PTAB

IPR2017-00830

Twitter Inc v. VidStream LLC

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Recording and Publishing Content On Social Media Websites
  • Brief Description: The ’997 patent discloses a system for recording and sharing video content on social media websites. The system uses a video management server to provide an embedded link on a webpage, which, when selected by a user, invokes media recorder software that displays a recorder interface within a frame of the existing webpage for video capture and submission.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 20-27, 29, 31-32, and 34-35 are obvious over Nassiri, Bradford, and Zhu.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Nassiri (Application # 2012/0254925), Bradford (“HTML5 Mastery Semantics, Standards, and Styling” textbook), and Zhu (Application # 2010/0180330).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Nassiri taught the core claimed system for online video capture and sharing. Nassiri disclosed an enterprise computing system (web server) and a separate video host computing system (user content management server) that provides a video recorder within a webpage, which could be embedded using an HTML iframe. Bradford, an HTML textbook, was asserted to supply the well-known technique of using a link to target a specific iframe, thereby loading content into it only upon user selection. Zhu was cited for its disclosure of standard server communication components, such as network interfaces and Application Program Interfaces (APIs), which Petitioner contended were inherent or obvious implementations for the communication between Nassiri’s distinct server systems.
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) developing the system in Nassiri would consult a standard HTML reference like Bradford to implement the iframe functionality. Combining their teachings was argued to be a predictable design choice to improve efficiency by only loading the resource-intensive video recorder when a user clicks a link. Similarly, a POSITA would combine Nassiri with the teachings of Zhu to implement robust and standardized communication between Nassiri’s distinct enterprise and video hosting servers using well-known network interfaces and APIs.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have a high expectation of success, as the combination involved applying conventional web development techniques (from Bradford) and standard network architecture principles (from Zhu) to a known system (Nassiri) to achieve predictable improvements in performance and interoperability.

Ground 2: Claims 28, 30, and 33 are obvious over Nassiri, Bradford, Zhu, and Tosh.o.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Nassiri (Application # 2012/0254925), Bradford (an HTML5 textbook), Zhu (Application # 2010/0180330), and Tosh.o (a New York Times article).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground incorporated the combination from Ground 1 and added Tosh.o to address limitations related to a "linear television program." Nassiri taught selecting user-submitted videos for display based on popularity metrics like the number of "likes." The Tosh.o article described a popular television show ("Tosh.0") that featured curated, user-submitted viral internet videos broadcast on traditional television. Petitioner asserted that this combination taught selecting popular user-generated content (as in Nassiri) for inclusion in a traditional television program (as in Tosh.o).
    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner argued that Nassiri disclosed a desire to broaden the distribution of its videos. A POSITA seeking to achieve this goal would be motivated to look at other successful distribution models, such as the one described in Tosh.o. Combining Nassiri’s method of identifying popular user content with Tosh.o’s method of broadcasting that content on linear television was presented as an obvious way to reach a wider audience, thus fulfilling Nassiri's stated objective.
    • Expectation of Success: The expectation of success was argued to be high, as it involved taking content already popular on one platform (the internet, as in Nassiri) and distributing it on another well-established platform (television, as in Tosh.o), a common and predictable media strategy.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • “linear television program” (Claims 28, 30, 33): Petitioner proposed this term be construed as “traditional television programming.” This construction was based on a patent incorporated by reference into the ’997 patent and was critical to mapping the Tosh.o reference in Ground 2.
  • “user submission[s]” (Claims 20-22, 30-34): Petitioner argued for a construction of “user-generated video.” This was based on the specification’s focus on crowd-sourced video and language in dependent claims explicitly reciting video content.
  • “display elements” (Claims 20, 25, 31): Petitioner proposed this term means “webpage components that are displayed.” This construction was derived from the context of claim language indicating the elements are part of a webpage's graphical user interface and was supported by a contemporaneous dictionary definition of HTML "elements."

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 20-35 of Patent 9,083,997 as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.