PTAB

IPR2015-01746

Google Inc v. Silver State Intellectual Technologies Inc

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Location Tagged Information Storage and Transceiver System
  • Brief Description: The ’824 patent discloses a system involving a personal communication device (PCD) with a GPS receiver and display. The PCD requests and receives maps and location-tagged, non-map data (e.g., points of interest) from remote data providers for display to the user.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Anticipation over Phelan - Claims 1-3, 7-9, and 13-15 are anticipated by Phelan under 35 U.S.C. §102.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Phelan (WO 97/07467).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Phelan disclosed every limitation of the challenged claims. Phelan described a system with a client device that requests map data from a map server and "overlay" information from a separate information server. This client/server architecture was alleged to be the claimed "location tagged information storage and transceiver system." Petitioner asserted that Phelan's information server, which stores details of facilities like hotels and restaurants associated with their geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude), taught the claimed computer memory storing both map data and non-map data. The database entries in Phelan, which associate non-map data (e.g., a "displayable name" or "icon") with map data (e.g., "longitude and latitude"), were argued to be the claimed "non-map data in linked data fields" that is "tagged to the map data." Phelan’s use of "standard database tools" to generate responses to user requests was mapped to the claimed "sorting application module."

Ground 2: Obviousness over Phelan and Abo - Claims 1-3, 5-9, and 11-15 are obvious over Phelan in view of Abo under 35 U.S.C. §103.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Phelan (WO 97/07467) and Abo (Patent 5,948,041).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground was presented as an alternative to Ground 1, addressing a potentially narrower construction of "linked data fields." Petitioner contended that if Phelan's general association of non-map and map data was deemed insufficient, Abo taught the specific data structure required. Abo disclosed an information center with a database where items like traffic or weather information were stored as files. Crucially, these files used a header containing location data that preceded the corresponding information data. Petitioner argued this file-header structure explicitly taught storing non-map data in "linked data fields" concerning specific locations and tagging it to the map data. Abo was also cited for its teachings on including non-map data such as "traffic information" and "weather information," which maps to the limitations of dependent claims 5, 6, 11, and 12.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Phelan's client-server mapping system with Abo's data structuring method to efficiently associate and manage related map and non-map data. This would be a simple design choice to improve data organization, enabling a client device to receive data where "the information data and the location data correspond with each other," as taught by Abo.
    • Expectation of Success: Combining a known data structuring technique (Abo) with a known mapping system (Phelan) was a predictable modification that would have yielded the expected result of a more organized and efficient database system.

Ground 3: Obviousness over Phelan and Fruchterman - Claims 4 and 10 are obvious over Phelan in view of Fruchterman under §103.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Phelan (WO 97/07467) and Fruchterman (Patent 5,470,233).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground specifically addressed claims 4 and 10, which require the non-map data to include "hours of operation." Petitioner argued that while Phelan disclosed the base system of claim 1 and mentioned displaying "levels of availability," Fruchterman explicitly taught this feature. Fruchterman disclosed a system for finding points of interest near a user's location, where points of interest have attributes including "hours of operation" that can be used to find locations that are currently "open."
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would have been motivated to modify Phelan's system to include the "hours of operation" data taught by Fruchterman to provide additional, user-friendly functionality. Enabling a user to determine if a point of interest is open is a common-sense improvement to a location-based information service.
    • Expectation of Success: Adding a known data type ("hours of operation") as an attribute for points of interest in a database was a simple design choice. A POSITA would have recognized this as a predictable substitution of one type of location-based data for another with a high expectation of success.
  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted an additional obviousness challenge (Ground 4) against claims 4 and 10 based on the combination of Phelan, Abo, and Fruchterman, which relied on the same rationale for adding "hours of operation" from Fruchterman to the combined Phelan and Abo system.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "linked data fields": Petitioner proposed this term be construed as "data structures that each store data that is associated with other data." This construction was central to Petitioner's strategy. It was argued to be broad enough to be met by Phelan's general association of point-of-interest information with geographic coordinates (the basis for the anticipation ground). However, Petitioner also argued that even under a narrower construction requiring a more specific data structure, the claims would be obvious in view of Abo, which taught storing location data in a file header linked to the corresponding non-map data.
  • "map data": Petitioner noted that a district court in related litigation had construed this term to mean "data from which a map is constructed... but which does not include information such as restaurant listings, hours of operation, traffic reports, weather reports, or yellow page entries." Petitioner argued that the prior art disclosed "map data" under both this narrower construction and its broader plain and ordinary meaning.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-15 of the ’824 patent as unpatentable.