Unified Patents Inc v. Vantage Point Technology Inc

1. Case Identification

• Case #: IPR2015-00732
• Patent #: 6,615,233
• Filed: February 13, 2015
• Petitioner(s): Unified Patents Inc.
• Patent Owner(s): Vantage Point Technology, Inc.
• Challenged Claims: 1-3, 6-13, 15-17, 27, 31, 41-42, 49, and 59

2. Patent Overview

• Title: Transmitting Sequenced Documents over a Network
• Brief Description: The ’233 patent describes a client-server system for transmitting a sequence of documents, such as web pages. The invention focuses on a server-side apparatus that selects a document without the client explicitly requesting it by address and transmits that document along with a "controller" (e.g., an HTML tag) that commands the client to automatically request the next document in the sequence.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: All challenged claims are anticipated by the CGI Manual under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b).

• Prior Art Relied Upon: CGI Manual of Style, by Robert McDaniel, published January 1, 1996 (“CGI Manual”).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the CGI Manual, a publication available more than one year before the patent's priority date, discloses every element of the challenged claims. The CGI Manual teaches how to create an automatically advancing "guided tour" of a website using a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) script written in Perl (guided.pl) and a standard META-REFRESH HTML tag.
    • Apparatus and Input: The web server described in the CGI Manual is the claimed "apparatus," and its network interface, which receives HTTP requests, is the "input that receives download request messages."
    • Selector: The guided.pl CGI script functions as the "selector." When a user clicks a link to start the guided tour, the initial HTTP request invokes the script without specifying a particular document. The script's logic defaults to selecting the first document in a predefined list (e.g., home.html) because the request contains "no address information identifying the selected one of the set of documents."
    • Controller and Output: The guided.pl script then dynamically modifies the selected HTML document by inserting a META-REFRESH tag into its header. This tag is the claimed "controller." The web server's "output" then forwards the modified document, containing both the content and the controller tag, to the client's browser.
    • Commanding a New Request: The CGI Manual explicitly describes how the META-REFRESH tag, when executed by the client's browser, commands the browser to "generate and transmit a download request message to the server computer" for the next URL in the sequence after a predetermined time delay.
    • Dependent Claims: Petitioner further contended that the CGI Manual discloses limitations of the dependent claims. For example, the META-REFRESH tag is a "tag incorporated into each document" (claim 6), the predetermined condition is the expiration of a time period (claim 7), and the system retrieves and displays a "web page" (claim 16).

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

• Indefiniteness of Means-Plus-Function Claims: Petitioner argued that the means-plus-function limitations in claims 41 and 42 are indefinite under 35 U.S.C. § 112 because the ’233 patent fails to disclose adequate corresponding structure. For the various functions (e.g., "means for accessing," "means for causing... to transmit"), the specification provides only a high-level list of alternatives like a session variable, a pointer, a database, or a text file. Petitioner contended that the only structure common to these mechanisms is generic "software code in the memory of a computer," which is insufficient to satisfy the requirements of § 112.
• "Document": Petitioner proposed construing "document" as "a collection of computer data." This broad construction was argued to be consistent with the specification's use of the term and its example of a web page, thereby ensuring the prior art's teachings of HTML files were within the claim scope.
• "Selector": Petitioner proposed construing "selector" as "any mechanism used to select or choose one item from a set or collection of items." This interpretation was based on the term's plain meaning, as the specification provided minimal description of the selector's structure. This construction encompasses the CGI script disclosed in the prior art.
• "Controller": Petitioner proposed construing "controller" as "any mechanism used to cause an entity to perform some action." This broad construction was argued to cover the META-REFRESH HTML tag, which the patent identifies as the controller and which is also central to the prior art's disclosure.

5. Relief Requested

• Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-3, 6-13, 15-17, 27, 31, 41-42, 49, and 59 of the ’233 patent as unpatentable.