PTAB

IPR2017-01817

Microsoft Corp v. Bradium Technologies LLC

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Communicating Images for Display to Wireless Portable Devices
  • Brief Description: The ’136 patent discloses methods and systems for efficiently communicating and displaying large images, like geographic maps, on client devices. The technology involves pre-processing a source image into a series of "image parcels" at progressively lower resolutions, which are stored on a server and sent to a client device upon request based on the user's viewpoint.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1-4, 6-8, 10-13, 15-17, 19-22, and 24-26 are obvious over Reddy in view of Woods.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Reddy (a March/April 1999 IEEE article titled "TerraVision II: Visualizing Massive Terrain Databases in VRML") and Woods (Patent 5,956,036).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Reddy, which describes the TerraVision II system, teaches the core invention of the ’136 patent. Specifically, Reddy disclosed pre-processing source imagery into a multi-resolution "pyramid" of image tiles (claimed "parcels") for browsing over a network. These tiles are requested and displayed based on a user's viewpoint, with higher-resolution tiles shown for closer views in a "coarse-to-fine" manner. Petitioner contended that Woods supplemented Reddy by teaching the application of such systems on wireless portable devices (e.g., laptops with PCMCIA wireless cards) and by disclosing an explicit priority scheme for fetching data. Woods taught prioritizing the download of graphic objects ("assets") based on their proximity to the user's viewpoint to optimize performance over limited bandwidth connections.
    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner asserted a POSITA would combine these references to achieve predictable results. Reddy's system for browsing geographic data on laptops for mobile applications (e.g., military mission planning) would naturally lead a POSITA to implement it with a wireless connection, as taught by Woods. Furthermore, a POSITA would have been motivated to incorporate Woods' explicit prioritization and parallel-fetching techniques to improve the performance and bandwidth efficiency of Reddy's "coarse-to-fine" loading system.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination involved applying known technologies—wireless connectivity and data prioritization—to an existing image-browsing framework to achieve the known benefits of mobility and improved performance, leading to a high expectation of success.

Ground 2: Claims 5, 14, and 23 are obvious over Reddy in view of Woods and Chiarabini.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Reddy, Woods, and Chiarabini (Patent 7,324,228).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the Reddy and Woods combination to address the specific limitation in claims 5, 14, and 23: determining the number of parallel image parcel download operations based on network response latency and available system resources. Petitioner argued Chiarabini taught this exact concept, disclosing a method for adjusting the number of parallel download threads for a large image based on network performance. Chiarabini explicitly taught monitoring download speed and spawning additional threads unless the connection is saturated, which Petitioner equated to managing downloads based on network latency. Woods further taught that the number of active fetches depends on hardware and software parameters, which a POSITA would understand to include available system resources.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA, seeking to optimize the parallel downloading system of Woods, would have been motivated to consult Chiarabini for specific methods of managing parallel threads. Chiarabini's teachings on adjusting download threads based on network conditions directly addressed the goal of efficiently using limited bandwidth, a problem central to both Reddy and Woods.
    • Expectation of Success: Integrating Chiarabini's network-responsive download management into the Reddy/Woods system was a straightforward application of a known optimization technique to improve a known system, with predictable results.

Ground 3: Claims 9, 18, and 27 are obvious over Reddy in view of Woods and Fuller.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Reddy, Woods, and Fuller (a May/June 1996 IEEE Network article titled "The MAGIC Project: From Vision to Reality").
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground addressed the limitation in claims 9, 18, and 27: issuing requests according to a priority order based on the resolution of the image parcels. Petitioner asserted Fuller, which described an earlier version of the TerraVision project from Reddy, explicitly taught this. Fuller disclosed assigning one of three priority levels to each requested tile so that "coarser tiles are likely to be retrieved first." This directly taught prioritizing requests based on image resolution to achieve the "coarse-to-fine" loading goal mentioned more generally in Reddy.
    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner argued that since Fuller described an earlier version of the same project in Reddy, a POSITA would naturally look to it for implementation details. A POSITA seeking to implement the "coarse-to-fine" loading of Reddy would be motivated to adopt Fuller's clear and effective method of assigning higher priority to lower-resolution tiles.
    • Expectation of Success: Applying Fuller's specific prioritization rule to the more advanced Reddy/Woods system was argued to be a predictable design choice that would reliably implement the desired coarse-to-fine loading behavior.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

Petitioner proposed constructions for several key terms under the Broadest Reasonable Interpretation standard, arguing they were either non-limiting or should be given their plain meaning.

  • "Wireless Portable Device": Petitioner argued this term required no construction, consistent with a Board decision in a related IPR. It simply means a device that is portable and wireless, without limitation to specific types or network speeds.
  • "Thereby Enabling Efficient Use of Network Bandwidth...": Petitioner contended this phrase was a non-limiting, laudatory statement of an intended result of the preceding claim step ("handles download operations... in parallel") and should be given no patentable weight.
  • "Configure[d] as a Server to Provide Access...": Petitioner argued this phrase should be broadly construed to include a simple client-side cache that provides parcels needed for display, as this is the only embodiment disclosed in the patent.
  • "Image Parcel": Petitioner argued this term did not require construction and simply meant a parcel of image data. Petitioner contended a prior Board construction that imported limitations about X/Y coordinates and a resolution index was an improper importation of a preferred embodiment.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-27 of the ’136 patent as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.