PTAB

IPR2015-01085

Amazon.com Inc v. Pragmatus Mobile LLC

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Petition
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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Personal Security and Tracking System
  • Brief Description: The ’795 patent discloses a personal security and tracking system for locating an individual in distress. The system comprises a separate alarm trigger and a portable signaling unit, where activation of the trigger causes the signaling unit to generate an alarm signal, enabling a locating system to identify its position.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Fast - Claims 1-15, 17-21, 27, and 29 are obvious over Fast.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Fast (Patent 5,497,149).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Fast’s “security beacon” is analogous to the claimed portable signaling unit and discloses all key elements of the independent claims. Petitioner asserted Fast teaches a portable, battery-powered device with a speaker (for an audible alarm), a microphone, an LCD screen (display), a microprocessor (microcontroller), a keypad (user interface), a cellular transceiver (fulfilling the roles of the claimed transmitter and first receiver), and an additional non-cellular receiver (second receiver) for communicating with another security beacon. Fast’s beacon transmits location and other data over a cellular network to a monitoring terminal, and can receive messages back, thus meeting the core limitations of independent claims 1 and 27.
    • Motivation to Combine: This ground relies on a single reference.
    • Expectation of Success: This ground relies on a single reference.
    • Key Aspects: Petitioner contended that although Fast discloses a wired “call button,” it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) to implement a wireless radio connection. This modification is suggested by Fast’s own disclosure of using a radio remote control to operate the beacon when tracking a vehicle.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Fast and Lookofsky - Claim 16 is obvious over Fast in view of Lookofsky.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Fast (Patent 5,497,149), Lookofsky (Patent 5,416,730).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner asserted that Fast teaches the base system of claim 1, while Lookofsky provides the additional limitations required by dependent claim 16. Specifically, Lookofsky’s arm-mounted computer discloses a second user interface (add-on switches for power/reset) that is physically separate from its first user interface (a keyboard). Lookofsky further teaches a housing where both user interfaces are on a first surface (the display module), and the charging interface is on a second, different surface (the power module).
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Fast and Lookofsky because both references address the design of wearable tracking and computing devices and share common technological foundations. Fast acknowledges that various housing configurations are possible for its beacon. A POSITA would naturally look to known, predictable solutions like those in Lookofsky to arrange the user and charging interfaces on Fast’s small, wearable device.
    • Expectation of Success: Combining the references involved applying a known and finite set of design choices for interface placement to an existing system, which would yield predictable results.

Ground 3: Obviousness over Fast and Layson - Claims 22-26 and 28 are obvious over Fast in view of Layson.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Fast (Patent 5,497,149), Layson (Patent 5,731,757).

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Fast discloses a system with two-way data communication and at least one-way voice communication (from the beacon to a monitoring terminal). Layson, which also teaches a portable tracking apparatus, explicitly discloses establishing two-way voice communications between the device user and a dispatch operator over a cellular network. Petitioner argued that adding Layson’s two-way voice capability to Fast’s system would render claims requiring this feature obvious.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would be motivated to enhance the functionality of Fast’s emergency beacon by incorporating the established two-way voice technology from Layson. This combination would be a simple substitution of a one-way voice system with a two-way one to achieve the predictable and beneficial result of allowing an operator to speak with a person in distress, thereby improving emergency response.
    • Expectation of Success: Since Fast’s beacon already contained a cellular telephone, speaker, and microphone, integrating Layson's two-way voice functionality would have been a straightforward modification with a high expectation of success.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted further obviousness challenges for claims 30-33 based on combinations of Fast, Lookofsky, and Layson, with Pawlish (Patent 5,276,916) added to teach a specific microphone placement for claim 32.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Petitioner adopted several claim constructions from a related International Trade Commission proceeding, asserting they were consistent with the broadest reasonable interpretation standard. Two key constructions were:
    • "second receiver": Construed as "a radio receiver different from the first receiver." This construction was critical for mapping Fast's "additional receiver" (for non-cellular signals between beacons) to the claims.
    • "standby mode": Construed as "a mode where only essential circuits are powered on, the essential circuits being only those circuits necessary to sense the conditions for leaving the standby mode." This was used to argue that Fast’s power-conserving "deactivated mode" met the claim limitation, as it powered only the necessary circuits to detect an activation event.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-33 of Patent 8,466,795 as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.