PTAB

IPR2025-00315

Sportradar AG v. SportsCastr Inc

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: System and Method for a Multi-Channel Viewer Experience
  • Brief Description: The ’687 patent discloses a system for delivering a live video feed of an event, such as a sporting event, to viewer devices while simultaneously delivering a separate, synchronized data feed (e.g., scores, statistics) over a different communication channel. The system architecture is designed to overlay the data feed onto the video feed on the viewer's screen.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Ellis in view of Spivey - Claim 1 is 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 foundational system of claim 1: providing digital content for a live sporting event to viewer client devices (VCDs) by streaming video over one channel and supplemental data (e.g., scores) over a separate channel. However, Ellis’s system suffered from latency in data delivery. Spivey was alleged to cure this deficiency by teaching a detailed backend architecture with a Live Data Server Device (LDSD) and a Message Queue Server Device (MQSD) that function as the claimed control server and socket server, respectively, to provide low-latency, real-time data to users via websocket connections.
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine Ellis and Spivey to improve the known latency issues of a system like Ellis’s. Spivey explicitly addressed latency in live-event data delivery. A POSITA would have been motivated to replace Ellis’s generic data delivery system with Spivey’s more efficient websocket-based architecture to achieve the predictable result of reduced latency.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a high expectation of success, as the combination involved substituting a known, inefficient component (Ellis’s data delivery) with a known, improved solution (Spivey’s backend architecture) to achieve a predictable improvement.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Ellis, Spivey, and Kellicker - Claim 10 is obvious over Ellis in view of Spivey and Kellicker.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Ellis (Application # 2014/0229992), Spivey (Application # 2016/0036910), and Kellicker (Application # 2017/0250882).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the Ellis/Spivey combination to address the limitations of dependent claim 10, which requires the media sources to include a Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) media server and a Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) media server. Petitioner asserted that Kellicker disclosed a media streaming server that explicitly supports various real-time protocols, including RTMP and WebRTC, for processing and transmitting live media streams.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would incorporate Kellicker’s teachings into the Ellis/Spivey system to ensure compatibility with well-known and widely utilized streaming protocols. This addition would provide the system with greater flexibility and adaptability for handling different types of incoming media streams, which was a known design choice at the time.

Ground 3: Obviousness over Ellis, Spivey, Kellicker, and Phillips - Claims 11, 15-16 are obvious over Ellis in view of Spivey, Kellicker, and Phillips.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Ellis (’992 application), Spivey (’910 application), Kellicker (’882 application), and Phillips (Application # 2015/0127845).

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground targeted claims requiring an HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) caching server architecture with a parent/child server structure. While Kellicker introduced the use of an HLS-compatible Content Distribution Network (CDN), Petitioner argued it did not explicitly detail the hierarchical structure. Phillips was alleged to supply this missing element by disclosing a detailed hierarchical CDN architecture with "parent" nodes (e.g., national servers) and "child" nodes (e.g., regional or edge servers) for efficiently distributing HLS content.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA, having implemented an HLS CDN as taught by Kellicker, would have been motivated to look to a reference like Phillips to implement a known, efficient server hierarchy. This would optimize content delivery, reduce server load, and improve performance, which are common goals in CDN design. Phillips’s parent/child architecture represented a conventional and effective way to structure the CDN taught by Kellicker.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted additional obviousness challenges for claims 12-14 and 17-18. These grounds built upon the core combination by adding Stoica (Patent 9,246,965) for its teachings on web server APIs and database integration for routing client requests, and Pantos (an HLS protocol specification) for its detailed disclosure of the HLS file suite structure, including master playlists, chunklists, and file segment pointers.

4. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

  • Petitioner argued that discretionary denial under Fintiv is inappropriate. Petitioner stipulated that if the inter partes review (IPR) is instituted, it will not pursue invalidity in the co-pending district court litigation on the grounds raised in the petition or on any other grounds that reasonably could have been raised.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an IPR and cancellation of claims 1 and 10-18 of the ’687 patent as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.