PTAB

IPR2019-00039

Next Caller Inc v. TrustID Inc

Key Events

Petition

petition

Title: Method and System for Discovering and Reporting Trustworthiness and Credibility of Calling Party Number Information
Brief Description: The ’985 patent discloses a method for determining the trustworthiness of an incoming telephone call. The method uses an electronic system to receive a calling party number, gather associated operational status information before the call is answered, and then determine a "source origin confidence metric" to validate the call's origin.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Martin (Application # 2007/0201625)
Core Argument for this Ground:
- Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Martin, which discloses a method for processing calls to an alarm system monitoring station, taught all limitations of the independent claims. Martin’s system receives an incoming call with caller ID, gathers associated status information from memory before connecting the call, and determines if the call is a "valid alarm call." This determination of validity was argued to be equivalent to the claimed "source origin confidence metric." The processing of this information before the receiver answers the call met the temporal limitation of the claims.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Martin (Application # 2007/0201625), Abramson (Application # 2007/0081648)
Core Argument for this Ground:
- Prior Art Mapping: Martin provided the foundational system for call validation. Abramson taught a method for detecting telephone number spoofing by assessing characteristics beyond the caller's number, such as telephone type, signaling protocol, and identifier order. Petitioner argued that incorporating Abramson’s spoofing detection would enhance Martin’s basic validity check.
- Motivation to Combine: A person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine Abramson's anti-spoofing techniques with Martin’s system to increase the accuracy of the call validation. This combination would address the known risk that the caller ID information relied upon by Martin could be spoofed, thereby making Martin's system more robust and efficient.
- Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have a high expectation of success, as both references described systems using conventional telecommunications components (e.g., processors, memory, switching circuits) to validate calls, making the integration straightforward.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Martin (Application # 2007/0201625), Kealy (Patent 7,912,192)
Core Argument for this Ground:
- Prior Art Mapping: This ground challenged claims related to adjusting the confidence metric based on risk factors. Martin again provided the base system. Kealy taught a method of managing unwanted calls by assigning a "trust rating" to callers based on "personal risk factors" such as the number of accumulated complaints. This trust rating was then used to adjust how subsequent calls from that caller were handled.
- Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would incorporate Kealy's dynamic trust rating system into Martin’s call processing framework to further improve its ability to assess call legitimacy. Kealy’s trust ratings based on complaint history could be readily stored as part of the "additional information" or "status information" disclosed in Martin, providing a more nuanced validation than a simple match/no-match check.
- Expectation of Success: The modification was presented as a routine and predictable programming change. A POSITA would have understood how to adapt Martin’s data structure to maintain and utilize Kealy’s trust ratings to further assess the legitimacy of an alarm call.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Martin (Application # 2007/0201625), Abramson (Application # 2007/0081648), Kealy (Patent 7,912,192)
Core Argument for this Ground:
- Prior Art Mapping: This ground asserted that a combination of all three references rendered the claims obvious. The argument leveraged the Martin/Abramson combination from Ground 2 and added the teachings of Kealy from Ground 3.
- Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine the teachings of all three references to create a comprehensive and robust call validation system. Incorporating Kealy’s trust ratings would strengthen the Martin/Abramson system's capabilities to reject spam and other unwanted calls, particularly those arriving over VoIP, by adding a historical, reputation-based component to Abramson's real-time spoofing detection.
- Expectation of Success: Given the complementary nature of the teachings and their shared implementation on standard hardware, a POSITA would have found the combination obvious and straightforward to implement.

"call": Petitioner proposed this term means "any connection over a telecommunications or an information service network and includes, but is not limited to, landline, wireless, modem, facsimile, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) transmissions," consistent with the definition in the ’985 patent specification.
"source origin confidence metric": Petitioner proposed this term means "a determination of the trustworthiness for the entity from which the call originated." This construction is broad enough to encompass simple binary outcomes (e.g., "valid" or "invalid"), which Petitioner argued was disclosed in the prior art.

Petitioner argued that discretionary denial under 35 U.S.C. §325(d) would be inappropriate. It contended that the core prior art references, Martin and Abramson, were never presented to or considered by the USPTO during the original prosecution of the ’985 patent. Petitioner also argued that while Kealy was previously cited by the Examiner, it was being presented in the petition in a new light and in novel combinations not previously considered.

Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 1-22 of the ’985 patent as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.