PTAB

IPR2014-01305

VMware Inc v. Clouding Corp

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: System for Configuration of Dynamic Computing Environments Using a Visual Interface
  • Brief Description: The ’708 patent discloses a system that allows a user to create a customized, dynamic computing environment from a pool of allocatable resources. The system provides a web-based visual interface for users to select and configure hardware devices, software applications, and communication components from an inventory to automatically construct the specified environment.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Anticipation of Claims 1-3 by Aziz

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Aziz (Patent 6,779,016).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Aziz discloses every limitation of claims 1-3. Aziz teaches a system for creating "dynamically sized, highly scalable and available server farms" (termed Virtual Server Farms or VSFs), which are analogous to the "dynamic computing environments" of the ’708 patent. Petitioner mapped Aziz's "separate web server" that receives user specifications to the claimed "configuration/access server." Aziz's "Control Plane," which controls and configures the system's resources, was mapped to the "infrastructure server." The "Computing Grid" in Aziz, comprising hardware, software, and communications components, was argued to be the claimed "plurality of resources."

Ground 2: Anticipation of Claims 11-18 by Patterson

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Patterson (Patent 7,093,005).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner asserted that claims 11-18, which depend on a "visual construction of a dynamic computing environment," are anticipated by Patterson. Patterson incorporates the teachings of Aziz by reference and further discloses a more sophisticated user interface, including a "Graphical Editor." This editor allows users to "drag and drop icons representing computing elements and network elements into a workspace," creating a graphical representation of the logical configuration of the computer system. Petitioner contended this graphical editor and its output directly meet the "visual construction" limitation, and that Patterson otherwise discloses all other elements of the challenged claims for the same reasons as Aziz. For example, Patterson’s disclosure of cloning and instantiating devices from stored server images was argued to meet the limitations of claims 15-17.

Ground 3: Obviousness of Claims 11-18 over Aziz in view of Sanchez-Frank

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Aziz (Patent 6,779,016), Sanchez-Frank (Patent 5,394,522).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Aziz discloses the fundamental architecture for creating dynamic computing environments but does not explicitly illustrate a graphical user interface with icons. Sanchez-Frank, however, discloses a "user friendly graphical environment" for configuring networked computer systems using icons to represent workstation nodes and define connections. The core of this ground was that Sanchez-Frank supplies the "visual construction" element that Aziz describes more generally.
    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner asserted that a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would be motivated to combine these references. Aziz itself states its system should be implemented with a "suitable user interface" and specifically a "graphical user interface." Sanchez-Frank provides exactly such an interface for the same purpose of configuring networked environments. A POSITA would combine the two to improve the usability of Aziz’s powerful back-end system, which was a well-known design incentive to solve a known problem.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination involved applying a known user interface technique (graphical icons from Sanchez-Frank) to a known type of system (the configurable computing environment of Aziz). This would have yielded predictable results without requiring undue experimentation, giving a POSITA a reasonable expectation of success.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "visual construction": Petitioner proposed this term, central to claims 11-18, be construed to mean "a representation of the combination of hardware, software, and communications components." This construction was argued to be consistent with the ’708 patent’s figures and a finding by the Board in a related proceeding involving a patent with a shared specification. This broad construction allows interfaces like those in Patterson and Sanchez-Frank, which use icons and diagrams, to meet the claim limitation.
  • "constraint on a hardware component": For claim 16, Petitioner proposed this term be construed as "a limit on system parameters associated with a hardware component." This construction was based on the specification’s example of limiting the "size of the hard disk" and supported by a standard technical dictionary definition. This interpretation allows user inputs like specifying disk size or number of CPUs, as taught in the prior art, to satisfy the limitation.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 1-3 and 11-18 of Patent 7,272,708 as unpatentable.