Apple Inc v. Realtime Data LLC

1. Case Identification

• Case #: IPR2016-01737
• Patent #: 8,880,862
• Filed: September 9, 2016
• Petitioner(s): Apple Inc.
• Challenged Claims: 1-4, 6-7, 13, 23-34, 47-58, 83-96, 99-100, 105-111, 113, and 116

2. Patent Overview

• Title: Systems and Methods for Accelerated Loading of Operating Systems and Application Programs
• Brief Description: The ’862 patent discloses methods and systems for accelerating a computer's boot time. The invention involves loading a portion of "boot data" (e.g., operating system or application files) in a compressed form from a primary storage device to a faster memory, and then decompressing the data upon access to decrease the overall loading time.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Sukegawa and Dye - All Challenged Claims are obvious over Sukegawa in view of Dye.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Sukegawa (Patent 5,860,083) and Dye (Patent 6,145,069).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Sukegawa disclosed the foundational elements of the challenged claims, including a system that accelerates boot time by pre-loading "control information" (boot data) for the operating system (OS) and applications from a hard disk drive (HDD) into a faster flash memory. Sukegawa’s system uses a management information table that functions as a "boot data list." Petitioner asserted that Dye taught the missing element: using a compression/decompression engine to improve the performance and effective access rate of non-volatile storage systems like those in Sukegawa. The combination of Sukegawa’s pre-loading architecture with Dye’s compression technology would result in loading a portion of boot data in a compressed form, accessing it, and decompressing it at a rate that decreases boot time, as recited in independent claims 1 and 6. Petitioner further mapped how Sukegawa taught updating the boot data list, both through user-directed utility programs and automatic caching, satisfying limitations in claims 1, 2, 3, and 4.
  • Motivation to Combine: A person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine Dye’s compression technology with Sukegawa’s system to achieve the well-known goals of increasing storage density and further reducing boot time. Sukegawa’s stated goal was to increase startup speed, and Dye provided a known method for increasing the effective read access rate of storage devices. Applying Dye’s teachings to Sukegawa’s system was therefore a predictable and obvious improvement.
  • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success in combining these references, as implementing compression/decompression in a memory controller was a known and straightforward technique for improving data access speeds in computer systems.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Sukegawa and Dye in view of Settsu, Burrows, and/or Zwiegincew - All Challenged Claims are obvious over the primary combination, with additional motivation from secondary references.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Sukegawa (Patent 5,860,083), Dye (Patent 6,145,069), Settsu (Patent 6,374,353), Burrows (“On-line Data Compression in a Log-structured File System” (1992)), and Zwiegincew (Patent 6,317,818).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: This ground asserted that the teachings of Settsu, Burrows, and Zwiegincew provided additional, independent motivation for a POSITA to combine Sukegawa and Dye, reinforcing the obviousness of the claimed invention. The core mapping of Sukegawa and Dye from Ground 1 remained the same. Settsu explicitly taught a method of booting by loading compressed OS modules into memory and then decompressing them to reduce I/O processing and boot-up time. Zwiegincew addressed slow boot times by pre-fetching data from a hard disk based on a "scenario file" (a boot data list) and recognized the benefit of compressing this pre-fetched data. Burrows confirmed that using compression to increase the effective data access speed from a hard drive was a well-known technique in the art.
  • Motivation to Combine: These secondary references demonstrated that using compression to accelerate the boot process was a common and obvious design choice for a POSITA. They provided concrete examples and rationales for the exact combination of pre-loading boot files (Sukegawa) and compressing them (Dye). For example, Settsu showed the direct application to OS modules, and Zwiegincew showed the benefit of compressing pre-fetched data to avoid page-fault delays during boot. This collective knowledge would have prompted a POSITA to make the proposed combination.
  • Expectation of Success: The prevalence of these techniques in the prior art, as shown by the additional references, confirmed that a POSITA would have expected success in applying compression to a pre-loading boot architecture.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

• "boot data": Petitioner argued that for the purposes of the inter partes review (IPR), the term "boot data" should be construed broadly under the broadest reasonable interpretation standard. The proposed construction was not limited to just OS files but should include any "data associated with data requests expected to result from a system power-on/reset." This construction would encompass OS data, application data, and even document files, consistent with the patent’s specification and necessary to map the prior art, which disclosed loading various types of "control information" to accelerate system startup.

5. Relief Requested

• Petitioner requested institution of an IPR and cancellation of claims 1-4, 6-7, 13, 23-34, 47-58, 83-96, 99-100, 105-111, 113, and 116 of the ’862 patent as unpatentable.