PTAB

IPR2017-00744

Comcast Cable Communications LLC v. Rovi Guides Inc

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Petition
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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Interactive Television Program Guide with Simultaneous Watch and Record Capabilities
  • Brief Description: The ’512 patent discloses a system and method for an interactive television program guide (IPG) that manages operations on a device with multiple tuners. The system determines when a requested operation (e.g., recording a program) creates a conflict because all tuners are in use, displays an alert to the user, and provides the user an opportunity to cancel an existing tuner function to free up a tuner for the new operation.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1-24 are obvious over Nagano in view of Alexander.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Nagano (Patent 6,240,240) and Alexander (Patent 6,177,931).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Nagano teaches the core elements of the challenged claims but in the context of a single-tuner system. Specifically, Nagano discloses an IPG that detects scheduling conflicts for recording programs, displays a visual alert to the user (e.g., a color change), and allows the user to resolve the conflict by canceling one of the scheduled recordings. Petitioner asserted that Alexander remedies Nagano’s lack of a multi-tuner system by explicitly teaching an IPG that controls a system with a first and a second tuner. Alexander also discloses detecting conflicts in recording instructions and prompting the user to resolve the conflict. The combination of Nagano’s user interface for conflict resolution with Alexander’s multi-tuner architecture allegedly discloses all limitations of independent claims 1 and 13.
    • Motivation to Combine: A person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would have been motivated to combine Nagano's conflict resolution system with Alexander's multi-tuner system. As multi-tuner systems became known, it was a predictable problem that users would face programming conflicts across multiple tuners. A POSITA would combine these known elements to provide a user with an efficient and convenient way to manage the increased programming content and resolve the inevitable tuner conflicts, thereby improving the user experience.
    • Expectation of Success: Petitioner contended that combining a known conflict resolution method with a known multi-tuner architecture was a predictable application of prior art elements according to their established functions. A POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success in integrating these systems to achieve the claimed functionality without undue experimentation.

Ground 2: Claims 1-24 are obvious over Nagano in view of Chun.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Nagano (Patent 6,240,240) and Chun (Patent 5,506,628).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground presented an alternative combination for providing the multi-tuner aspect of the invention. As in Ground 1, Nagano was asserted to teach the fundamental conflict resolution method—detecting an overlap, alerting the user, and providing an option to cancel a tuner function. Petitioner argued that Chun, like Alexander, teaches a multi-tuner system. Chun discloses a self-contained system with a first and second tuner that can perform multi-channel operations, such as displaying a picture-in-picture (PIP) signal. The combination of Nagano's conflict resolution logic with Chun's multi-tuner hardware was argued to render the claims obvious.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would have found it obvious to modify Nagano's single-tuner conflict resolution system with the multi-tuner system taught by Chun. The motivation was to resolve programming conflicts that naturally arise with the use of multiple tuners, thereby improving a user's ability to record multiple programs efficiently while enhancing their viewing capabilities (e.g., with PIP). The combination would simply apply Nagano's known conflict management principles to the more complex, but known, environment of a multi-tuner device as taught by Chun.
    • Expectation of Success: Petitioner argued the combination would yield predictable results. Integrating a known software-based conflict resolution feature into a known multi-tuner hardware configuration would have been a straightforward design choice for a POSITA seeking to improve user control over television programming.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Petitioner argued that most claim terms should be given their plain and ordinary meaning. However, it proposed a specific construction for the term "secondary tuner function" that was central to its arguments for several dependent claims.
  • "Secondary tuner function": Petitioner asserted this term should be construed to include any process other than standard television program viewing or recording that requires allocation of a tuner. This would encompass functions like collecting IPG data, enabling Internet browsing, playing a music channel, or providing a picture-in-picture signal. This construction broadens the scope of potential conflicts, strengthening the obviousness argument by showing that prior art functions like PIP (taught by Alexander and Chun) would qualify as a secondary tuner function that could cause a resolvable conflict.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-24 of Patent 8,621,512 as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.