PTAB

IPR2025-00269

Sportradar AG v. SportsCastr Inc

Log In
Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Server and Memory Storage Architecture for Providing an Audio and/or Visual Feed and a Separate Event Data Feed
  • Brief Description: The ’687 patent discloses a server and memory architecture for distributing digital content related to live sporting events. The system provides a primary audio/visual feed and a separate, synchronized event data feed (e.g., scores, statistics) to viewer client devices over different communication channels.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 19-25, 27-30 are obvious over Ellis in view of Spivey

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Ellis (Application # 2014/0229992) and Spivey (Application # 2016/0036910).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Ellis disclosed the broad functionality of the ’687 patent, teaching a system that provides media content (like a sporting event) from a content source to user equipment over one communication path, while providing supplemental real-time data (like sports scores) over a separate path. However, Ellis’s system suffered from latency. Spivey, addressing such latency issues, taught a low-latency backend architecture using a Live Data Server Device (LDSD) and a Message Queue Server Device (MQSD) to broadcast live event data to multiple users in milliseconds. Petitioner contended that Ellis’s "content source" and "supplemental content source" map to the claimed media and control servers, while Spivey's low-latency MQSD, which uses topic queues and websocket connections, disclosed the claimed "socket server."
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSA) would combine Ellis and Spivey to solve a known problem: reducing latency in real-time data delivery for live events. Petitioner asserted that a POSA would have been motivated to replace the general data delivery system in Ellis with Spivey’s more detailed, high-performance backend architecture (substituting Ellis’s supplemental content source with Spivey’s LDSD and MQSD) to achieve the predictable result of faster, more reliable data transmission.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSA would have had a high expectation of success because Spivey’s system was designed to be implemented in content delivery systems like that of Ellis. The combination involved substituting known server components to improve performance, a common practice in the art.

Ground 2: Claims 19-25, 27-30 are obvious over Herzog in view of Ellis and Spivey

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Herzog (Application # 2015/0163379), Ellis (Application # 2014/0229992), and Spivey (Application # 2016/0036910).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Herzog taught a system for streaming multiple video/audio feeds related to a single live sporting event (e.g., different camera views of a car race) along with separate, synchronized metadata. Herzog's MPEG 4 encoders corresponded to the claimed "media sources," and its ERP Server, which retrieves metadata, mapped to the "control server." However, Herzog used standard HTTP polling for data delivery, which is prone to latency. Spivey’s MQSD was presented as the missing "socket server" to improve this system. Ellis was added to this combination to teach the claimed functionality of providing content from multiple different live events, as Herzog focused on multiple streams from only one event.
    • Motivation to Combine: The primary motivation was to improve Herzog’s system. A POSA would first combine Herzog with Spivey by replacing Herzog’s latency-prone HTTP-based data delivery with Spivey’s low-latency websocket-based MQSD architecture. This would predictably reduce data latency. Second, a POSA would incorporate Ellis's teachings to expand the content offerings of the improved Herzog/Spivey system from a single event to multiple, different live events, thereby making the platform more attractive to users.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSA would have reasonably expected success because the combination involved applying a known technique (Spivey's low-latency data transmission) to improve a known system (Herzog's) and expanding its functionality with a known feature (Ellis's multi-event capability) to yield predictable results.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Means-Plus-Function Limitations: The ’687 patent includes several means-plus-function limitations (e.g., in claims 27-30). Petitioner noted that in parallel district court litigation, the Patent Owner contended these claims were of the same scope as the non-means-plus-function system claims (e.g., claim 19). For the purposes of the IPR petition only, Petitioner adopted the structures purportedly advanced by the Patent Owner in that litigation, mapping them to algorithms and components disclosed in the ’687 patent specification.

5. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

  • Fintiv Stipulation: Petitioner argued against discretionary denial under the Fintiv factors. It asserted that it has stipulated to the Patent Owner that, if the IPR is instituted, Petitioner will not pursue invalidity in the parallel district court litigation on the grounds raised in the petition or any other grounds that reasonably could have been raised.

6. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 19-25 and 27-30 of the ’687 patent as unpatentable.