a final decision finding that the invention claimed in the ’265 patent was derived from the inventors named in Petitioner's ’019 application without authorization, leading to the cancellation of claims 1-18 of the ’265 patent.