IBM Corp v. ZitoVault LLC

1. Case Identification

• Case #: IPR2016-01025
• Patent #: 6,484,257
• Filed: May 10, 2016
• Petitioner(s): International Business Machines Corporation and Softlayer Technologies, Inc.
• Patent Owner(s): ZitoVault, LLC.
• Challenged Claims: 1, 3, 5-8, and 10

2. Patent Overview

• Title: System and Method for Maintaining N Number of Simultaneous Cryptographic Sessions Using a Distributed Computing Environment
• Brief Description: The ’257 patent discloses techniques for managing multiple cryptographic sessions over a distributed network. The invention addresses latency and processing overload by distributing the computationally intensive workload of encryption and decryption across multiple "agent" servers coordinated by a main "gateway" server.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Anticipation of Claims 6 and 10 under §102 over Feinberg

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Feinberg (Patent 6,065,046).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Feinberg teaches every limitation of claims 6 and 10. Feinberg discloses a scalable client-server system with a primary server and multiple secondary servers that handle encrypted user traffic. When the primary server cannot handle a request due to load, it enlists the "least busy" secondary server to process the request. Petitioner asserted this directly teaches a "scaleable software crypto system" (claim 6) and a "distributed automaton" (claim 10) where additional agent servers are enlisted to support incremental secure sessions in response to maintaining performance at a desired level. By shunting traffic to eliminate bandwidth and server load issues, Feinberg's system necessarily maintains network performance.

Ground 2: Obviousness of Claims 1, 3, 6, and 10 under §103 over Feinberg in view of Bhaskaran

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Feinberg (Patent 6,065,046) and Bhaskaran (Patent 6,266,335).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Feinberg provides a foundational distributed network where a main server shunts encrypted traffic to secondary servers based on load. Bhaskaran was cited for its teachings on more advanced load-balancing, specifically disclosing the even distribution of traffic on a per-packet basis across a cluster of servers and the ability to dynamically add or remove servers to scale with traffic demands. Petitioner contended that combining Bhaskaran’s teachings of even workload distribution would render obvious claim 3’s limitation of "partitioning the client bandwidth among N agents such that every agent receives 1/N of the encrypted bandwidth." Further, Bhaskaran’s teaching of adding or removing servers to handle "any demand" was argued to render obvious the scalability limitations of claims 6 and 10.
  • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner asserted that a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would have been motivated to combine the references because both address the same fundamental problem of overcoming network bandwidth limitations in distributed systems handling encrypted traffic. A POSITA would naturally look to incorporate Bhaskaran's known and complementary techniques for even load distribution and dynamic scaling into Feinberg's similar architecture to achieve predictable performance improvements.
  • Expectation of Success: Petitioner claimed the combination involves the simple application of known load-balancing and scaling techniques from Bhaskaran to the similar network architecture of Feinberg. This would have yielded the predictable result of a more robust and evenly loaded system, giving a POSITA a reasonable expectation of success.

Ground 3: Obviousness of Claims 5, 7, and 8 under §103 over Feinberg in view of Molva

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Feinberg (Patent 6,065,046) and Molva (R. Molva et al., Authentication of Mobile Users, IEEE Network 1994).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Feinberg's system again provided the base network architecture. Molva was introduced for its disclosure of a "fast handover protocol" for maintaining a secure session when a user moves between network domains. In Molva, the original server passes the session key to a new server and the user is notified to redirect communications. Petitioner argued this directly teaches the limitations in claims 5 and 7 concerning a main server detecting a saturated agent, finding an alternate agent, "passing the session key," and "notifying a corresponding networked client to redirect the secure session."
  • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner argued a POSITA would combine these references to improve the fault tolerance and robustness of Feinberg's system. When a secondary server in Feinberg becomes overloaded or unavailable (i.e., "saturated"), a known approach to maintaining a continuous user session would be to implement a session handoff mechanism, as taught by Molva. The motivation stems from addressing the common problem of server unavailability in a distributed network.
  • Expectation of Success: Petitioner asserted that incorporating Molva's session handoff method into Feinberg's architecture would have been a straightforward application of a known technique to a known problem, yielding the predictable benefit of uninterrupted secure communications.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

• "A Distributed Automaton ... / Automata" (Claims 1 and 10): Petitioner proposed this term be construed as "a collection of software that encrypts and/or decrypts packets." This broad interpretation was based on the specification's description of software residing on agent servers to perform decryption. This construction was central to arguing that the secondary servers in the prior art, which run decryption software, meet the "automaton" limitation.
• "Registration Entity" (Claim 5): Petitioner proposed this term be construed as "data structure(s) containing identification information for agents and clients in the network and keys used to encrypt and decrypt communications within the network." This construction allowed Petitioner to argue that Feinberg's primary server, which stores lists of secondary servers, user authentication data, and encryption keys in memory, contains the claimed "registration entity."

5. Relief Requested

• Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1, 3, 5-8, and 10 of the ’257 patent as unpatentable.