PTAB

IPR2023-01441

Bright Data Ltd v. Oxylabs UAB

Key Events

Petition

petition

Case #: IPR2023-01441
Patent #: 7,010,526
Filed: September 27, 2023
Petitioner(s): Bright Data Ltd.
Patent Owner(s): Oxylabs, UAB
Challenged Claims: 1-3, 6-9, 11, 13, 16-17, 19-20, 34-36, 39-42, 44, 46, 49-50, 52-53

Title: Knowledge-Based Data Mining System
Brief Description: The ’526 patent discloses a data mining system where a web crawler gathers data into a data store. The system utilizes "low level miners" to process data and "high level miners" that can be created in response to a customer request to process the output of other miners and fulfill the request.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Jacobsen (Application # 2003/0163454).
Core Argument for this Ground:
- Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Jacobsen, which discloses a "Subject Specific Search Engine," teaches every limitation of the challenged independent claims. Jacobsen's "smart crawler" traverses the internet and saves relevant web pages to a data store. Petitioner asserted that Jacobsen's "word scoring feature," which assigns numerical scores to words on saved pages, constitutes the claimed "first data miner." Subsequently, in response to a user query, Jacobsen's "site ranking feature" is created to access the word scores (the result of the first miner) and generate a ranked list of search results, which Petitioner mapped to the claimed "second data miner" created in response to a customer request.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Jacobsen (Application # 2003/0163454), Hegli (Patent 6,606,659).
Core Argument for this Ground:
- Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner contended that Jacobsen discloses the base system as described in Ground 1. Hegli was introduced for its teaching of analyzing "lexical elements" (e.g., words, word pairs) on internet sites to categorize them and assign relevance scores. Petitioner argued Hegli's system of using word IDs, category IDs, and relevance scores constitutes the "key representing at least one characteristic" of a web page as recited in the dependent claims (e.g., claim 6).
- Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Hegli's method for categorizing information with Jacobsen's subject-specific search engine to improve the functionality and precision of information retrieval. For example, applying Hegli’s categorization would allow Jacobsen’s specialized search system to create distinct sections for different subjects (e.g., patent law vs. medical information), enhancing the user experience.
- Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have reasonably expected success, as combining a known search engine architecture (Jacobsen) with known lexical analysis and categorization techniques (Hegli) involves applying conventional methods to improve a known system and would predictably yield categorized search results.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Seibel (Patent 7,082,427).
Core Argument for this Ground:
- Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Seibel's "customer lead generation system" anticipates the claimed invention. Seibel's "prospects harvester process" crawls the internet to return data to a staging database. A "profiles generation process" then analyzes this data to create customer profiles, which Petitioner asserted is the "first data miner." In response to a customer "chart request," a server runs a customized query with specific parameters to extract data from the results of the profiles generation process to create a tailored output. Petitioner contended this query process constitutes "creating at least a second data miner" that accesses the first miner's results to generate an output.
Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted additional obviousness challenges based on combining Jacobsen or Seibel with general knowledge or with Jaramillo (Application # 2002/0049773) to teach the billing limitations of claims 2 and 35.

"...creating at least a second data miner..." (claims 1, 34): Petitioner argued that based on express distinctions made during prosecution to overcome prior art, this term requires creating a new data miner to provide customized results based on a user's request. It cannot be interpreted so broadly as to cover merely selecting or passing a request to a pre-existing search engine.
"...billing the customer..." (claims 2, 35): Petitioner argued that statements made during prosecution to distinguish the Jaramillo reference—which was characterized as billing "only by subscription, not by query"—amounted to a clear disclaimer. Therefore, Petitioner contended these claims require billing on a per-request basis and do not cover a subscription-based billing model.

§314(a) (Fintiv Factors): Petitioner argued against discretionary denial based on a parallel district court case. Key arguments included that the litigation was in its early stages with no substantive proceedings having occurred, and the petition presents compelling evidence of unpatentability. Petitioner also stipulated that, if the IPR is instituted, it will not pursue the same invalidity grounds in the district court litigation.
§325(d) (Same or Substantially the Same Art): Petitioner argued against denial because the petition relies on primary references—Jacobsen and Seibel—that were never considered by the USPTO during the original prosecution of the ’526 patent. The Examiner's allowance was based on overcoming a different primary reference (Chipman), and Petitioner contended that both Jacobsen and Seibel teach the key "creating" limitation that Chipman was found to lack.

Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 1-3, 6-9, 11, 13, 16-17, 19-20, 34-36, 39-42, 44, 46, 49-50, and 52-53 of the ’526 patent as unpatentable.