Roku Inc v. Anonymous Media Research Holdings LLC

1. Case Identification

• Case #: IPR2024-01057
• Patent #: 10,719,848
• Filed: July 15, 2024
• Petitioner(s): Roku, Inc.
• Patent Owner(s): Anonymous Media Research Holdings, LLC
• Challenged Claims: 1-15

2. Patent Overview

• Title: Media Measurement Method and System
• Brief Description: The ’848 patent discloses a system for identifying media content by analyzing a sequence of captured video data samples. The system generates a "raw play stream" of identification results and then "scrubs" this stream by analyzing patterns in the data to correct errors or fill in missing identifications, thereby creating a "clean play stream."

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Herley682 and Seet - Claims 1-3, 5, 6, 8-11, 13, and 14 are obvious over Herley682 in view of Seet.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Herley682 (Application # 2004/0260682) and Seet (Application # 2005/0193016).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Herley682 taught the foundational steps of the challenged claims, including a system that receives broadcast signals (video), generates fingerprints (representations of video data), and queries a database to identify content. Herley682’s collection of identification results, stored with metadata and timestamps, was argued to constitute the claimed "raw play stream." However, Herley682 handled unmatched samples by flagging them as "unknown objects" for manual user identification. Seet was argued to supply the missing "scrubbing" element by teaching a method to infer the identity of unmatched samples by analyzing the temporal sequence and pattern of surrounding, correctly identified samples. The combination of Herley682's system with Seet's automated inference method was argued to render the full claimed process obvious, including generating a "clean play stream" after correcting the "unknown objects."
  • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine Seet's automated data correction method with Herley682's system to replace the slow and inefficient manual identification of "unknown objects." This would achieve a faster, more reliable, and more automated system, which was a stated goal of Herley682.
  • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have an expectation of success because both references operate in the same field of media content identification and the combination involved applying a known data imputation technique (Seet) to a known system ready for improvement (Herley682) to achieve a predictable increase in automation and reliability.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Herley682, Seet, and Herley864 - Claims 1-6 and 8-14 are obvious over Herley682 and Seet in view of Herley864.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Herley682 (Application # 2004/0260682), Seet (Application # 2005/0193016), and Herley864 (Patent 7,333,864).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the combination in Ground 1, adding Herley864 to address the limitation of using "audience data" for scrubbing (recited in dependent claims 4 and 12). Petitioner contended that "audience data" includes a user's media consumption patterns, such as preferred genres. Herley864 taught improving search efficiency by limiting content identification searches to a particular genre. Therefore, Herley864 taught using a form of audience data (genre preference) to assist in the content identification process.
  • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA, seeking to improve the efficiency of the Herley682/Seet system, would be motivated to incorporate Herley864's teaching. When scrubbing the raw play stream to identify an "unknown object," a POSITA would first search for matches within the user's preferred genre, as taught by Herley864, to speed up the search before querying the entire database. This was presented as a logical extension to improve the system's performance.

Ground 3: Obviousness over Herley682/Seet and Wang060 - Claims 7 and 15 are obvious over Herley682 and Seet in view of Wang060.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Herley682 (Application # 2004/0260682), Seet (Application # 2005/0193016), and Wang060 (Application # 2002/0083060).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: This ground addressed claims 7 and 15, which require the "video data representations" in the database to include a "plurality of signal landmarks." The base combination of Herley682/Seet taught using "fingerprints" for content identification. Petitioner argued Wang060 taught a well-known method for generating such fingerprints using "landmarks," which it defined as reproducibly computable locations within a media file.
  • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA implementing the fingerprinting system of Herley682/Seet would look to known techniques for creating those fingerprints. Wang060 provided an explicit, known, and effective method using landmarks. A POSITA would, therefore, be motivated to use Wang060's landmarking technique as the specific implementation for generating the fingerprints in the Herley682/Seet system, rendering claims 7 and 15 obvious.

4. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

• Petitioner argued against discretionary denial under 35 U.S.C. §314(a) (Fintiv), stating it would file a Sotera stipulation to not pursue the same grounds or any reasonably assertable grounds in parallel district court litigation if the IPR is instituted.
• Petitioner also argued against denial under 35 U.S.C. §325(d), asserting that the primary prior art references and the proposed combinations (Herley682, Seet, Herley864) were not considered by the Examiner during the original prosecution. While Wang060 was cited, it was not applied in any rejection, meaning the specific arguments and combinations in the petition are new.

5. Relief Requested

• Petitioner requests the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 1-15 of Patent 10,719,848 as unpatentable.