PTAB

IPR2013-00397

Apple Inc v. VirnetX Inc

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Petition
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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Agile Network Protocol for Secure Communications Using Secure Domain Names
  • Brief Description: The ’211 patent describes systems and methods for establishing secure communication links, such as virtual private networks (VPNs), over a computer network. The invention uses a domain name service (DNS) system that, upon receiving a query for a a network address, can automatically determine whether a secure connection is required and facilitate its establishment.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Anticipation - Claims 1-3, 5-8, and 14-60 are anticipated by Aventail under 35 U.S.C. §102.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Aventail (Aventail Connect v3.01/2.5 Administrator’s Guide).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Aventail, a commercial VPN product available before the patent's priority date, disclosed every element of the challenged claims. The Aventail system, comprising client-side software ("Aventail Connect") and a gateway server ("Extranet Server"), allegedly constitutes the claimed "domain name service system." Petitioner asserted that this system was configured to store a plurality of "redirection rules" in a configuration file, which correspond to the claimed "plurality of domain names and corresponding network addresses." When a user's application made a DNS query, Aventail's system would intercept and evaluate it. If the query matched a redirection rule, the system would indicate that a secure connection was supported and automatically establish an encrypted, anonymous VPN between the client and the target destination. Petitioner contended that this process met all limitations of independent claims 1, 36, and 60, as well as the limitations of the dependent claims. For example, the "indication" of support for a secure link was disclosed as an "Indicator" pop-up window or simply as the successful establishment of the secure connection itself.

Ground 2: Obviousness - Claims 3, 31, 32, 55, and 56 are obvious over Aventail in view of Beser under 35 U.S.C. §103.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Aventail (Aventail Connect v3.01/2.5 Administrator’s Guide) and Beser (Patent 6,496,867).

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that even if Aventail did not explicitly anticipate every limitation of these specific dependent claims, combining it with Beser would have been obvious. For claim 3, which requires a "non-standard top-level domain name," Petitioner pointed to Patent Owner's own representation that a "secure name" could be a telephone number. Beser explicitly taught that a "unique identifier" for establishing a connection could be a "dial-up number," making it obvious to use such an identifier in Aventail's system. For claims related to specific application services (claims 31, 32, 55, 56), Beser taught the desirability of using tunneling methods to support various multimedia applications, including audio, video, and interactive games, over a secure network.
    • Motivation to Combine: A person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would have been motivated to combine the references to enhance the capabilities of a known secure networking framework. A POSITA would have recognized that Aventail's nested WinSock implementation provided a robust foundation for secure communications that could be readily extended, using the tunneling methods taught by Beser, to support the growing demand for secure multimedia and telephony services over the internet.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success in combining these technologies, as it involved applying Beser's known tunneling techniques for specific data types to Aventail's established secure connection architecture.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted an alternative obviousness challenge for claims 31, 32, 55, and 56 based on Aventail in view of the knowledge of a Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art, arguing that adapting a secure connection system like Aventail to support common applications like email, video, and audio was a well-understood and predictable design choice.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "Secure Communication Link": Petitioner argued that under the broadest reasonable construction standard applicable in an IPR, this term should not be limited to links that require encryption, as the patent specification itself states that data security is "usually" (not always) handled by encryption. Furthermore, Petitioner contended that prosecution history disclaimer from a related district court case, which suggested the link required "direct" communication, should not limit the claim scope in this proceeding; instead, the term should encompass VPNs that operate through intermediary servers, as described in Aventail.
  • "Domain Name Service System": Petitioner argued this term should be construed broadly to mean "a lookup service, comprising one or more applications or devices, that will return to a requester an IP address or an error code in response to a domain name resolution request." This construction was asserted to be consistent with its ordinary meaning and with an Examiner's findings in a related reexamination of the ’211 patent, covering systems that are not limited to traditional DNS servers.
  • "Indication": Petitioner argued this term should be broadly construed to encompass any signal that communicates the system's support for secure communications, including not only a visible or audible signal but also the successful establishment of the secure communication link itself.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested that a trial be instituted and that claims 1-3, 5-8, and 14-60 of the ’211 patent be canceled as unpatentable.