ServiceNow Inc v. BMC Software Inc

1. Case Identification

• Case #: IPR2015-01211
• Patent #: 7,617,073
• Filed: May 15, 2015
• Petitioner(s): ServiceNow, Inc.
• Patent Owner(s): BMC Software, Inc.
• Challenged Claims: 1-4

2. Patent Overview

• Title: System and Method for Assessing and Indicating the Health of Components
• Brief Description: The ’073 patent discloses a system for managing computer-based systems by visually indicating the health status of information technology ("IT") components and their subcomponents. The system purports to improve upon prior art systems by providing visual indications for both a parent IT component and an IT subcomponent simultaneously in a single display window, reducing the need for a user to "drill down" through hierarchical menus.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Anticipation - Claims 1-4 are anticipated by Lewis under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b).

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Lewis (International Publication No. WO 00/72183 A2).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Lewis, which discloses a system for "Service Level Management," teaches every limitation of the challenged claims. The petition mapped the claimed "IT component" to a higher-level, computer-based service in Lewis, such as the "ICS Web site service 271" shown in Lewis's Figure 35. The claimed "IT subcomponent" was mapped to a constituent network component upon which the service depends, such as the "Web server 275" that is part of the ICS Web site service.
  • Petitioner contended that Lewis’s software-based agents meet the claimed "processor" limitations. Specifically, the claimed "IT component processor" was mapped to Lewis’s "alarm correlation agent," a software entity that receives alarms from lower-level components to determine the overall health status of a service. The "IT subcomponent processor" was mapped to Lewis’s "monitoring agent" software, which monitors individual network components for faults and generates alarms based on their operational status.
  • Finally, Petitioner argued that the claimed "renderer" is disclosed by Lewis’s graphical user interface (GUI), which displays icons representing both the service ("IT component") and the underlying network device ("IT subcomponent") in a single window (Figure 35). Lewis explicitly teaches that if a fault is detected in a server, "both icons might turn red, indicating an alarm." Petitioner asserted this meets the limitation of showing first and second indicators for the component and subcomponent that are separately visible at the same time on a single display. For dependent claims, Petitioner argued Lewis discloses using colors as indicators (claim 2) and that its "alarm correlation agent" and "monitoring agent" can be implemented as rules-based systems (claims 3 and 4).

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

Petitioner argued that the following claim terms, under the broadest reasonable interpretation, were critical to its anticipation argument.

• "IT component": Petitioner proposed the construction "part of an information technology system, i.e. a system that relies at least in part on storing, retrieving, transmitting or manipulating data or information." This broad construction was argued to encompass not just discrete hardware or software but also "virtual components" like the business services and processes described in Lewis. This interpretation was central to mapping the term to Lewis's high-level "ICS Web site service."

• "IT subcomponent": Petitioner proposed construing this term as "an IT component (a) that is part of another IT component, or (b) that is used or depended upon by another IT component." This construction was necessary to map the term to a constituent network element in Lewis (e.g., a web server) that is part of a larger service and upon which the service's functionality depends.

• "processor": Petitioner argued for the construction "any combination of software and/or hardware." The petition asserted that limiting "processor" to only a hardware device like a CPU would be improper, as the patent specification describes the computation of health status via complex algorithms and rules-based systems, which are functions of software. This broad construction was essential for Petitioner's argument that Lewis’s software-based "monitoring agent" and "alarm correlation agent" satisfy the "IT subcomponent processor" and "IT component processor" limitations, respectively.

5. Relief Requested

• Petitioner requests institution of inter partes review (IPR) and cancellation of claims 1-4 of the ’073 patent as unpatentable.