PTAB

IPR2021-00774

ByteDance Ltd v. Triller Inc

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Systems and Methods for Creating Music Videos Synchronized with an Audio Track
  • Brief Description: The ’429 patent discloses systems for creating a music video by synchronizing a plurality of captured video takes with a pre-selected audio track. The technology allows a user to capture various video takes while the audio track is playing, ensuring the takes are "in sync" for subsequent editing into a continuous music video.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 11-16 are obvious over Hozumi in view of Herberger.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Hozumi (Application # 2012/0148208) and Herberger (Patent 7,512,886).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Hozumi taught the core limitations of independent claim 11, including a user device that captures multiple video takes synchronized with a selected audio track. Hozumi’s system plays the audio track from the beginning each time a new video take is captured, ensuring synchronization. Herberger taught analyzing an audio track to identify musical structures, such as a chorus or verse ("vocal phrase and a melodic phrase"), and using standard video editing functions to align video clips with these identified audio markers. The combination, therefore, taught creating a music video by displaying portions of the captured video takes based on the identified musical phrases.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine these references to enhance Hozumi’s basic synchronization system with Herberger’s sophisticated editing capabilities. This would enable the creation of more professional and aesthetically pleasing music videos where video transitions align with the musical structure, a known method for improving the viewing experience.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success because both references operate in the same field of synchronizing audio and video. Implementing Herberger’s audio analysis and editing techniques into Hozumi’s video capture framework was presented as a straightforward application of known principles to achieve a predictable result.

Ground 2: Claim 17 is obvious over Hozumi in view of Yamamoto.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Hozumi (Application # 2012/0148208) and Yamamoto (Application # 2012/0076357).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground challenged claim 17, which adds the limitations of determining a number of faces within each video take and creating a music video by displaying a subset of takes based on that number. Petitioner asserted that Hozumi provided the foundational system for capturing synchronized video takes. Yamamoto taught a video processing apparatus that automatically creates a summarized video by analyzing video streams to extract feature values, specifically including "face count." Yamamoto’s system then selects and combines video segments with the highest "summarization scores" (e.g., those with the most faces) to create a final, higher-quality video.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Yamamoto with Hozumi to automate and improve the video editing process. By incorporating Yamamoto’s face-counting and scene-selection technology, Hozumi’s system could automatically identify and use the most visually interesting video segments (e.g., those with more people), resulting in a "quality summarized video" without requiring manual editing.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination was argued to be predictable and routine. Since Hozumi captures video data in frames and Yamamoto analyzes video data in frames, integrating Yamamoto's feature extraction into Hozumi's capture process would be a simple matter of design choice for a POSITA.

Ground 3: Claims 18 and 19 are obvious over Hozumi in view of Yamamoto and Herberger.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Hozumi (Application # 2012/0148208), Yamamoto (Application # 2012/0076357), and Herberger (Patent 7,512,886).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground targeted dependent claims 18 and 19, which require determining a verse and chorus from the audio track (claim 18) and aligning video portions based on both the determined verse/chorus and the number of faces (claim 19). Petitioner contended this combination was obvious by extending the logic of the previous grounds. Hozumi provided the base system, Yamamoto added automated scene selection based on face count, and Herberger added audio analysis to identify musical sections like verses and choruses. The three-way combination taught a system that could identify significant musical sections (verse/chorus via Herberger) and then align the most visually compelling video takes (selected via Yamamoto’s face-counting) to those specific sections.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would be motivated to combine all three references to create a highly automated and sophisticated music video editor. The motivation was to produce a final video where the most engaging visual content (per Yamamoto) is precisely aligned with the most significant musical content (per Herberger), all within the synchronized capture framework taught by Hozumi.
    • Expectation of Success: Success was expected because the combination involved applying distinct, known techniques to different aspects of the same overall problem (video creation) to achieve their respective, predictable benefits in a single, integrated system.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Petitioner argued that no formal claim constructions were necessary. However, it asserted that the term "synchronizing" was well-understood by a POSITA to include establishing a relationship between video takes and an audio track. This understanding was supported by numerous prior art examples, including systems where video capture and audio playback begin at substantially the same time, which Petitioner argued was disclosed in Hozumi.

5. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

  • Petitioner argued against discretionary denial under Fintiv, emphasizing that the challenged claims (11-19) were not asserted in the parallel district court litigation. Further, the litigation was in its infancy, with no trial date set, no claim construction order issued, and discovery not yet open.
  • Petitioner also argued that denial under General Plastic was inappropriate because this petition was not a "follow-on" to its earlier IPR (IPR2021-00099). It asserted that the present petition challenges a distinct set of claims (11-19 vs. 1-10) based on different embodiments and relies on unique prior art combinations not present in the earlier petition.

6. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 11-19 of the ’429 patent as unpatentable.