PTAB

IPR2014-00062

Rackspace US Inc v. PersonalWeb Technologies LLC

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Controlling Access to Data in a Data Processing System
  • Brief Description: The ’310 patent describes a method for identifying and controlling access to data items in a computer network. The system uses content-based identifiers, generated by applying a function like a hash or message digest to the data's content, to create a unique name for each data item, which is then used to authorize access.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Kinetech and Brunk - Claims 1-2, 5-8, 10, 12, 14, and 16-19 are obvious over Kinetech in view of Brunk.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Kinetech (WO 96/32685) and Brunk (Patent 7,289,643).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the challenged claims were not entitled to their alleged priority date due to a lack of written description for the key limitation "at least some of the content." The priority documents allegedly only disclosed identifiers based on "all of the data," while the challenged claims were amended to cover identifiers based on "less than all" of the data. This made Kinetech—the patent owner's own published PCT application corresponding to the priority documents—intervening prior art. Kinetech was asserted to teach all elements of the claims, except it only disclosed content-based identifiers (called "True Names") generated from all of a data item's content. Brunk was introduced to remedy this by teaching the use of content signatures computed over less than all of the bits of a content item.
    • Motivation to Combine: A person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine Kinetech and Brunk to create a more flexible and efficient content identification system. Brunk's method of using a portion of the data for hashing was a known technique to achieve patentably indistinct variations of the hashing method disclosed in Kinetech, providing a straightforward way to implement the broader "at least some" concept.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have a high expectation of success, as combining the known hashing techniques was a predictable implementation of an alternative content identification method.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Kinetech, Francisco, and Brunk - Claims 16-19, 24, 29, 70, 81-82, and 86 are obvious over Kinetech and Francisco, further in view of Brunk.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Kinetech (WO 96/32685), Francisco (Patent 4,845,715), and Brunk (Patent 7,289,643).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the Kinetech/Brunk combination from Ground 1. Petitioner contended that while Kinetech disclosed a "license table" for passively tracking authorized users, it did not teach an active enforcement mechanism that proactively permits or denies access based on that authorization. Francisco was asserted to cure this deficiency by disclosing a system that uses "electronic identification indicia" (content-based identifiers) to check against an authorized user library and actively grant or deny access to a program. The combination of Kinetech's content-based naming and licensing framework with Francisco's active access control mechanism allegedly rendered the challenged claims obvious.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would be motivated to improve the security of Kinetech's passive license auditing system. Francisco provided a known and logical method for implementing active security and access control, which was a predictable improvement to prevent unauthorized access rather than merely detecting it after the fact.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination involved applying a known security mechanism (Francisco) to a known content-identification system (Kinetech), which would have been a straightforward integration with predictable results.

Ground 3: Obviousness over Woodhill and Francisco - Claims 1-2, 5-8, 10-11, 14, 16-19, 24, 29, 32, 70, 81-82, and 86 are obvious over Woodhill in view of Francisco.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Woodhill (Patent 5,649,196) and Francisco (Patent 4,845,715).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground presented an alternative to the Kinetech-based arguments. Woodhill was asserted to disclose a distributed storage system using "Binary Object Identifiers" calculated from all of and only the contents of a data object, thus teaching the core content-based identification method. However, Petitioner argued Woodhill only implicitly suggested access control and did not explicitly teach determining authorization based on its identifiers. As in Ground 2, Francisco was introduced to provide the missing element: a system that uses content-based identifiers to actively determine if a user is authorized and to grant or deny access accordingly.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Woodhill and Francisco to add robust security to Woodhill's distributed storage management system. Woodhill itself referenced "access control lists," explicitly motivating a skilled artisan to incorporate a known authorization mechanism like the one taught by Francisco to manage permissions for the binary objects identified in its system.
    • Expectation of Success: Integrating Francisco’s authorization check into Woodhill’s file system operations was characterized as a straightforward application of a known security paradigm to a data management system, which would have yielded predictable results.
  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted an additional obviousness challenge against claim 12 based on the combination of Woodhill, Francisco, and Langer (a 1991 Usenet article), where Langer was cited for explicitly teaching the use of MD5 hash functions for creating unique file identifiers.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "content-based name" / "content-dependent name" / etc.: Petitioner argued these related terms should be construed as "a substantially unique identifier for a particular data item generated and being determined using and depending on some or all of the data of the data item." This construction was central to the invalidity case, as it captured the claim scope that Petitioner alleged lacked written description support in the priority documents, which only described identifiers based on all of the data.
  • "plurality of values" / "plurality of identifiers": Petitioner proposed construing these terms as collections of content-based identifiers (e.g., "True Names" or "Binary Object Identifiers"), as used in the patent’s context of comparing a data item’s identifier against a list of authorized identifiers in a database or license table.

5. Key Technical Contentions (Beyond Claim Construction)

  • Lack of Written Description for Priority Claim: The petition's central technical pillar, underpinning Grounds 1 and 2, was that the challenged claims were not entitled to the filing date of their priority applications. Petitioner argued that the specification and the entire prosecution history of the priority applications repeatedly and unequivocally taught that the invention's content-based identifiers depend on "all of the data" in a data item. The claim term "at least some of the data" was introduced in a 2010 amendment, over 15 years after the earliest priority date, allegedly adding new matter without corresponding support in the original disclosure. This alleged failure to meet the written description requirement of §112 was the basis for asserting Kinetech as intervening prior art.

6. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 1-2, 5-8, 10-12, 14, 16-19, 24, 29, 32, 70, 81-82, and 86 of the ’310 patent as unpatentable.