PTAB

IPR2025-00337

Google LLC v. EscapeX IP LLC

Key Events

Petition

petition

Title: System and Method for Aggregating Content and Facilitating Uncapped Engagement of the Content
Brief Description: The ’687 patent is directed to business methods for social media platforms. The patent discloses a system to address the perceived limitation of single "likes" by allowing users to spend resources to obtain an unlimited number of "engagements" with content, and subsequently ranking users based on their levels of engagement.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Fuloria (Application # 2013/0030905) and Andler (Application # 2014/0025688).
Core Argument for this Ground:
- Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Fuloria teaches a social media system, such as Facebook, that facilitates "uncapped engagement" by allowing users to exchange "credits" for "super-likes" to promote content items in a news feed. This promotion increases content visibility and subsequent user interaction. Petitioner contended that Andler teaches a complementary social media system that calculates "engagement scores" for users and displays a ranked list of users based on those scores. The combination of Fuloria's uncapped, resource-based engagement mechanism and Andler's user ranking system was alleged to disclose the core limitations of independent claim 1.
- Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Andler's ranking system with Fuloria's engagement system to achieve the predictable result of incentivizing user activity. Incorporating Andler's teachings would allow the system to identify and reward "top fans," a benefit explicitly taught by Andler. The fact that both references suggest Facebook as a potential platform provides an express reason to combine their features.
- Expectation of Success: The combination involved predictable software components within the well-understood field of social networking, ensuring a POSITA would have had a high expectation of success.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Fuloria, Andler, and WO ’100 (International Publication No. WO 2015/089100).
Core Argument for this Ground:
- Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the combination of Fuloria and Andler to address claims requiring a joint indication from multiple users to obtain engagements. Petitioner argued WO ’100 teaches a social network system where multiple users can "join forces" or "team up" to collectively promote content, thereby increasing its visibility to a high-profile user.
- Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would be motivated to integrate the "teaming up" functionality of WO ’100 into the Fuloria/Andler base system. This addition would allow users to pool their resources and influence to more effectively promote content, a direct benefit taught by WO ’100. This combination directly meets the claim limitation requiring a joint request for engagement from multiple users.

Prior Art Relied Upon: Fuloria, Andler, and Bartholomew (Application # 2016/0314501).
Core Argument for this Ground:
- Prior Art Mapping: This ground addressed claims requiring the functionality for one user to "donate" resources to another user's account. Petitioner asserted that Bartholomew teaches a social network system where users can transfer or "gift" credits (resources) to other users for free.
- Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would find it obvious to add Bartholomew's resource donation feature to the base Fuloria/Andler system. This would represent the simple addition of a known, desirable feature to permit users to help friends, transfer credits from a closing account, or encourage others to engage with the platform, constituting a predictable design choice.
Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted additional obviousness challenges against claims 4 and 16 based on combinations including Kirk (Application # 2015/0058103) for awarding resources based on third-party activity, and against claims 7-10 and 19-22 based on combinations including Cheung (Patent 7,835,943) for automatically obtaining engagements to achieve and maintain a desired user rank.

Petitioner argued that the term "engagement," as used in the independent claims, should be construed as "an indication that a user should be distinguished with respect to the content over another user." This construction, based on the patent's own definition in the specification, was central to Petitioner's argument that prior art actions like "super-liking" or promoting content fall within the scope of the claims.

Petitioner argued that the Board should not exercise discretionary denial. Denial under 35 U.S.C. §325(d) was argued to be inappropriate because none of the asserted prior art references were of record during the prosecution of the application leading to the ’687 patent. Further, Petitioner contended that denial under 35 U.S.C. §314(a) would be improper as there was no currently pending parallel litigation involving the ’687 patent.

Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-24 of Patent 10,474,687 as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.