PTAB

IPR2013-00328

OpenTV Inc v. Cisco Systems Inc

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Petition
petition Intelligence

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Conditional Access System With Geographic Location-Based Scrambling
  • Brief Description: The ’892 patent relates to systems for limiting access to television programs based on the geographic location of a set-top receiver. The technology involves broadcasting encrypted service instances along with entitlement information that includes geographic restrictions (e.g., blackout or spotlight regions), which the receiver compares against its own stored location data to determine if decryption and display are authorized.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Anticipation over Wasilewski '92 - Claims 1-4, 7-9, 11-14, 16-18, 20, 22-23, 26-27, 30-31, 35, and 38 are anticipated by Wasilewski '92.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Wasilewski ’92 (“ISO/IEC JTC1/SC20/WG11, Requirements and Method for High-Level Multiplexing,” Nov. 1992).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Wasilewski ’92, a technical publication describing a digital broadcast system, disclosed every element of the independent claims. Wasilewski allegedly described a conditional access system with a receiver (decoder) that receives encrypted service instances and associated entitlement information to control access. Petitioner asserted that Wasilewski’s “blackout” information, which can include geographic (x,y) coordinates and a radius for a blackout zone, corresponds to the claimed "entitlement information" and "geographic reception information." Further, Wasilewski’s decoder allegedly included a secure microprocessor and protected non-volatile memory (the claimed "secure element") for storing the receiver's location and processing the received geographic information to determine authorization.

Ground 2: Anticipation over Sheldrick - Claims 1-8, 12-31, and 35-38 are anticipated by Sheldrick.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Sheldrick (Patent 5,506,904).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner contended that Sheldrick taught a broadcast system that provides conditional access based on the geographic location of receivers ("converters") using both "blackout" and "spotlight" information. Sheldrick’s system allegedly included a converter with a Digital Compression In-board Security Element (DISE) that functions as the claimed "secure element." Petitioner argued Sheldrick disclosed transmitting authorization codes that define geographic regions by latitude, longitude, and radius. The DISE in the converter stores the converter's location and compares it to the received authorization codes to determine whether to permit decryption, thus mapping to the limitations of the independent claims.

Ground 3: Obviousness over Wasilewski '92 in view of Sheldrick - Claims 5-6, 10, 15, 19, 21, 24-25, 28-29, and 36-37 are obvious over Wasilewski '92 in view of Sheldrick.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Wasilewski ’92, Sheldrick (Patent 5,506,904).

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Wasilewski provided a foundational system for geographic-based blackouts (denying service within a region). Sheldrick, in turn, explicitly taught the concept of "spotlighting" (authorizing service only within a region), which it described as the inverse of a blackout. The combination allegedly rendered obvious the dependent claims related to authorizing service within a specified geographic region, as taught by Sheldrick.
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine these references as they addressed the same technical problem of geographically targeted content delivery and disclosed complementary and closely related solutions.
    • Expectation of Success: Combining Sheldrick's known spotlighting technique with Wasilewski's conditional access framework was a straightforward application of known principles to achieve the predictable result of more flexible geographic control.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted additional obviousness challenges, including that claims 32-34 are obvious over Wasilewski ’92 in view of Thibadeau (Patent 5,432,542), and that claims 9-11 and 32-34 are obvious over Sheldrick in view of Thibadeau. These grounds relied on a similar motivation to combine a base system (Wasilewski or Sheldrick) with Thibadeau’s specific teachings on defining geographic regions using squares, rectangles, and minimum/maximum coordinate values to achieve more precise boundary control.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "Entitlement Agent": Petitioner proposed construing this term as "any one, or a combination of, a program or service provider, an entity or function that is located outside of the receiver... that has the right to provide the receiver access authorization..." This construction was based on the specification and arguments made by the Patent Owner during the prosecution of a related patent to distinguish the term from a component inside the receiver.
  • "Geographic Reception Information": Proposed as "information received at a receiver related to the receiver's authorization for accessing a program or a service within a geographic location or area." Petitioner argued this claim term is defined by the specification’s examples of blackout/spotlight data that specify geographic regions for controlling access.
  • "Service Instance": Proposed as simply "a program or a service," based on language in the patent's abstract that equates "service 'instances'" with "programs."

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-38 of the ’892 patent as unpatentable.