PTAB

IPR2014-01292

VMware Inc v. Clouding Corp

Log In
Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Replica Synchronization Using Copy-On-Read Technique
  • Brief Description: The ’089 patent discloses methods and systems for efficient data replication, primarily for backup and disaster recovery. The invention identifies "storage objects" (e.g., files) in a first storage area that contain "relevant" data, reads only those objects, and copies their contents to a second storage area, thereby conserving bandwidth by not processing irrelevant data.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1-24 are obvious over Gold in view of Chefalas

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Gold (International Publication No. WO 99/12098) and Chefalas (Patent 6,976,039).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Gold, a backup and recovery system, discloses the core limitations of the challenged claims. Gold's "File Differencing Module" (FDM) selects files and determines if they contain relevant data by filtering out excluded file types (e.g., temporary files, swap files) based on user-defined policies. Gold's "Block Differencing Module" and "Data Transfer Module" then read and copy the contents of these relevant files to a backup apparatus. Petitioner asserted that Chefalas teaches a more advanced system for determining data relevancy. Chefalas uses a device driver to monitor application activity and stores this information as "relational meta data" in a database. A backup program can then query this database to identify all files relevant to a specific application or user without reading the files themselves. This combination, Petitioner argued, renders all limitations of the independent claims obvious.
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine Gold with Chefalas for clear design incentives. Chefalas is explicitly described as a tool to be used with standard backup programs to supply them with a list of relevant files. A POSITA would be motivated to integrate Chefalas's more efficient and flexible method for identifying relevant files into Gold's existing backup framework to improve its performance and capabilities, such as enabling application-specific backups.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have a reasonable expectation of success because Chefalas is designed to provide a list of files to a backup application, which is a straightforward integration with a system like Gold that processes lists of files for backup.

Ground 2: Claims 1-24 are obvious over Cane in view of Chefalas

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Cane (Patent 5,765,173) and Chefalas (Patent 6,976,039).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner contended that Cane, which discloses a system for "selectively choosing files for backup," also teaches the fundamental steps of the ’089 patent. Cane's system scans a user's files and determines relevancy by identifying files modified since the last backup and excluding files based on user-defined criteria (e.g., files not critical to business operations, commercial software). Once relevant files are identified, Cane reads them to identify changed blocks and copies only those changed portions to the backup system. Petitioner argued that combining Cane's backup process with Chefalas's superior method for determining relevancy would have been obvious. The contribution of Chefalas and the mapping to the "determining" limitation is the same as in Ground 1.
    • Motivation to Combine: The motivation to combine Cane with Chefalas is parallel to the motivation for combining Gold with Chefalas. Cane discloses a need to identify relevant files for backup, and Chefalas provides a more sophisticated and efficient solution for this exact purpose. A POSITA would be motivated to replace or supplement Cane's basic relevancy criteria with Chefalas's relational metadata query system to enhance the flexibility and efficiency of the backup process.
    • Expectation of Success: Success would be expected for the same reasons as in Ground 1. Integrating a system that generates a list of relevant files (Chefalas) with a system that acts upon such a list (Cane) is a predictable and well-understood task in the art.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "relevant data": Petitioner proposed construing this term as "data relevant to the purpose for which storage objects are being copied." This construction was previously adopted by the Board in a related proceeding (IPR2013-00519) and, according to Petitioner, is the broadest reasonable construction consistent with the specification, which uses terms like "relevant," "useful," and "necessary" interchangeably without limiting them to specific examples.
  • "storage object": Petitioner proposed this term means "a unit of storage that may include bytes, ranges of bytes, or files." This construction is based directly on the patent's specification, which states that the unit of storage can vary and may be specified in these forms.
  • Means-Plus-Function Terms: For several means-plus-function terms in claims 9-12, Petitioner submitted that the Board should adopt the constructions from the prior IPR2013-00519 proceeding, which identified the corresponding structure as computer software executing on a general-purpose computer implementing specific utilities (e.g., a "block identifier utility," "storage area replication facility").

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 1-24 of the ’089 patent as unpatentable.