PTAB

IPR2018-01039

Hulu LLC v. Sound View Innovations LLC

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Key Events
Petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Data Analysis System Using Virtual Databases
  • Brief Description: The ’062 patent discloses a data processing method using reusable software operators. The system uses an "initial operator" to convert source information into a "virtual database" format and subsequent "query operators" that process the data and output results into another virtual database, with all virtual databases sharing the same data schema.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Dougherty - Claims 1-3, 7, 10, 11, 14, and 15 are obvious over Dougherty.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Dougherty (Sed & Awk (edited by Tim O'Reilly), O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. (Nov. 1990)).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the Dougherty reference, a well-known book on standard UNIX utilities, taught every element of the challenged claims. Petitioner asserted that Dougherty's utilities like sed, awk, sort, and uniq are the claimed "software operators," which can be saved as reusable scripts in a "library." The structured text files that these utilities operate on (e.g., mailing lists, index files) were presented as analogous to the claimed "virtual database," as they possess a consistent schema of records and fields. Petitioner contended that Dougherty explicitly shows these operators receiving an input file (the first virtual database), processing its contents, and outputting a new file (the second virtual database) that maintains the original schema. The "means for combining" limitation of claim 1 was alleged to be met by Dougherty's explicit disclosure of using a standard UNIX pipe (|) to chain operators together, such as piping the output of sort to uniq or sed to awk, to create a single, more powerful data-processing application.
    • Motivation to Combine (for §103 grounds): Petitioner argued that motivation was inherent to the prior art, as Dougherty itself expressly teaches combining its software operators using a UNIX pipe. This functionality was described not as a novel combination but as a fundamental and standard feature of the UNIX environment, designed to pass the output of one program as the input to the next to perform more complex tasks.
    • Expectation of Success (for §103 grounds): Petitioner asserted that a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would have had a very high, if not certain, expectation of success. The argument was based on the fact that sed, awk, sort, uniq, and the UNIX pipe are standard, well-documented, and long-established utilities designed specifically to work together predictably and reliably.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "Software Operator": Petitioner proposed the construction "software that extracts or converts information from a repository." This was argued to be consistent with the ’062 patent specification and the function of the described operators. The related phrase "providing a plurality of software operators" was construed to mean "providing a library of software operators," based on the patent's description of reusable operators.
  • "Virtual Database": Petitioner proposed the construction "a self-contained sequence of characters organized into one or more sections, which contains zero or more records made up of one or more fields containing information." The "self-contained" nature of the database was highlighted as a critical feature described in the patent.
  • "Schema": Petitioner proposed the construction "format of the entire virtual database that includes format of the records and fields of each section of the virtual database." This construction clarifies that the term refers to the format of the whole database, not just individual sections, a point Petitioner argued was essential for the claim limitation requiring the input and output to have the same "first schema."
  • "means for combining at least two of said query operators to create an application": Petitioner identified this as a means-plus-function limitation under 35 U.S.C. §112. The recited function was "combining at least two of said query operators to create an application," and the corresponding structure disclosed in the patent's specification was identified as "a UNIX pipe."

5. Key Technical Contentions (Beyond Claim Construction)

  • Petitioner's central technical contention was that the core concepts of the ’062 patent were not inventive but were instead fundamental principles of the UNIX operating system that had been well-known for decades before the patent's filing. The petition argued that stream-based processing of structured text files and the use of pipes to combine simple, single-purpose tools into complex applications were part of the foundational philosophy of UNIX, as extensively documented in prior art like Dougherty.

6. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board institute an inter partes review (IPR) of claims 1-3, 7, 10, 11, 14, and 15 of Patent 5,806,062 and find them unpatentable as obvious under 35 U.S.C. §103 over the Dougherty reference, and subsequently cancel the challenged claims.