Meta Platforms Inc v. SitNet LLC

1. Case Identification

• Case #: IPR2024-00612
• Patent #: 8,249,932
• Filed: March 4, 2024
• Petitioner(s): Meta Platforms, Inc.
• Patent Owner(s): SitNet, LLC
• Challenged Claims: 12-21

2. Patent Overview

• Title: Presenting Targeted Advertising in a Situational Network
• Brief Description: The ’932 patent discloses methods for presenting targeted advertising to users within a "situational network." The system identifies an event or "situation," establishes a network connecting users affected by it, and delivers information and ads to those users based on access levels and user data.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Amidon and Walsh - Claims 12, 14-21 are obvious over Amidon in view of Walsh.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Amidon (Patent 8,346,864) and Walsh (Patent 9,195,996).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Amidon, which teaches systems for users to conduct online conferences based on social network structures, discloses the core elements of the ’932 patent. Amidon's "social network conference" was asserted to be a "situational network" where user devices are "personal information aggregators." Amidon's system establishes a conference (an "event node") in response to a situation (e.g., users listening to the same song). It further teaches creating different user groups with varying access levels (e.g., full participants vs. viewers-only) based on parameters like degrees of separation in the social network, which Petitioner mapped to the claimed "two or more projections." Walsh, a related patent by the same inventors as Amidon, was asserted to supply the missing advertising element by explicitly teaching the integration of targeted advertisements into the same conference interface disclosed in Amidon.
  • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Walsh's advertising features with Amidon's social conferencing system to achieve the predictable result of generating advertising revenue, a well-known business objective. The fact that the same inventors created both patents, with Walsh essentially adding advertising to the Amidon system, was presented as strong evidence of this motivation.
  • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have a high expectation of success, as the combination merely involved integrating a known advertising model into an existing social conferencing platform, a common and straightforward practice in the art. Walsh itself was argued to demonstrate how to successfully perform the integration.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Amidon, Walsh, and Shahine - Claim 13 is obvious over Amidon and Walsh in view of Shahine.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Amidon (Patent 8,346,864), Walsh (Patent 9,195,996), and Shahine (Patent 8,799,073).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the Amidon and Walsh combination from Ground 1 to address the additional limitation of claim 13, which requires that the "plurality of advertisements are received from at least one advertising entity." Petitioner contended that while Amidon and Walsh teach providing ads, they do not expressly disclose the source. Shahine was introduced to remedy this, as it discloses a standard client-server advertising system where an "advertiser server" receives advertising content and targeting data from advertisers for subsequent distribution to users.
  • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner argued that to the extent Amidon and Walsh did not disclose receiving ads from an advertising entity, a POSITA implementing Walsh’s advertising feature would have been motivated to use a conventional ad server architecture as taught by Shahine. This would be a routine design choice to efficiently manage and serve ads from various sources.
  • Expectation of Success: Success would be expected because implementing an ad server to store and distribute advertisements was a well-known and widely used technique at the time, involving standard network communication and data upload protocols.

Ground 3: Obviousness over Amidon, Walsh, and Jones - Claim 20 is obvious over Amidon and Walsh in view of Jones.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Amidon (Patent 8,346,864), Walsh (Patent 9,195,996), and Jones (Application # 2006/0095320).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: This ground addressed claim 20's limitation that the "situation is a weather phenomenon." Petitioner first argued this phrase should be treated as non-limiting descriptive matter. Alternatively, if limiting, Petitioner asserted the combination of Amidon and Walsh in view of Jones rendered the claim obvious. Jones teaches a system for electronic advertising that includes providing announcements like "emergency weather reports" and connecting users in a live chat room to discuss the situation.
  • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would be motivated to apply the social conferencing and advertising system of Amidon and Walsh to the specific context of a weather event, as taught by Jones. Jones demonstrated the utility of creating online user groups for such events, making it an obvious application for the more advanced social networking tools of Amidon.
  • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have a reasonable expectation of success because Amidon's system was already equipped to host conferences on any topic, requiring no modification to be applied to weather-related events.

4. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

• Petitioner argued that the Board should not discretionarily deny the petition under 35 U.S.C. §325(d) or §314(a).
• §325(d) (Advanced Bionics): Denial was argued to be inappropriate because all asserted prior art references (Amidon, Walsh, Shahine, and Jones) are new and were never previously considered by the USPTO during prosecution.
• §314(a) (Fintiv): Petitioner asserted that the Fintiv factors strongly favor institution. The parallel district court litigation was in its early stages with no substantive rulings, and the scheduled trial date was unreliable. Petitioner also highlighted its diligence in filing the petition and stipulated that it would not pursue the same invalidity grounds in the district court if the IPR is instituted.

5. Relief Requested

• Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 12-21 of the ’932 patent as unpatentable.