PTAB

IPR2022-01026

Unified Patents LLC v. Savannah Licensing LLC

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Measuring and Improving the Quality of a User Experience
  • Brief Description: The ’777 patent discloses a system for detecting user frustration events, creating a frustration event package with data about the event, and using that feedback to implement a network action to improve the user's experience. The system aims to correlate user frustration with specific device events and network performance parameters.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1-6 and 8-10 are obvious over Basu and Aaron.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Basu (Application # 2010/0082516) and Aaron (Application # 2009/0140864).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Basu disclosed the core method of the ’777 patent: a computing system that receives an indication of user frustration and modifies the operation of a target system to reduce future frustration. This system creates a "frustration event item" (analogous to the claimed "frustration event package") containing a timestamp and information about the system's characteristics when the frustration occurred. Petitioner asserted that Aaron supplemented Basu by explicitly teaching the use of user mood data, including frustration, to alter network and service policies. Aaron disclosed a network/service controller that generates actions "within a network" based on the user's mood to improve their experience. Dependent claims relating to increasing network service were also allegedly taught by Aaron, which described improving quality of service or offering a temporary upgrade in a local network.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Basu and Aaron to enhance Basu’s general frustration-response system with Aaron’s specific teachings on implementing network-level corrective actions. Both references shared the goal of improving user experience based on frustration feedback. A POSITA implementing Basu's system would have looked to references like Aaron for detailed methods of applying corrective policies in a network context.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success because combining Aaron’s known technique of altering network control policies with Basu’s system for identifying and applying policies would involve, at most, minor software modifications and yield predictable results, such as the ability to implement a network control policy to reduce user frustration.

Ground 2: Claims 1-6 and 8-10 are obvious over Basu, Aaron, and McCarty.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Basu (Application # 2010/0082516), Aaron (Application # 2009/0140864), and McCarty (Application # 2011/0283189).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the combination of Basu and Aaron by adding McCarty to explicitly teach determining a "level" of user frustration, a limitation of independent claims 1, 5, and 9. While Basu suggested using frustration levels, Petitioner argued McCarty explicitly disclosed it. McCarty taught detecting a frustration pattern based on the level of various user signals, such as elevated microphone volume, accelerometer signals above a threshold magnitude, or force gauge pressures indicating a user is pressing hard on a device.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA seeking to improve the Basu/Aaron system would incorporate McCarty to add more granular data for triggering a response. Since Basu was not specific about how it identifies frustration patterns, a POSITA would have been motivated to look to references like McCarty that provided well-known techniques for detecting frustration levels from user input signals, thereby making the overall system more effective.
    • Expectation of Success: Success was expected because modifying Basu’s system to detect the level of user signals as taught by McCarty would require only minor modifications and was a known technique used in a similar context.

Ground 3: Claims 1-6 and 8-10 are obvious over Basu, Aaron, and Dvir.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Basu (Application # 2010/0082516), Aaron (Application # 2009/0140864), and Dvir (Patent 9,135,104).

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground added Dvir to the primary combination to explicitly teach associating a user frustration event with an "active operation of a device" at the time the frustration occurred, a key limitation added during prosecution of the ’777 patent. Petitioner contended that Dvir disclosed a system capable of "tracking ongoing PC activity and ongoing user activity" in real-time. Dvir’s system could monitor a plurality of processes, identify "clashes" between them, and correlate these clashes with identified frustration events "substantially immediately during running the processes."
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Dvir with Basu to provide a more robust and accurate correlation between a user's frustration and the underlying cause. Basu taught collecting system characteristics "approximately concurrently" with the frustration event, and a POSITA would have looked to references like Dvir for established techniques for real-time monitoring to improve the accuracy of this correlation.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would expect success because both Basu and Dvir taught frustration detection systems involving multiple processes. Incorporating Dvir’s real-time monitoring would not require significant modification to Basu’s system and was an obvious way to improve its goal of identifying the cause of user frustration.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted an additional obviousness challenge (Ground 4) based on the combination of Basu, Aaron, McCarty, and Dvir, which relied on the same arguments for combining the individual references as detailed above.

4. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-6 and 8-10 of the ’777 patent as unpatentable.