Oracle Corp v. Clouding IP LLC

1. Case Identification

• Case #: IPR2013-00275
• Patent #: 7,596,784
• Filed: May 9, 2013
• Petitioner(s): Oracle Corporation
• Patent Owner(s): Clouding IP, LLC
• Challenged Claims: 9

2. Patent Overview

• Title: Method of providing on-demand computational resources over a distributed network
• Brief Description: The ’784 patent discloses methods and systems for providing on-demand, scalable computational resources to application providers over a distributed network. The technology is directed to solving problems associated with dynamically managing resources, capacity planning, and predicting demand for services and applications in a distributed computing environment.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Anticipation of Claim 9 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e)

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Aziz (Patent 6,779,016).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Aziz, which was not considered during prosecution, teaches every element of claim 9. Aziz describes a method for providing distributed on-demand application processing via a "computing grid" logically divided into Virtual Server Farms (VSFs). Petitioner asserted that Aziz’s "Control Plane" provides a VSF customer (the "application provider") with web-based access to the distributed network. Through this interface, the customer specifies the number and type of computing elements, hardware, and software platforms for its VSF, which Petitioner mapped to the claim limitation of "dictating at least a first portion of the distributed network to receive at least one application." Finally, Petitioner contended that Aziz’s disclosure of the customer uploading "master copies of the applications to execute in the VSF" meets the final limitation of distributing the application onto the dictated computational resources.

Ground 2: Obviousness of Claim 9 over Aziz in view of Karpovich

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Aziz (Patent 6,779,016), Karpovich (a 1996 technical report on object placement).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner asserted that Aziz provides the foundational system for on-demand distributed computing. Karpovich was cited for its teaching of a "placement mapper" that resolves object placement decisions in a distributed environment. This mapper determines optimal task placement by considering system status, resource load, hardware capabilities, and other constraints (e.g., security). In Karpovich, a developer designs a default mapper that specifies the resources upon which objects will be placed.
  • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Karpovich's placement mapper with Aziz's Control Plane to improve the VSF customer’s placement decisions and provide more granular control over application distribution. This combination would allow for more intelligent and dynamic resource allocation than described in Aziz alone, particularly in a geographically distributed Wide Area Network (WAN) where optimizing placement is critical for performance.
  • Expectation of Success: Petitioner argued that incorporating Karpovich's well-understood resource placement algorithms into Aziz’s distributed framework was a predictable design choice to enhance system efficiency and control, representing a simple application of known technologies.

Ground 3: Obviousness of Claim 9 over Aziz in view of Kotov

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Aziz (Patent 6,779,016), Kotov (a 2000 symposium paper on e-service optimization).

• Core Argument for this Ground:

  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner relied on Aziz as the primary reference and introduced Kotov for its teachings on optimizing distributed service systems to improve traffic efficiency. Kotov teaches that service placement is critical and that services which communicate frequently should be mapped to servers that are physically close (e.g., in the same cluster) to minimize communication costs and network delays.
  • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would have been motivated to apply Kotov's principles to optimize the resource provisioning in Aziz’s system. For example, a skilled artisan would modify Aziz’s Control Plane to provision compute resources from a single, geographically concentrated "Idle Pool" instead of from several distributed pools for applications requiring low latency, as taught by Kotov. This would directly address the challenge of managing performance in a large-scale distributed system.
  • Expectation of Success: Applying Kotov's established principles of service co-location to Aziz's dynamic provisioning system was presented as a straightforward modification that would have predictably resulted in improved network performance and reduced operational costs.

• Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted additional obviousness challenges against claim 9 based on Aziz in view of Rabinovich (a 1998 paper on content replication), Lumelsky (Patent 6,516,350), and Berman (a 1996 paper on application-level scheduling), relying on similar theories of combining known optimization techniques with Aziz's foundational system.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

• "application provider": Petitioner argued this term should be construed broadly to include any entity that deploys a collection of computer program instructions onto a network, such as a provider of application content. This construction was positioned against a potentially narrower interpretation of an entity that provides a "service," which Petitioner argued was a distinct term at the time of invention.
• "dictating at least a first portion of the distributed network...": Petitioner proposed this term be interpreted as "specifying compute resources in the distributed network to receive" an application. Petitioner noted that during prosecution, the Patent Owner distinguished prior art based on the concept of the application provider "dictating" distribution. The petition argued that the specification supports a broad reading where dictating includes specifying geographic locations, resource limits, or maximum response times, all of which are disclosed in the prior art.

5. Relief Requested

• Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review (IPR) and cancellation of claim 9 of the ’784 patent as unpatentable.