PTAB

IPR2014-00914

Cisco Systems Inc v. Constellation Technologies LLC

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Petition
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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Resource Conservation for Packet Television Services
  • Brief Description: The ’299 patent discloses methods and systems for conserving network resources used to deliver television content over a packet-based network. The system determines whether to activate a resource-conserving process, and if activated, monitors for viewer inactivity to initiate an action, such as stopping content delivery from the provider.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Anticipation over Minnick - Claims 1-3, 6-9, 11, 15, and 19-22 are anticipated under 35 U.S.C. § 102 by Minnick.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Minnick (Application # 2005/0157215).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Minnick disclosed every limitation of the challenged claims, focusing on the key limitation that led to the patent's allowance: "determining if a resource conserving process should be activated." Minnick described a set-top box (STB) that first determined if a "channel selecting resource" was needed for other system purposes not related to user commands, such as housekeeping, maintenance, or receiving forced downloads. This decision to check for system needs constituted the claimed pre-determination of whether to activate a conservation process, which occurred before any monitoring of viewer activity. If the resource was needed, Minnick’s STB would then monitor for viewer inactivity (e.g., the television being turned off) and, upon detecting it, would stop content delivery to free up the resource for the other system task. This sequence, Petitioner asserted, directly mapped to the method of independent claims 1 and 19.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Riley and Minnick - Claims 1-3, 6-11, 14, 15, and 18-22 are obvious over Riley in view of Minnick.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Riley (Application # 2005/0188415) and Minnick (’215 application).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner contended that Riley taught conserving resources across the packet network itself, a feature distinguished from the prior art during prosecution of the ’299 patent. Riley disclosed a system where, upon a user pausing a video session, a session manager informed a central Video Policy Server (VPS), which then released the network resources (e.g., bandwidth) previously reserved for that stream. This taught initiating a conservation action that stopped content transport over the network, not just at the user's local equipment. Minnick, as argued in Ground 1, taught the preliminary step of determining whether a resource conservation process should be activated at all based on system needs.
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine Riley and Minnick because both references addressed the same problem of conserving resources in packet-based television delivery systems. A POSITA would have been motivated to improve the network-level conservation method of Riley by incorporating the more efficient pre-determination step from Minnick. Applying Minnick’s known technique of first checking if conservation is needed would be an obvious way to improve Riley’s similar method, yielding the predictable result of a more efficient resource conservation system. The combination was presented as a simple substitution of one known element into a known system to achieve a predictable benefit.

Ground 3: Obviousness over Riley, Minnick, and Harrell - Claims 12 and 13 are obvious over Riley and Minnick in view of Harrell.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Riley (’415 application), Minnick (’215 application), and Harrell (Application # 2003/0067872).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the combination of Riley and Minnick to address the specific resource conservation actions recited in dependent claims 12 and 13. Harrell disclosed a client device that, upon detecting network congestion, could send instructions to a media server to perform specific bandwidth-saving actions. For claim 12 ("reduce a relative quality of the television content"), Harrell taught requesting "changes in media compression rate" or "changes in media resolution." For claim 13 ("halt delivery of a video portion of the television content"), Harrell taught sending instructions to "maintain[] audio while dropping video."
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA seeking to implement the resource conservation system of Riley and Minnick would have been motivated to incorporate the specific, well-known techniques from Harrell. Reducing video quality or dropping the video stream while maintaining audio were established and predictable methods for conserving network bandwidth. Therefore, it would have been an obvious-to-try solution for a POSITA to select these known techniques from Harrell to carry out the resource-conserving action initiated by the Riley/Minnick system.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Petitioner argued that the phrase "transporting the television content over the packet network" should be construed to mean "conveying television content from one place to another over the packet network." This construction was asserted to be critical because it focused the inquiry on the conservation of resources used for data transmission across the network (e.g., from a content provider to an STB), distinguishing it from prior art considered during prosecution that only disclosed conserving resources locally at the user's equipment (e.g., pausing the output from an STB to a television monitor).

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review (IPR) and the cancellation of claims 1-3, 6-15, and 18-22 of the ’299 patent as unpatentable.