PTAB

IPR2016-00963

Bungie Inc v. Acceleration Bay LLC

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Key Events
Petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Broadcast Channel
  • Brief Description: The ’634 patent describes a computer network for broadcasting information from one participant to all others without using routing tables. The technology centers on a "flooding" protocol implemented over a specific network topology defined as a non-complete, m-regular, and m-connected graph.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Lin - Claims 1-18 are obvious over Lin in view of the knowledge of a Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA).

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Lin (a 1999 technical report by Meng-Jang Lin, et al., titled "Gossip versus Deterministic Flooding").
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Lin disclosed all key limitations of the challenged claims. Lin described broadcasting messages using a "flooding" protocol over a "Harary graph," which is a well-known network topology. Petitioner asserted that Lin’s Harary graphs inherently meet the claim limitations of being m-regular (each node has exactly m neighbors), m-connected (resilient to failure), and non-complete (not all nodes are directly connected). Lin’s "flooding" protocol, where a node forwards a message to all its neighbors, was presented as directly corresponding to the broadcasting method recited in independent claims 1 and 10. For dependent claims, Petitioner argued that features like peer-to-peer connections (claims 4-5), execution as a computer process (claim 7), and use of TCP/IP (claim 6) were either directly taught by Lin’s disclosure of generic, peer-based networks or would have been obvious implementations for a POSITA at the time.
    • Motivation to Combine: The primary motivation was not to combine distinct references but to apply the common knowledge of a POSITA to the teachings of Lin. For example, Petitioner contended that while Lin described controlled flooding by only forwarding a message the "first time" it is received, a POSITA would have found it obvious and routine to use sequence numbers to implement this control. This would directly address the claim limitation that "data received out of order can be queued and rearranged." Similarly, applying Lin’s generic broadcast protocols to common network standards like TCP/IP was argued to be a simple and obvious design choice.
    • Expectation of Success: Petitioner asserted that a POSITA would have had a high expectation of success because the techniques proposed for implementation (e.g., using sequence numbers, applying protocols over TCP/IP) were well-known, simple, and standard practices in network engineering long before the patent's filing date.

Ground 2: Anticipation by Lin - Claims 10, 15, and 18 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: Building on the arguments from Ground 1, Petitioner contended that for claims 10, 15, and 18, Lin’s disclosure was so complete that it anticipated them under 35 U.S.C. §102. Petitioner argued that Lin expressly or inherently disclosed every element of independent claim 10, which recites a broadcast channel with peer-to-peer communications. Lin’s description of a network where "no processor has a specific role to play" was mapped to the "peers" limitation. The Harary graph itself was argued to be the claimed "broadcast channel," and its structure inherently provided an "indication" of neighbor participants. Dependent claim 15 (participant is a computer) and claim 18 (participants are peers) were argued to be explicitly taught by Lin's disclosure of a network of interconnected "processors" or computers with no hierarchy.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • “m-regular”: Petitioner proposed this term means "each node is connected to exactly m other nodes."
  • “non-complete graph”: Petitioner proposed this term means a "graph in which at least two nodes are not connected to each other." This construction was supported by the claim language itself, which recites that the number of participants is at least two greater than m, necessarily resulting in a non-complete graph.
  • “m-connected”: Petitioner proposed this term means "dividing the network into two or more separate parts would require the removal of at least m nodes," reflecting the network's fault tolerance.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-18 of the ’634 patent as unpatentable.