PTAB

IPR2016-00964

Bungie Inc v. Acceleration Bay LLC

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Network Broadcast Using Flooding on a Defined Graph Topology
  • Brief Description: The ’634 patent relates to a computer network for broadcasting information from one participant to all others. The invention claims the use of a "flooding" technique on networks configured with a specific topology defined as being non-complete, "m-regular," and "m-connected."

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1-18 are obvious over Shoubridge under 35 U.S.C. §103.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Shoubridge (a 1997 IEEE paper titled "Hybrid Routing in Dynamic Networks" by Peter J. Shoubridge & Arek Dadej).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Shoubridge taught the core limitations of the challenged claims. Shoubridge disclosed a "constrained flooding" protocol, a non-routing table-based method, to broadcast data. It analyzed this protocol on a 64-node network where each node connects to four adjacent neighbors, forming a "manhattan grid network that has been wrapped around itself as a torus." Petitioner asserted this disclosed topology is inherently non-complete (64 nodes with only 4 connections each), 4-regular (each node has exactly 4 connections), and 4-connected (requires removal of at least 4 nodes to partition the network), directly mapping to the ’634 patent’s claimed network structure. Shoubridge also taught using sequence numbering to identify and discard duplicate packets, preventing endless loops.
    • Motivation to Combine: This ground asserted that a Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA), starting with the Shoubridge reference, would find it obvious to implement the remaining minor features of the claims. The motivation was not to combine distinct references, but to apply general, well-known principles to the system disclosed in Shoubridge. For example, a POSITA would be motivated to use the sequence numbers disclosed in Shoubridge for the common and predictable purpose of queuing and re-arranging out-of-order data packets, a standard feature in reliable data transmission. Likewise, implementing the network nodes as peers, using TCP/IP protocols, or deploying the network over the Internet were all presented as obvious, conventional design choices for a POSITA at the time.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a high expectation of success in making these modifications. Applying sequence numbers for packet reordering or using standard protocols like TCP/IP were routine, well-understood tasks in network engineering with predictable and reliable outcomes.

Ground 2: Claims 10-11, 15, and 18 are anticipated by Shoubridge under 35 U.S.C. §102.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Shoubridge (a 1997 IEEE paper titled "Hybrid Routing in Dynamic Networks").
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Shoubridge explicitly and inherently disclosed every element of the narrower set of challenged claims. Relying on the same mapping from Ground 1, Petitioner asserted that Shoubridge’s disclosure of a network with evenly distributed traffic and identical nodes constituted a peer-to-peer communications network (claims 10 and 18). The "constrained flooding" mechanism, which uses sequence numbers to "discard" packets that have already been seen, was argued to be a direct teaching of a broadcast component that "disregards received data that it has already sent" (claim 11). Finally, Petitioner contended that Shoubridge's description of network "nodes" with processing and memory requirements inherently disclosed that the participants are computers (claim 15). Because all limitations were allegedly present in a single reference, Petitioner argued the claims were anticipated.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Petitioner proposed constructions for the key topological terms, arguing they were critical to understanding how the prior art met the claim limitations.
    • "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."
    • "m-connected": Construed as a network where "dividing the network into two or more separate parts would require the removal of at least m nodes."

5. Relief Requested

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