PTAB

IPR2021-01401

Unified Patents LLC v. Netcom Global Solutions LLC

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Communication Management System
  • Brief Description: The ’128 patent discloses a software application for managing the routing of communications across various channels. The system uses user-defined "zones" (e.g., work, personal) and associated contact identities to enforce communication management policies via an "identity/zone firewall."

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1-3, 7, and 9-11 are obvious over Swander, Eudora, and Bhatia.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Swander (Patent 7,509,673), Eudora (“Eudora for Windows & Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide,” 1997), and Bhatia (Application # 2005/0160144).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the prior art combination teaches every limitation of the challenged claims. Swander discloses a base firewall architecture implemented on a user's computer that can filter network packets at the application layer using user-defined policies. Eudora, an email client, teaches the use of "personalities" (e.g., for work and personal accounts), which Petitioner asserted are analogous to the claimed "zones." Eudora also discloses an address book for storing contact identities and creating groups ("nicknames"), and teaches creating filter rules based on a message's personality, sender/receiver identity, or nickname group. Bhatia teaches filtering outgoing messages against a trusted list of contacts before the message is sent to the network SMTP server. Petitioner argued that combining Swander's firewall with Eudora's identity-based filtering and Bhatia's pre-transmission enforcement renders the claims obvious.
    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner contended a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine the references to improve the functionality of Swander’s known firewall system. A POSITA would have recognized Swander's firewall as a versatile platform ready for improvement and would have been motivated to incorporate the well-known and desirable email management features from Eudora, such as filtering based on user-defined personalities and contact groups. This would predictably enhance the firewall's ability to manage application-layer communications. Further, incorporating Bhatia's teaching of filtering outgoing communications before they are transmitted to the network would provide the additional benefit of stopping unintended or unauthorized messages before they leave the user's computer, improving overall communication management.
    • Expectation of Success: Petitioner asserted a POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success because all three references relate to filtering network messages and are compatible. Swander's architecture was described as extensible, capable of analyzing application-layer packet payloads, and including a graphical user interface (GUI) for user-defined rules. A POSITA would have understood that Eudora's email filtering logic and GUI elements could be implemented into Swander’s framework to yield the predictable result of a firewall with enhanced, identity-based filtering for email. Swander already taught blocking packets, so applying this function based on Bhatia's pre-transmission filtering logic would have been a straightforward modification.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "zone": Petitioner argued that based on the specification's examples (e.g., "work," "family," "community"), a POSITA would understand a "zone" to be user-defined communication parameters for a particular social environment. This construction aligns the term with the "personalities" taught by Eudora.
  • "identity/zone firewall": Petitioner proposed that this term should be construed as a firewall application that enforces the routing of messages through policies that use zone and identity as enforcement criteria. This construction allows the functionality of Swander's base firewall, when modified with Eudora's identity-based filtering rules, to meet the claim limitation.

5. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

  • Petitioner argued that discretionary denial would be inappropriate. The petition asserted that its obviousness challenge was meritorious, that the ’128 patent had not been subject to any prior Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) review, and that the co-pending district court litigation was in its early stages.

6. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-3, 7, and 9-11 of the ’128 patent as unpatentable.