PTAB

IPR2025-00545

Amazon.com Inc v. AlmondNet Inc

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Accumulating Descriptive Profile Data for Targeted Advertising
  • Brief Description: The ’904 patent discloses automated methods for collecting and accumulating user profile data from multiple unaffiliated third-party websites. The system receives URL-redirected "partial profiles" from these third parties, adds them to a centrally "maintained profile" for a user, and uses the aggregated data for targeting third-party advertisements.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Merriman061 and Jaye - Claims 1, 3-6, 10-11, 13-16, 20-21, 23-26, and 30 are obvious over Merriman061 in view of Jaye.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Merriman061 (Patent 5,948,061) and Jaye (Patent 6,415,322).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Merriman061 disclosed a foundational ad server system (DoubleClick) that receives user information, including cookies, from an affiliate website via a URL redirection (an HTML <img> tag) to target ads. However, Merriman061 did not explicitly teach how the affiliate server transmits a detailed "partial profile" to the ad server. Jaye was argued to supply this missing element by disclosing a system where local servers transmit local user profiles to a central enterprise server. Jaye taught that this could be accomplished by appending profile information directly to a "special URL" used for the redirect (e.g., .../go?local_server_id&client_information). The combination of Merriman061's ad network architecture with Jaye's method of appending profile data to a redirect URL renders obvious the claimed method of receiving a URL-redirected partial profile from an unaffiliated third party.
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine the teachings to improve the ad targeting capabilities of Merriman061's system. Jaye provided a well-understood and efficient method for transmitting more detailed user profile information from distributed sources to a central server. Incorporating this technique would provide the ad server with more robust data in real-time, enabling more precise ad targeting and increasing advertising revenue for both the ad network and publishers.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a high expectation of success, as the combination involved applying a conventional technique (appending data to a URL, as taught by Jaye) to a known system architecture (the ad network of Merriman061) to achieve the predictable result of enhanced data collection.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Rosenberg and Merriman154 - Claims 1, 3-6, 9-11, 13-16, 19-21, 23-26, 29-30 are obvious over Rosenberg in view of Merriman154.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Rosenberg (Patent 6,073,241) and Merriman154 (Patent 8,566,154).

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner asserted that Rosenberg disclosed a system for tracking a user's browser across distinct domains, where multiple "cooperating" web servers send profile information to a central database server to build a comprehensive user profile. Rosenberg taught using URL redirection to share a common cookie identifier among servers. Merriman154 was argued to teach a more specific, real-time method for this data transfer using "spotlight tags"—minimal graphic images (e.g., a 1-pixel image) placed on an advertiser's website that contain a redirect message back to an advertising server. When a user visits a page with a spotlight tag, their browser is redirected, conveying real-time activity data (a partial profile) to the server. Petitioner argued it would have been obvious to modify Rosenberg's system to use Merriman154's spotlight tag technique to pass user activity data from the web servers to the central database server.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine the references to improve Rosenberg's system with the real-time data collection taught by Merriman154. This would allow Rosenberg's database server to update user profiles instantly as browsing activity occurs, ensuring that personalized content and targeted ads are based on the most current information, thereby increasing their effectiveness. The combination enabled re-targeting, a specific and valuable form of advertising.
    • Expectation of Success: Success was predictable because the modification involved a simple substitution of one known data transfer technique for another. The underlying technology—using an embedded image link to cause a browser to redirect to another server—was already present in Rosenberg for exchanging cookie identifiers, making the integration of Merriman154's functionally similar spotlight tags straightforward.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted that claims 7-8, 17-18, and 27-28 are obvious over the primary combinations of Ground 1 or Ground 2 when further combined with Coleman (Application # 2002/0026351). Coleman was argued to teach verifying profile attributes against external databases and assigning a "credibility rating" or score to the data, which could be reflected in the price charged for ads targeted using that data.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • For the purposes of the petition, Petitioner applied the plain-and-ordinary meaning to all claim terms.
  • Petitioner explicitly adopted Patent Owner's proposed constructions from a related district court litigation for two key terms:
    • "unaffiliated third parties": "a party not having common ownership with the party or parties that control said programmed computer system."
    • "URL redirection": "obtaining certain information for at least a portion of an accessed page / site from a different location."

5. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

  • Petitioner argued that discretionary denial under Fintiv would be inappropriate because the parallel district court litigation is in a nascent stage. At the time of filing, neither discovery nor claim construction had begun, and the trial was not scheduled until November 2026, ensuring a final written decision in the IPR would issue long before trial.
  • Petitioner also argued against denial under §325(d), contending that the same or substantially the same art and arguments were not previously presented to the USPTO. Key references, including Merriman061, Merriman154, and Rosenberg, were not before the examiner during the original prosecution.

6. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1, 3-11, 13-21, and 23-30 of the ’904 patent as unpatentable.