PTAB

IPR2020-01110

DraftKings Inc v. Interactive Games LLC

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Convenience Gaming System
  • Brief Description: The ’967 patent describes a “convenience gaming system” that permits users to participate in wager-based gaming on mobile devices. The system uses location verification technology, such as geofencing via a cellular or private wireless network, to ensure the user is within a pre-defined area where gaming is legally permitted and enforces time limits on gaming activity.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Wells and Harkham - Claims 1-20 are obvious over Wells in view of Harkham.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Wells (Application # 2003/0064805) and Harkham (Application # 2002/0094869).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Wells teaches the core location-based functionality of the challenged claims. Wells discloses a wireless mobile gaming system for use in a casino that employs position verification (e.g., GPS) to permit gaming only in authorized areas and terminate sessions if a user moves to a restricted area (e.g., a hotel room). Wells also teaches terminating a gaming session after a certain "amount of time" has elapsed. Petitioner asserted that Harkham supplements Wells by teaching more sophisticated time-limit features. Harkham discloses a central gaming server that allows remote players to set cumulative playing time limits (e.g., five hours within a seven-day period) to prevent excessive gambling. The combination of Wells's location-based controls and Harkham's cumulative time-tracking functionality was argued to render the limitations of the independent claims obvious.
    • Motivation to Combine: A person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine the teachings of Wells and Harkham to address the well-known goal of promoting responsible gaming and satisfying regulatory requirements. A POSITA would have been motivated to enhance the basic location-aware gaming system of Wells with the more robust, cumulative time-limit and player-accountability features of Harkham. This would create a more commercially viable and legally compliant system by preventing users from circumventing time limits and providing better tools to combat gambling addiction.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success in combining these references because both relate to remote gaming server architectures. The combination would have involved the straightforward integration of Harkham’s software-based time-tracking logic into the server-based system of Wells, which is a predictable modification.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Wells, Harkham, and Johns - Claims 1-20 are obvious over Wells and Harkham in view of Johns.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Wells (Application # 2003/0064805), Harkham (Application # 2002/0094869), and Johns (Patent 5,923,870).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground was presented as an alternative, arguing that if Wells and Harkham were deemed insufficient to teach the claimed "counter," Johns explicitly provides this teaching. Johns discloses a computer-implemented counter designed to objectively track the usage and "total amount of time" a computer has been active. It describes a timer that periodically interrupts a processor to increment a count, and further teaches configuring the counter to track different states, such as "total on-time" versus active "in usage," and to stop counting during a "suspend or sleep state." This directly teaches the claimed limitations of incrementing a counter while a user is engaged in an activity and stopping the incrementation when the activity ceases (e.g., the user moves to an unapproved area).
    • Motivation to Combine: The motivation for this combination was presented as a matter of practical implementation. To implement the time-limit functionalities taught by Wells and Harkham, a POSITA would have sought a concrete, well-understood mechanism for tracking time. Johns provides such a mechanism. A POSITA would have been motivated to use a standard, off-the-shelf counter solution like that in Johns to track the gaming time in the combined Wells and Harkham system. This would have been a simple substitution of a known element to achieve a desired function.
    • Expectation of Success: Integrating Johns’s straightforward counter into the gaming system of Wells and Harkham would have been a simple and predictable task for a POSITA, involving a known technique for a known purpose.

4. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

  • Petitioner argued that discretionary denial under §314(a) and the Fintiv factors would be inappropriate. It asserted this was the first and only inter partes review (IPR) filed against the ’967 patent and that the co-pending district court case was at a very early stage, with no answer filed by Petitioner and the case having been stayed.
  • Petitioner also contended that denial under §325(d) was unwarranted because the petition raised new issues. The primary references of Harkham and Johns were never before the examiner. While Wells was cited during prosecution, it was one of over 1,100 references and the examiner never substantively analyzed it or relied upon it in any rejection, which Petitioner argued weighs strongly against denying institution.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested institution of IPR and cancellation of claims 1-20 of the ’967 patent as unpatentable.