PTAB

IPR2013-00156

Zynga Inc v. Personalized Media Communications LLC

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: SIGNAL PROCESSING APPARATUS AND METHODS
  • Brief Description: The ’131 patent describes systems for adding personalized content to television or radio broadcasts, such as displaying a graphic of a subscriber's stock portfolio performance during a financial news program. The challenged claims relate to a method for a station to deliver "complete programming" by executing a computer program that accesses prestored data to fill in a portion of the programming.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Anticipation Under §102 - Claims 1, 3, 4, 6, 9, and 11 are anticipated by Higgins.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Higgins (Patent 5,270,922).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Higgins, which discloses a data processing system for displaying financial market information on workstations, teaches every limitation of the challenged claims. Independent claim 1 requires storing programming that includes a computer program and a portion to be completed by accessing prestored data. Higgins allegedly disclosed this through its workstations that store programs in memory (ROM/RAM) to drive a multi-window display. Portions of this display, such as a personalized stock ticker, are completed by accessing prestored, user-specific criteria (e.g., a list of securities to monitor) stored in the workstation's RAM. The claim’s requirement of executing the program to select a "datum" from prestored data to complete the programming portion is met by Higgins's CPU, which processes the user-specific criteria to populate the personalized ticker with incoming market data. Finally, the "storing a control signal" limitation is met by Higgins's disclosure of storing user-entered keystrokes or incoming trade data, both of which act as control signals that cause the program to update the display. Dependent claims are met by Higgins's disclosure of user-specific data (claim 3), sequential stock update information with timestamps (claim 4), generally applicable information like a NYSE ticker (claim 6), control signals controlling a display (claim 9), and workstations as the final destination for data (claim 11).

Ground 2: Anticipation Under §102 - Claims 1, 3, 4, 6, 9, and 11 are anticipated by Hedges.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Hedges (Patent 4,339,798).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner contended that Hedges, which discloses a remote gaming system for casino games, also anticipates all challenged claims. Hedges’s remote gaming terminal (a "station") stores firmware (a "computer program") in ROM and RAM. This firmware generates a display, such as a roulette playboard (the "programming"), which has portions that are completed by accessing prestored data. For example, the playboard's layout is completed using data from descriptive tables in ROM, while game-state information (e.g., player's credit, time remaining to bet) is completed using data stored in RAM. This meets the core "storing programming" and "accessing prestored data" limitations of claim 1. The execution of the firmware by a microprocessor to select data from ROM and RAM to populate the playboard satisfies the "select a specific datum" limitation. The "storing a control signal" element is met by Hedges’s disclosure that player inputs and communications from a credit station are stored and used as stimuli to cause execution of the firmware and update the game state on the display. Hedges's disclosure of player-specific account data (claim 3), a timer for placing bets (claim 4), and general game information (claim 6) were argued to meet the corresponding dependent claims.

Ground 3: Obviousness Under §103 - Claim 4 is obvious over Higgins in view of Hedges.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Higgins (Patent 5,270,922) and Hedges (Patent 4,339,798).

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner asserted that Higgins discloses every element of independent claim 1. Dependent claim 4 adds the limitation that the control signal comprises a "series or stream of sequentially transmitted control instructions" stored in a specific order with "information designating a time period." Petitioner argued that to the extent Higgins does not explicitly disclose this, Hedges does. Hedges describes generating a display under the control of a stored sequence of control bytes and explicitly teaches displaying time-based information, such as the "time remaining in which to enter a bet."
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine Higgins and Hedges because both relate to displaying user-configurable information in a distributed computer system. A POSITA would have been motivated to supplement the financial data display of Higgins with the time-based display features of Hedges to provide predictable and desirable functions, such as monitoring the time since a last trade or the time remaining until a market closes.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination involved applying a known technique (displaying time-based information from Hedges) to a similar system (the financial data system of Higgins) to achieve a predictable result, giving a POSITA a reasonable expectation of success.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted additional anticipation challenges against claims 1, 3, 6, 9, and 11 based on Sitrick (Patent 4,572,509). Petitioner also asserted that claim 4 is obvious over Sitrick in view of Hedges, relying on similar combination logic.

4. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 1, 3, 4, 6, 9, and 11 of the ’131 patent as unpatentable.