PTAB

IPR2016-01238

WebPower Inc v. WAG Acquisition LLC

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Streaming Media Buffering System
  • Brief Description: The ’141 patent discloses systems and methods for buffering streaming media over a network like the Internet. The core concept involves a server transmitting media data elements to a user's media player at a rate more rapid than the playback rate, particularly when the user's buffer is not full, to ensure uninterrupted playback.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Anticipation over Chen - Claims 1-2, 4-7, 9-11, 13-16, 18-20, 23-24, and 26-28 are anticipated under 35 U.S.C. §102 by Chen.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Chen (Patent 5,822,524).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Chen, which was not cited during prosecution, discloses every element of the challenged claims. Chen teaches a client-server system for streaming multimedia files that are separated into sequential data packets, each with a unique packet sequence number. Critically, Chen discloses monitoring the client-side buffer using "water marks" and entering a "Rush" mode to transmit data "as fast as possible" when the buffer level falls below a low water mark. This directly corresponds to the ’141 patent's core teaching of sending data more rapidly than the playback rate to maintain a sufficient buffer. Chen further discloses a client agent that maintains a record of the last received packet's sequence number and requests retransmission of lost packets, mapping to the ’141 patent’s claim limitations regarding serial identifiers and client requests.
    • Key Aspects: The petition emphasized that Chen’s “Rush” mode is functionally identical to the ’141 patent’s central inventive concept of accelerated data transmission to prevent buffer underrun.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Chen in view of Willebeek - Claims 8, 17, and 21 are obvious over Chen in view of Willebeek.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Chen (Patent 5,822,524) and Willebeek ("Bamba – Audio and Video Streaming Over the Internet," IBM Journal of Research and Development, Mar. 1998).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground addressed dependent claims requiring the server to obtain streaming media from a live source. Petitioner asserted that while Chen primarily discloses streaming from stored files, Willebeek explicitly teaches a system for streaming live audio and video. Willebeek describes a "capture station" that receives a live feed, packetizes the data, and transfers it to a server with a circular buffer containing the most recent seconds of the live transmission. The argument was that Willebeek supplies the "live source" limitation missing from Chen.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Willebeek's live-streaming capability with Chen's buffer management system. Willebeek itself noted that streaming from live sources was becoming increasingly common on the web. Therefore, modifying Chen's existing architecture to accommodate this popular content source would have been a logical and desirable improvement to increase its utility.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination was argued to be predictable and straightforward. Both Chen and Willebeek describe systems that utilize packetized data, making their teachings technologically compatible. Implementing Willebeek's capture station as a front-end for Chen's server would be a simple application of a known technique (live capture) to a known system (buffered streaming) to achieve a predictable result (live buffered streaming).

Ground 3: Obviousness over Carmel in view of Willebeek - Claims 1-2, 4-9, 15, 24, and 26-27 are obvious over Carmel in view of Willebeek.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Carmel (Patent 6,389,473) and Willebeek.

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Carmel discloses most limitations of the independent claims, including a system for real-time multimedia broadcasting where a data stream is divided into "slices," each with a unique index. Carmel’s system also increases the data transmission rate in response to detected lag, thereby teaching transmission at a rate faster than playback. However, Petitioner contended that Carmel does not explicitly teach the limitation of transmitting requests to maintain a sufficient number of data elements for uninterrupted playback. Willebeek was introduced to supply this teaching, as it discloses a client player that automatically calculates and preloads the amount of data needed to maintain continuous playback, especially during periods of network congestion.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would have been motivated to combine the client-side preloading and buffering strategy of Willebeek with the real-time broadcasting system of Carmel. Both references operate in the same technical field. The combination represents the use of a known technique (Willebeek's preloading for uninterrupted playback) to improve a similar device (Carmel's streaming system), a recognized rationale for combining prior art.
    • Expectation of Success: The result would be predictable: enhancing Carmel's system to provide more robust, continuous playback, which is the exact problem Willebeek's preloading technique was designed to solve.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted additional challenges, including that claims 10-11 and 13-21 were anticipated by Carmel alone. Further obviousness grounds argued that modifying Chen or Carmel to use a "constant bit rate," as taught by the well-known MPEG-1 standard (ISO-11172), would have been a simple design choice for a POSITA.

4. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-28 of the ’141 patent as unpatentable.