PTAB

IPR2015-01714

Google Inc v. Core Wireless Licensing SARL

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Petition
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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Location Information Service for a Cellular Telecommunications Network
  • Brief Description: The ’667 patent discloses methods and systems for providing a location information service to mobile stations in a cellular network. The purported innovation is enabling this service without requiring prior registration of the mobile station with the location finding service.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Johansson and Boss - Claims 1-5 and 8-15 are obvious over Johansson in view of Boss.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Johansson (Patent 6,442,391) and Boss (Patent 7,444,156).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Johansson taught the core elements of a cellular mobile communication system providing a "mobile locating service." This included a "mobile locating node" (server) that, in response to a request, establishes the location of a mobile station (MS) by retrieving data from a mobile switching center (MSC) based on the cell occupied by the MS. Johansson also explicitly disclosed that certain authorization and registration steps could be omitted, thus teaching the "without pre-registering" limitation. While Johansson disclosed sending the location information to a "second party" service provider, it did not explicitly send it back to the originating MS. Petitioner contended that Boss supplied this missing element by disclosing a cellular telephone location service where requested location information is transmitted back to and displayed on the user’s cellular telephone.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine the teachings of Boss with Johansson to improve the utility of Johansson’s system. It was argued to be a common-sense modification to deliver the location data back to the mobile station that requested it, as taught by Boss, so the user could benefit from the service (e.g., for directions). Both patents addressed the same field of location-based services in cellular networks, making Boss a logical source to consult for improving user-facing features.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a high expectation of success in combining these systems. Both Johansson and Boss operated within standard GSM cellular network architectures, ensuring their respective features were compatible and the integration would have been predictable.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Johansson, Boss, and Reed - Claims 6, 7, and 15 are obvious over Johansson, Boss, and Reed.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Johansson (Patent 6,442,391), Boss (Patent 7,444,156), and Reed (Patent 6,275,707).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the combination of Johansson and Boss to address additional dependent claims. Claim 6 required "re-directing the message... to another mobile station," and claim 15 required "circuitry operable to send the received message to another mobile station." Petitioner introduced Reed to teach these limitations. Reed disclosed a "peer-to-peer mode of operation" in wireless communication systems that explicitly enabled transferring a location estimate from a first transceiver to a second transceiver. This peer-to-peer data transfer directly mapped to the re-directing and sending limitations. Claim 7, which added modifying the message before re-directing, was argued to be an obvious addition to facilitate communication, such as by adding addressing information or user context.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Reed’s peer-to-peer functionality with the location-finding system of Johansson and Boss to add desirable features, such as sharing one’s location with another user. This would improve the system's speed, robustness, and utility by allowing mobile stations to share location information directly. Since all three references operate in the field of wireless cellular communications, incorporating Reed’s known peer-to-peer methods was presented as a predictable design choice.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination was asserted to be predictable, as implementing Reed’s peer-to-peer communication protocols within the cellular systems of Johansson and Boss involved well-understood principles of wireless communication.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "location message server": Petitioner proposed this term should be construed under the broadest reasonable interpretation as "a server that generates location finding information." This construction was based on the term's use in the claims and its description in the specification.
  • "without pre-registering the mobile station... for the location finding service": This was a critical negative limitation. Petitioner argued for the construction "without recording that a mobile station can take part in a location finding service prior to a request for location finding information." The argument emphasized the temporal aspect—the lack of registration occurs prior to the service request—which was central to distinguishing the claims from prior art requiring users to be part of pre-defined locating groups.
  • "circuitry operable to..." (Means-Plus-Function): Petitioner contended that the "circuitry operable to..." phrases in claims 13 and 15 were means-plus-function terms governed by 35 U.S.C. §112, para. 6, because they failed to recite sufficiently definite structure. While arguing that the ’667 patent failed to disclose the corresponding structure, Petitioner, for the purposes of the proceeding, assumed the structure was a "mobile station (MS), or equivalents thereof," based on the Patent Owner's positions in co-pending litigation.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-15 of the ’667 patent as unpatentable.