PTAB

IPR2015-01951

Activision Blizzard Inc v. Acceleration Bay LLC

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Information Delivery Service in a Computer Network
  • Brief Description: The ’966 patent describes an information delivery service where data is broadcast from one participant to all others within a computer network. The core of the claimed invention is the specific network topology: a non-complete, m-regular graph where each participant (node) has connections to exactly 'm' other participants, and information is propagated using a "flooding" technique.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over DirectPlay and Lin - Claims 1-17 are obvious over DirectPlay in view of Lin.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: DirectPlay (a 1998 book, INSIDE DIRECTX, by Bargen & Donnelly) and Lin (a 1999 technical report, "Gossip versus Deterministic Flooding," by Meng-Jang Lin et al.).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that DirectPlay, a flexible Application Program Interface (API) for developing multiplayer games, disclosed a generic "information delivery service" for a plurality of participants. It taught the need for reliable and scalable network communications for large numbers of players but did not mandate a specific network topology. Petitioner asserted that Lin disclosed the specific network structure missing from DirectPlay: the use of a "flooding" broadcast protocol over a non-complete, m-regular, and m-connected network (specifically, "Harary graphs") to achieve high reliability and scalability with low message overhead.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine these references for several reasons. DirectPlay was explicitly designed as a flexible interface to work with various network communication channels, and Lin disclosed an advantageous one. Both references addressed the same technical problem of reliably broadcasting information to multiple participants. A POSITA implementing the large-scale gaming environments envisioned by DirectPlay would have been motivated to use the scalable and reliable network topology taught by Lin to predictably improve the gaming experience.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a high expectation of success, as combining a well-known, reliable network protocol (Lin) with a gaming API designed to accommodate various protocols (DirectPlay) would predictably result in a functional and improved system.

Ground 2: Anticipation by Lin - Claims 1-7, 10, 11, 16, and 17 are anticipated by Lin.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Lin (a 1999 technical report by Meng-Jang Lin et al.).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner contended that Lin, by itself, disclosed every element of the challenged claims. Lin described a broadcast protocol for disseminating information to all processors in a network. This protocol used "flooding" over a network configured as a "Harary graph." Petitioner argued these Harary graphs are explicitly described as being m-regular, non-complete, and m-connected. Lin provided specific examples, such as an 8-node, 4-regular graph (H8,4), which met all limitations of independent claim 1, including having each participant connected to at least three neighbors (four, in this case), being m-regular (m=4), and being non-complete (8 participants > 4+2). Lin also disclosed peer-to-peer connections and that a computer could host multiple participants in its network simulations.

Ground 3: Obviousness over Lin and POSITA Knowledge - Claims 6-10 and 17 are obvious over Lin in view of the knowledge of a POSITA.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Lin and the general knowledge of a Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground served as an alternative for several dependent claims. Petitioner argued that to the extent Lin did not explicitly teach certain conventional features, it would have been obvious for a POSITA to implement them. For claims 6 and 7 (participants as peers, peer-to-peer connections), Lin's disclosure that "no processor has a specific role to play" implied a peer architecture. For claim 8 (TCP/IP connections), a POSITA would have naturally implemented Lin's "generic networks" using the ubiquitous TCP/IP protocol. For claims 9, 10, and 17, it was argued to be obvious that Lin's "processors" were processes executing on computers and that the "ns simulator" used by Lin would run on a single computer, thereby hosting multiple participants.
    • Motivation to Combine: The motivation was to implement the abstract network protocol described in Lin using well-known, standard, and readily available components and architectures that were common knowledge in the art at the time.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "m-regular": Construed as "each node is connected to exactly m other nodes."
  • "non-complete graph": Construed as a "graph in which at least two nodes are not connected to each other."
  • "means for identifying a broadcast channel for a topic of interest" (claim 13): Petitioner proposed that the function is "identifying a broadcast channel for a topic of interest" and the corresponding structure is "a directory web site where consumers can locate and subscribe to broadcast channels of interest" or equivalents.
  • "means for connecting to the identified broadcast channel" (claim 13): Petitioner proposed that the function is "connecting to the identified broadcast channel" and the corresponding structure is a software "broadcaster component" that interfaces with an "information delivery service application program" or equivalents.

5. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

  • Petitioner disclosed the concurrent filing of a separate IPR petition against the same ’966 patent, which asserted obviousness over a different combination of prior art (DirectPlay and Shoubridge). Petitioner requested that the Board institute review on both petitions because they involved different combinations and substantive analyses. If the Board were to institute on only one, Petitioner requested it be the instant petition based on the DirectPlay/Lin combination.

6. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-17 of the ’966 patent as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 102 and/or § 103.