PTAB

IPR2015-01631

ServiceNow Inc v. BMC Software Inc

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Petition
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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Spotlight Graphs
  • Brief Description: The ’992 patent discloses graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for network and IT service management. The technology focuses on using a graphical "spotlight" behind service icons to visually convey multiple service attributes—such as importance, severity, and Service Level Agreement (SLA) violation status—in a consolidated and easily understandable manner.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claim 1 is obvious over Lewis, Ainsworth, Runov, and Raffel.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Lewis (Patent 7,600,007), Ainsworth (Application # 2008/0295100), Runov (Application # 2006/0101347), and Raffel (Patent 6,169,534).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the combination of references taught every limitation of method claim 1. Lewis was asserted to teach the base system for monitoring IT services using a GUI that displays a graph with nodes representing services. Petitioner contended that Lewis also taught determining metrics for SLA violations and the severity of incidents causing them. Ainsworth was introduced for its teaching of determining a metric for the "importance" of a service within an SLA, such as designating a service as "mission critical." Runov was cited for its disclosure of a general-purpose "spotlight effect" used to visually highlight on-screen items to draw a user's attention. Finally, Raffel was argued to teach varying the visual characteristics of a graphical object, specifically mapping the object's size to its importance and its color to its severity level.
    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner argued a POSITA would combine the references to create a more effective and information-rich GUI, a well-known goal in the art. A POSITA would have integrated Ainsworth’s concept of service importance into Lewis’s management system to enable better prioritization of IT issues, especially since Ainsworth incorporates Lewis by reference and shares the same assignee. Runov’s general-purpose spotlight effect would have been an obvious technique to apply to Lewis’s display to highlight service nodes with alerts. Finally, a POSITA would have been motivated by Raffel to modify Runov's spotlight so its size and color would vary to convey the importance and severity data from Lewis and Ainsworth, thereby maximizing the information presented to the user in an efficient manner, consistent with the stated goals of Raffel.
    • Expectation of Success: Petitioner asserted success would be expected because the combination involved applying known and compatible GUI techniques to improve a known type of system for their predictable effects.

Ground 2: Claims 8 and 9 are obvious over Lewis, Ainsworth, Runov, and Raffel, in further view of Schwem.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Lewis (Patent 7,600,007), Ainsworth (Application # 2008/0295100), Runov (Application # 2006/0101347), Raffel (Patent 6,169,534), and Schwem (WO 98/21668).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground addressed system claims 8 and 9, which largely mirrored the functionality of method claim 1 but required the system to be distributed across a "first computer system" that generates the graph and a "second computer system" that displays it. Petitioner argued the combination of Lewis, Ainsworth, Runov, and Raffel taught the core "spotlight" functionality for the same reasons as in Ground 1. The additional reference, Schwem, was introduced to teach a web-based network management system where a server (a first computer system) generates a GUI that is transmitted over a network for display on a client device running a web browser (a second computer system). This architecture was argued to satisfy the distributed system limitations of claim 8. Claim 9, which depends on claim 8, was argued to be obvious as it simply required the software to run on the first computer system, which Petitioner asserted was disclosed by the primary references.
    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner contended that since Lewis explicitly disclosed its system could provide a "Web interface," a POSITA would naturally look to known web technologies, as taught by Schwem, to implement it. The motivation for using Schwem's client-server architecture was to gain the well-understood benefits of remote access and platform independence, allowing administrators to monitor the network from any device with a standard web browser.
    • Expectation of Success: Success would have been predictable, as implementing web capabilities for an existing software application was a routine and common practice in the art at the time.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "SLA violation": Petitioner proposed this term be construed as a "failure to achieve a service level objective specified in an SLA." This construction was based on the general understanding in the art and supported by extrinsic evidence, grounding the patent's terminology in established industry concepts.
  • "variable graphical image": Appearing in claim 8, this term was argued to be synonymous with the term "spotlight" from claim 1. Petitioner proposed it be construed as a "graphical image whose appearance may vary based on one or more states associated with a service level agreement (SLA)." This construction was critical to mapping the same prior art for highlighting and varying visual characteristics to both independent claims 1 and 8.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1, 8, and 9 of the ’992 patent as unpatentable.