PTAB

IPR2018-01791

Facebook, Inc. v. Hypermedia Navigation LLC

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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: System and Method for Creating and Navigating a Linear Hypermedia Resource Program
  • Brief Description: The ’173 patent describes systems and methods for presenting web content to users in a "guided tour" format. The technology aims to simplify web navigation by presenting information, such as a series of websites or video clips, along a predefined "linear path" and using a "map area" to display the elements of that path.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Greer, Gundavaram, and Steele - Claims 15, 16, 24, and 25 are obvious over Greer in view of Gundavaram and Steele.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Greer (Patent 6,009,429), Gundavaram (a 1996 book on CGI programming), and Steele (Patent 5,884,056).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the combination of references taught all limitations of the challenged claims. Greer disclosed the core of the invention: an "HTML Guided Web Tour" that presents web pages in a specific sequence using a "tour map" (analogous to the claimed "map area") with selectable text links. Greer also expressly suggested its system could be used to present "movies" (video media elements). Gundavaram, a well-known programming guide, supplied the conventional back-end technology (Common Gateway Interface, or CGI) for receiving a search request from a user's browser and dynamically generating a results page, a detail assumed but not elaborated upon in Greer. Steele taught the then-common practice of using selectable, hyperlinked icons (thumbnail images) to represent video content on the web, an obvious alternative to Greer's text-based links.
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSA) would combine Greer and Gundavaram to implement Greer’s search-based tour concept using standard, well-understood web server techniques. Adding Steele’s teachings would be a simple and predictable design choice to replace Greer’s textual links with more intuitive graphical icons, a known method for improving user interface design, particularly for video content.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSA would have a high expectation of success, as the combination involved implementing a known concept (Greer's guided tour) using ubiquitous and well-documented web technologies (Gundavaram's CGI and Steele's hyperlinked icons).

Ground 2: Obviousness over Greer, Gundavaram, Steele, and Richardson - Claims 15, 16, 24, and 25 are obvious over the combination of Ground 1 in further view of Richardson.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Greer (Patent 6,009,429), Gundavaram (a 1996 book on CGI programming), Steele (Patent 5,884,056), and Richardson (Patent 5,809,247).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground was presented as an alternative to address the Patent Owner's proposed claim construction for "linear path" as requiring both exclusive forward and backward links. While Greer taught a "NEXT" button for forward navigation, Richardson was added to explicitly teach a guided tour system with both a "Next >>" button and a "<< Prev" button for backward navigation. The mappings for Greer, Gundavaram, and Steele remained the same as in Ground 1. Richardson taught that its tour could be navigated forward and backward one stop at a time by incrementing or decrementing an index to a vector storing the tour stops, satisfying the Patent Owner's narrower construction.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSA would be motivated to incorporate Richardson's backward navigation into the Greer system to provide users with enhanced control over the guided tour. The ability to move both forwards and backwards through sequential content was a well-known and desirable feature in software design, and Richardson provided an express teaching of this functionality in the same technical field of guided web tours.
    • Expectation of Success: Integrating a "back" button functionality as taught by Richardson was a technologically straightforward and fundamental programming task. A POSA would have every expectation of successfully adapting this feature into the Greer system to create a more user-friendly tour.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "map area": Petitioner noted the parties in the co-pending litigation agreed to construe this term as “a user interface or a part thereof displaying at least a portion of a linear path.” This construction was central because it incorporated the disputed term "linear path."
  • "linear" / "linear path": This was the primary disputed construction.
    • Petitioner's proposed construction: "serially linked websites." Petitioner argued this was consistent with the patent's description of solving the problem of navigating across multiple websites.
    • Patent Owner's proposed construction: "no more than one exclusive forward link and one exclusive backward link."
    • Petitioner structured its invalidity case to succeed under either construction, with Ground 1 addressing its own proposal and Ground 2 specifically addressing the Patent Owner's narrower construction by adding the Richardson reference.

5. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

  • Petitioner argued that discretionary denial under §325(d) would be inappropriate. It asserted that the core prior art references for its primary challenge—Greer, Gundavaram, and Steele—were never presented to or considered by the examiner during the original prosecution of the ’173 patent.
  • While acknowledging that Richardson (used in Ground 2) was listed on an Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) in related patent prosecutions, Petitioner argued it was never substantively analyzed by the examiner or applied against the specific claim limitations at issue. Therefore, the arguments based on Richardson were not substantially the same as those previously before the Office.

6. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 15, 16, 24, and 25 of Patent 8,250,173 as unpatentable.