PTAB

IPR2017-02166

Cisco Systems Inc v. Nokia Technologies Oy

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Tunnel Management Method, Tunnel Management Apparatus, and Communications System
  • Brief Description: The ’462 patent relates to methods and systems for managing communication tunnels in packet-switched networks, specifically within the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Evolved Packet System (EPS) architecture. The patent acknowledges that the basic network architecture—including the Mobility Management Entity (MME), Serving Gateway (S-GW), and Packet Data Network Gateway (PDN-GW)—and the use of tunnel management requests and responses were well-known. The purported invention addresses the alleged deficiency that prior art response messages, while containing a "cause value" to indicate a failure, did not specify which network node caused the failure. The ’462 patent’s solution is to add an "indication indicating which node that causes the failure" to the response message, enabling the initiating node to perform more effective error handling.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1-27 are obvious over 3GPP 23.401, 3GPP 29.274, and Vasseur.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: 3GPP TS 23.401 (V8.1.0), 3GPP TS 29.274 (V1.0.0), and Vasseur (Patent 8,531,976).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the combination of the two 3GPP standards discloses nearly every element of the challenged claims. 3GPP 23.401 was asserted to teach the claimed network architecture and the two primary tunnel creation processes described in the ’462 patent: the MME-initiated "attach procedure" for default bearers and the PDN-GW-initiated "dedicated bearer activation procedure." Petitioner mapped the MME, S-GW, and PDN-GW to the claimed roles of "initiating node," "tunnel management node," and "remote node" for these respective procedures. 3GPP 29.274 was argued to provide the message-level details, specifying that tunnel management responses include a mandatory "Cause Information Element (IE)" that indicates a failure but does not identify the failing node.

    • Petitioner contended that Vasseur supplies the single missing element. Vasseur was presented as addressing the identical problem of inefficient failure diagnosis where an end-to-end failure notification lacks location information. Vasseur explicitly teaches a method for locating a tunnel failure and sending a response message to the head-end node that includes an indication of the failure's location (e.g., a failed path segment). By adding Vasseur’s teaching to the 3GPP framework, a response message would include not just a cause value but also the identity of the node (S-GW, PDN-GW, or MME) that caused the tunnel creation failure. This combination was argued to teach all limitations of independent claims 1, 7, 13, and 14. Arguments for dependent claims followed, asserting, for example, that Vasseur’s teaching of re-routing around a failure would make it obvious to select a new network node to replace the one that failed.

    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner argued a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would be motivated to combine Vasseur's solution with the 3GPP standards to solve a known problem. The 3GPP system, which provided failure notifications without location data, suffered from the same diagnostic inefficiency that Vasseur was designed to remedy. A POSITA would have recognized the benefit of applying Vasseur's known technique—adding failure location data to a response message—to the existing 3GPP failure response framework. This would improve network diagnostics and enable more intelligent recovery actions, such as selecting an alternative node, a clear and desirable goal in network management.

    • Expectation of Success: The petition asserted a POSITA would have had a high expectation of success in making this combination. The modification was portrayed as the straightforward application of a known technique to solve a known problem. The results were predictable because the 3GPP architecture has a limited and well-defined number of potential failure points during tunnel creation (e.g., the S-GW and PDN-GW in an attach procedure). This made identifying the specific failed node even simpler and more predictable than the more complex path-segment identification taught by Vasseur.

4. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

  • Petitioner argued that the IPR should not be discretionarily denied as redundant to two previously filed IPRs against the ’462 patent by a different petitioner (Nokia). Petitioner asserted three primary reasons: (1) it was not a party or real-party-in-interest in the earlier proceedings; (2) the present petition challenges all 27 claims, whereas the prior petitions challenged a smaller subset; and (3) its substantive challenge is different. Petitioner contended that the prior petitioner failed to provide sufficient evidence and argument on how a POSITA would modify Vasseur, a deficiency this petition aimed to correct with new, more detailed analysis.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 1-27 of Patent 9,235,462 as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.