PTAB

IPR2016-00594

Xactware Solutions Inc v. Pictometry Intl Corp

Key Events

Petition

petition

Title: System and Process for Roof Measurement Using Aerial Imagery
Brief Description: The ’880 patent discloses a system for determining attributes of a building’s roof structure. The process involves a user inputting initial location data, which displays a top-down aerial image, and then moving a visual marker on the image to a more precise final location on the roof to retrieve one or more oblique images corresponding to that final location.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Abhyanker (Application # 2007/0220174).
Core Argument:
- Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Abhyanker discloses every element of the challenged claims. Abhyanker teaches a system for placing markers in a geo-spatial mapping environment by inputting a street address. It displays aerial images (including top-down and oblique views) with a marker that a user can reposition via a drag-and-drop algorithm to a more precise location, such as directly over a building's roof. Abhyanker’s system assigns geographic coordinates to the marker’s final location and includes a "locking module" for the user to accept and save the new position, which then updates the various image views.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Pictometry (a July 2007 user guide titled "Pictometry Visual Intelligence, Electronic Field Study User Guide").
Core Argument:
- Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner asserted that the Pictometry user guide discloses a system that anticipates the challenged claims. The guide describes software that provides aerial images based on an address search, including orthogonal ("straight down") and oblique views. A movable "Navigation Point" (a red crosshair) appears over the searched location, which the user can reposition to a more precise final location by panning the image. The system displays the coordinates of the new location and allows the user to accept the final position, which refreshes the available images, including a "PentaView" feature providing multiple oblique views corresponding to the new marker location.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Abhyanker (Application # 2007/0220174) and Hsieh (a November 1995 Carnegie Mellon publication).
Core Argument:
- Prior Art Mapping: Abhyanker was presented as the base system, providing the user interface for inputting a location, displaying aerial images, and repositioning a marker. Hsieh was argued to supply the missing limitation of claim 4: generating outline drawings of roof planes by tracing from imagery. Hsieh discloses a semi-automated modeling system that constructs 3D building models, including roofs, by outlining roof features from one or more aerial images.
- Motivation to Combine: Petitioner argued a POSITA would combine these references to improve the functionality of Abhyanker's mapping system. Adding Hsieh's known technique for outline model generation to Abhyanker's system would be a combination of prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results. The fact that figures in Abhyanker illustrate outlines of building structures was argued to provide a teaching or suggestion for the combination.
- Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success in integrating Hsieh's model generation into Abhyanker's image manipulation system, as it involved applying a known improvement to a similar existing device.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Pictometry (July 2007 user guide) and Hsieh (November 1995 publication).
Core Argument:
- Prior Art Mapping: This ground mirrored the logic of Ground 3, but used Pictometry as the base system. Pictometry provides the core system for viewing and manipulating aerial imagery with a movable marker. Hsieh again supplies the teaching of generating outline drawings of roof planes from those images.
- Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Pictometry's system with Hsieh's modeling functionality to enhance its capabilities. Petitioner noted that Pictometry already taught a measurement tool that could generate outlines of structures, providing a direct motivation to incorporate Hsieh's more advanced roof-modeling techniques to improve the existing system.
- Expectation of Success: There was a reasonable expectation of success because the combination involved adding a known outlining/modeling feature (Hsieh) to an existing commercial system (Pictometry) that already possessed basic measurement and annotation tools.

"location data": Petitioner proposed this term means "information which uniquely identifies a geographic position, such as latitude and longitude coordinates and/or a street address." This construction was argued to be necessary to map the address-input features of the prior art to the claims.
"visual marker": Petitioner proposed this term means "any shape, pointer, label, icon, avatar or other indicator which is movable or displayable on a computer screen...and which may be visually differentiated from other objects." This broad construction was used to argue that the markers in Abhyanker and the crosshair in Pictometry met the claim limitation.
"final location": Petitioner proposed this term means "a location at which a marker is placed and which corresponds to unique latitude and longitude coordinates." This construction was central to tying the repositioned marker in the prior art to the claimed "final location" that triggers the display of new imagery.

Petitioner requested institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-10 and 13-20 of the ’880 patent as unpatentable.