PTAB

IPR2017-01710

Commvault Systems Inc v. Realtime Data LLC

Key Events

Petition

petition

Title: Data Compression Systems and Methods
Brief Description: The ’204 patent describes systems and methods for improving data transmission speed by compressing data before sending it. The methods involve recognizing a characteristic of the data, selecting an appropriate encoder based on that characteristic, and compressing the data to achieve a specified compression ratio.

Prior Art Relied Upon: XMill (Hartmut Liefke & Dan Suciu, XMill: an Efficient Compressor for XML Data, Proceedings of the 2000 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data).
Core Argument for this Ground:
- Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that XMill, a system for compressing XML data, discloses all limitations of the independent claims. XMill's "path processor" was alleged to meet the "recognizing" limitation by determining a data value's path (a characteristic) and to meet the "selecting an encoder" limitation by mapping the data to specific semantic compressors based on container expressions in a command line. Petitioner asserted that XMill’s use of deterministic automatons (a type of state machine) and its demonstrated compression ratios (e.g., 29.5:1 and 53:1) satisfy the "compressing" limitation, including the "over 4:1" ratio of claim 12. Finally, XMill's description of data exchange experiments between an AT&T server and clients was argued to teach the "point-to-point transmitting" limitation.
- Motivation to Combine: Not applicable (single reference ground).
- Expectation of Success: Not applicable (single reference ground).
- Key Aspects: Petitioner emphasized that the Board, in a related reexamination of a sibling patent, had already found very similar, narrower claims unpatentable over XMill.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Ferris (International Publication No. WO 02/13058) and XMill.
Core Argument for this Ground:
- Prior Art Mapping: This ground primarily addresses claims requiring broadcasting to a plurality of clients. Petitioner argued that XMill teaches the core compression elements (recognizing, selecting, compressing), while Ferris teaches a method for broadcasting compressed XML data to multiple receivers. The combination was alleged to render claims requiring broadcasting obvious. For example, claim 1 is similar to claim 12 but adds "broadcasting the compressed data to a plurality of clients," which Petitioner asserted is taught by Ferris.
- Motivation to Combine: A person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) seeking to implement Ferris's XML broadcasting system would be motivated to use a known, efficient XML compression tool like XMill to achieve the "efficient use of bandwidth" that Ferris describes as a key goal.
- Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have an expectation of success because the combination involves applying a general-purpose XML compressor (XMill) to standard XML files used in a broadcasting system (Ferris), which is a predictable application of known technologies.

Prior Art Relied Upon: The 2003 Continuation-in-Part (CIP) application from the ’204 patent's own priority chain (Patent 7,417,568).
Core Argument for this Ground: This argument is contingent on the Board finding the ’204 patent is not entitled to its claimed priority date.
- Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that key claim limitations, such as the unbounded compression ratios (e.g., "over 10:1"), are not enabled by the specification, which only describes achieving specific, lower ratios. This alleged lack of enablement breaks the priority chain to the 2003 CIP, making the 2003 CIP, published more than one year before the patent's effective filing date, anticipatory prior art under 35 U.S.C. §102. Petitioner contended that the 2003 CIP discloses specific examples (species) of compression ratios that fall within the patent’s claimed ranges (genus), and under case law, a prior art disclosure of a species anticipates a claim to the genus.
- Key Aspects: This ground relies on a finding of non-enablement not to directly invalidate the claims under §112, but to change their effective filing date, thereby making the patent's own parent application invalidating prior art.
Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted additional obviousness challenges, including claims 14, 15, and 19 over XMill in view of RFC768 and/or RFC1180 to teach specific network protocols, and claims 9 and 29 over Ferris and XMill in further view of Comer to teach broadcasting using UDP.

"data packet" (claims 4, 14, 22): Petitioner argued this term should be construed broadly to include any segregation of data, and that it does not require specific internal structure like control information or headers. This position was based on the specification's language and, critically, on the Board's explicit rejection of a narrower construction during a reexamination of a related patent that shares the same specification.
"recognizing" and "analyzing" (claims 1, 11, 12, 21): Petitioner contended these terms should be given their broad, ordinary meaning and should not be limited to requiring a "direct" or "active" analysis of the data content itself. Petitioner again cited the Board's decision in the related reexamination, where the Board rejected the Patent Owner's proposed narrower construction and applied the broadest reasonable interpretation.

Lack of Enablement for Priority Claim: The central technical contention, forming the basis of Ground 3, was that the ’204 patent fails to enable the full scope of its own claims. Petitioner argued that for unbounded range limitations like a "compression ratio of over 10:1," the specification provides only a single example of achieving a ratio over 10:1 in a narrow context (financial data) and fails to teach a POSITA how to achieve the full scope of the claim (e.g., ratios of 100:1 or 1000:1) without undue experimentation. This failure, Petitioner argued, severs the patent's priority claim.

Petitioner argued that discretionary denial under §325(d) would be inappropriate because the current petition is not redundant of the original prosecution. Although the Patent Owner cited XMill in an Information Disclosure Statement, the examiner never applied XMill in a rejection or provided any substantive analysis of it. Furthermore, the petition presented new evidence not before the examiner, including the Final Written Decision from the related patent's reexamination and a detailed expert declaration mapping the prior art to the claims.

Petitioner requested institution of an inter partes review (IPR) and cancellation of claims 1-30 of the ’204 patent as unpatentable.