Home Depot USA Inc v. H2 Intellect LLC

1. Case Identification

• Case #: IPR2025-00480
• Patent #: 8,433,296
• Filed: April 4, 2025
• Petitioner(s): Home Depot U.S.A., Inc.
• Patent Owner(s): H2 Intellect LLC
• Challenged Claims: 1-15

2. Patent Overview

• Title: Content Delivery System
• Brief Description: The ’296 patent discloses a content delivery platform that delivers content to applications on mobile devices based on the device's location. The system allows sponsors to register applications and reserve exclusive or non-exclusive rights to deliver content within specific geographic areas.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Elliott in view of Jacob - Claims 1-3, 5-8, 10-13, and 15 are obvious over Elliott in view of Jacob.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Elliott (Application # 2006/0149630) and Jacob (Application # 2002/0161633).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Elliott disclosed the foundational system for delivering advertisements to mobile applications, including a content delivery platform (an advertising intermediary and application distributor) that connects sponsors (advertisers) with mobile users. Elliott’s system delivered content based on application type and user demographics but did not explicitly teach establishing geographic perimeters for content delivery reservations. Petitioner asserted that Jacob remedied this deficiency by disclosing an advertising system that delivers content based on a user’s location, using geographic attributes such as local addresses and ZIP codes. Jacob’s use of ZIP codes, which define pre-established geographic areas, was argued to teach the limitation of "establishing a plurality of perimeters defining a plurality of geographic areas." The combination, therefore, taught reserving content delivery based on both application type (from Elliott) and geographic area (from Jacob), as required by independent claims 1 and 6.
  • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine Jacob's location-based targeting with Elliott’s demographic and application-based system to provide more individualized, relevant, and useful advertising. Petitioner contended this was a simple addition of a known element (geographic targeting) to an existing system to obtain the predictable result of improved ad targeting.
  • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success in combining the references. The integration required minimal modification and involved combining compatible and similar elements (different types of ad targeting data) to yield a predictable improvement.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Elliott in view of Jacob and Musk - Claims 4, 9, and 14 are obvious over Elliott in view of Jacob and Musk.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Elliott (Application # 2006/0149630), Jacob (Application # 2002/0161633), and Musk (Patent 6,108,650).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the combination of Elliott and Jacob to address claims requiring a determination of whether a sponsor is located within a "predetermined radial distance" of a target and, in response to a negative determination, "increasing the predetermined radial distance." While the base Elliott/Jacob combination provided a system for location-based advertising, Petitioner asserted it did not explicitly teach this dynamic radius search. Musk was introduced as disclosing an "accelerated radius search" method that performed a search using a first radius and, if an insufficient number of results were returned (a negative determination), automatically generated a second, larger search radius to perform a second search. Petitioner argued that Musk’s teaching of dynamically increasing a search radius rendered the limitations of claims 4 and 9 obvious.
  • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would be motivated to implement Musk's efficient accelerated radius search into the Elliott/Jacob framework to better determine if a user is within a specified distance of a sponsor's location. This modification would improve the system's functionality for proximity-based advertising, representing a simple substitution of one known location-determination technique for another to achieve a predictable result.
  • Expectation of Success: The combination would have been straightforward for a POSITA, requiring minimal modification to the base system and yielding the predictable result of a more robust location-based search function.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

• "reserving" (claims 1, 6, 11): Petitioner argued this term should be construed to include making either an exclusive or non-exclusive reservation for content delivery in a geographic area, based on explicit disclosure in the ’296 patent specification.
• "subject to the reserving" (claim 1): Petitioner proposed this phrase meant that content selection is based on both a geographic area and an application type, as these are the antecedent bases for the "reserving" step in the claim.
• "recording a request identifier associated with the request" (claims 2, 7, 12): Petitioner noted an ambiguity as to whether "the request" refers to a sponsor's "request to obtain an interest" or a user's "request for content." Petitioner argued that under either interpretation, the limitation was disclosed by Elliott's use of a URL with embedded parameters to track user responses to advertisements.

5. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

• Petitioner stipulated that, if the IPR is instituted, it will not pursue in parallel district court litigation the same grounds raised, or that could have reasonably been raised, in the petition. This stipulation was presented to argue against a discretionary denial under 35 U.S.C. §314(a) based on Fintiv factors.

6. Relief Requested

• Petitioner requested institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-15 of the ’296 patent as unpatentable.