PTAB

IPR2023-01338

Stodge Inc v. Attentive Mobile Inc

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Click-to-Text Advertising Method
  • Brief Description: The ’887 patent discloses a "two-tap" method for enrolling users in text-based marketing campaigns. The system uses ad-network technology to serve an advertisement containing a link that, when clicked, utilizes mobile app deeplinking to open a messaging application with a pre-populated consent message for the user to send.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Haggerty, Demsey, and Khanna

  • Claims 1-2 and 13-14 are obvious over Haggerty in view of Demsey and Khanna.
    • Prior Art Relied Upon: Haggerty (Patent 8,532,283), Demsey (Application # 2014/0379482), and Khanna (Application # 2013/0111328).
    • Core Argument for this Ground:
      • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Haggerty teaches the core "two-tap" business method, where a user clicks a link in an ad to open a pre-populated SMS message for enrollment in a promotion. The independent claims, however, recite an underlying ad-network and deeplinking infrastructure not detailed in Haggerty. Demsey was argued to disclose this infrastructure, teaching a central ad-network server (the claimed "click-to-text server") that sends an "integration tag" to a publisher's "client server." This tag executes on a user's mobile device to send user data (e.g., a unique ID or cookie information) back to the server. Khanna was argued to teach the specific deeplinking functionality, wherein a server generates a deeplinking Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) in response to an ad request and sends it with the ad, causing the user's device to transition from a browser to a target mobile application upon interaction.
      • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Demsey's standard ad-serving techniques and Khanna's mobile app deeplinking to implement Haggerty's business method. This combination would predictably increase the marketing reach of Haggerty’s method, allow for better ad targeting as taught by Demsey, and provide the specific deeplinking functionality from Khanna necessary to open the messaging app from a web-based ad.
      • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a high expectation of success as the combination involves applying known, compatible software techniques for their intended purposes to achieve a predictable result.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Ground 1 plus Rakavy

  • Claims 1-4, 6-10, 13-14, and 19 are obvious over Haggerty, Demsey, and Khanna in further view of Rakavy.
    • Prior Art Relied Upon: Haggerty (Patent 8,532,283), Demsey (Application # 2014/0379482), Khanna (Application # 2013/0111328), and Rakavy (Patent 5,913,040).
    • Core Argument for this Ground:
      • Prior Art Mapping: This ground adds Rakavy's teachings on user authentication to the core combination of Ground 1 to render claims reciting authentication obvious. Rakavy, an early web-advertising patent, teaches authenticating users (e.g., using a unique user ID against a database) to prevent fraud in promotions offering incentives. Petitioner argued this maps directly to limitations in claims 3, 4, and 6-10 requiring the server to authenticate the mobile device based on user data. Rakavy’s teaching to "check the user's participation" in contests further maps to the limitations in claims 8 and 19 concerning determination of a "new subscriber."
      • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would be motivated to incorporate Rakavy’s explicit authentication methods into the system of Ground 1 to mitigate the foreseeable problem of fraudulent sign-ups for the promotional campaigns described by Haggerty. This would ensure that incentives are provided only to legitimate, unique users.

Ground 3: Obviousness over Ground 1 plus Ad Serving Technology

  • Claims 1-2, 5, and 13-18 are obvious over Haggerty, Demsey, and Khanna in further view of Ad Serving Technology.

    • Prior Art Relied Upon: Haggerty (Patent 8,532,283), Demsey (Application # 2014/0379482), Khanna (Application # 2013/0111328), and Ad Serving Technology (a 2014 textbook).
    • Core Argument for this Ground:
      • Prior Art Mapping: This ground adds general knowledge from the Ad Serving Technology textbook to render claims related to device-specific ad serving and business rules obvious. The textbook teaches using iframes as a well-known method for displaying ads (relevant to claim 15). It also discloses using JavaScript within ad tags to implement business rules, such as distinguishing between mobile and desktop devices (mapping to claim 5) or applying "frequency caps" which limit ad re-serving within a set time, directly teaching the "timeout" or "predefined event" rules of claims 16-18.
      • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would find it a simple and obvious optimization to apply these well-known techniques, described as standard in the textbook, to the Ground 1 combination. For a click-to-text campaign, it would be a routine design choice to use JavaScript to ensure the ad is served only to mobile devices and to apply frequency caps to avoid over-exposing users to the same ad.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted an additional obviousness challenge (Ground 4) for claims 1-2, 11-14, and 20 based on the Ground 1 combination in further view of Molinet (Application # 2016/0142858), which teaches customizing the deeplinking URI for the specific operating system of the mobile device.

4. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

  • Petitioner argued that discretionary denial under §325(d) is unwarranted because the primary prior art references were never considered during prosecution, and the Examiner misapprehended the state of the art by failing to recognize that "two-tap" methods were well-known.
  • Petitioner further argued that denial under §314(a) based on Fintiv factors would be inappropriate because the parallel district court litigation is in its early stages, a stay will be requested upon institution, minimal investment has been made in the court case, and the merits of the petition are compelling.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of IPR and cancellation of claims 1-20 of the ’887 patent as unpatentable.