DataDome SA v. Arkose Labs Holdings Inc

1. Case Identification

• Case #: IPR2025-00693
• Patent #: 7,373,510
• Filed: March 14, 2025
• Petitioner(s): DataDome S.A. and DataDome Solutions, Inc.
• Patent Owner(s): Arkose Labs Holdings, Inc.
• Challenged Claims: 1-30

2. Patent Overview

• Title: SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR IMPLEMENTING A ROBOT PROOF WEB SITE
• Brief Description: The ’510 patent discloses a system for preventing automated bots from browsing a website by presenting a challenge to an unknown user. If the user passes, they are granted access; if they fail, further requests are blocked for a period of time by logging the user's IP address and starting a lockout timer.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Lim and Guthrie - Claims 1, 2, 7, 8, 13-15, 17-22, and 25-30 are obvious over Lim in view of Guthrie.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Lim (Patent 8,527,337) and Guthrie (Patent 6,161,185).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Lim taught the core elements of independent claims 1 and 20, including a method for preventing bots from accessing a website by issuing a challenge to an undefined user, checking the response, and either processing further requests upon success or stopping processing upon failure. Lim disclosed that a user's account could be suspended for a time period after failing a challenge. Petitioner asserted that the detailed lockout timer limitations (logging a source IP address, starting a timer, and checking the timer on subsequent requests), which were added during prosecution to secure allowance, were well-known and explicitly taught by Guthrie. Guthrie described a "lock-out timer" to thwart unauthorized users and automated applications from "hammering" a server with repeated authorization attempts by temporarily denying access based on a timer.
  • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner contended that a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine Lim and Guthrie to implement Lim's disclosed "suspension" of a user account. Guthrie provided a well-understood, conventional method for implementing such a temporary lockout. A POSITA would have been motivated to use Guthrie's detailed lockout timer to accomplish Lim's goal of distinguishing humans from bots more effectively and flexibly, as it would prevent bots from making brute-force attempts while not permanently blocking legitimate users.
  • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a high expectation of success because both Lim and Guthrie operated in the same field of internet authentication and security and used the same standard network technologies (e.g., TCP/IP), making their combination predictable and straightforward.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Lim, Guthrie, and Lillibridge - Claims 3-6, 9-12, 16, and 23-24 are obvious over Lim in combination with Guthrie, in further view of Lillibridge.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Lim (Patent 8,527,337), Guthrie (Patent 6,161,185), and Lillibridge (Patent 6,195,698).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the combination of Lim and Guthrie from Ground 1 and added Lillibridge to address dependent claims requiring that the challenge prompting is "different at each subsequent access" of the website. Petitioner asserted that while Lim taught presenting subsequent quizzes, Lillibridge explicitly taught the importance of modifying the challenge for each new request to enhance security. Lillibridge described generating a new, random "riddle" for each request to prevent an automated agent from simply reusing a previously solved answer. This directly maps to the limitation of providing a different prompt on subsequent access.
  • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner argued that a POSITA would have been motivated to incorporate Lillibridge's teaching into the Lim/Guthrie system to improve its security. Simply repeating the same challenge would create a significant vulnerability, allowing a bot to easily bypass the system after solving the initial challenge once. Lillibridge provided the obvious solution of varying the challenge to defeat such automated attacks. All three references addressed the same fundamental problem of distinguishing humans from bots, making their features complementary.
  • Expectation of Success: The combination would have been successful and predictable. Implementing dynamic challenges as taught by Lillibridge was a known technique to improve the robustness of CAPTCHA-style systems like the one disclosed in Lim, and it involved no undue experimentation.

4. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

• Petitioner argued that discretionary denial under Fintiv would be inappropriate because the co-pending district court litigation was in its earliest stages. At the time of filing, only a motion to dismiss was pending, no answer had been filed, no discovery had occurred, and no trial date had been set, meaning there was little investment by the court or the parties.
• Petitioner further argued that denial under §325(d) would be inappropriate. The petition asserted that the primary prior art references, Lim and Guthrie, were not before the Examiner during the original prosecution. Therefore, the petition raised substantially new arguments and questions of patentability that the Patent Office had not previously considered.

5. Relief Requested

• Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-30 of the ’510 patent as unpatentable.