Niantic Inc v. ImagineAR Inc

1. Case Identification

• Case #: IPR2025-01274
• Patent #: 10,946,284
• Filed: July 14, 2025
• Petitioner(s): Niantic, Inc.
• Patent Owner(s): ImagineAR, Inc. and Imagine AR, Inc.
• Challenged Claims: 1-28

2. Patent Overview

• Title: System for Modifying Virtual Gameplay Based on Real-World Location
• Brief Description: The ’284 patent discloses computer-implemented methods for enabling virtual gameplay where a game's storyline is dynamically modified based on real-world "local elements," such as weather or news events, corresponding to a player's geographic location.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1-22, 24, and 27 are obvious over Kolo

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Kolo (Application # 2012/0244945).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Kolo, which describes a location-based massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, discloses all limitations of the challenged claims. Kolo teaches modifying the game environment based on a player's geolocation. Specifically, Petitioner pointed to Kolo’s multiplayer battle scenario where weapon effectiveness and item creation depend on environmental conditions like weather at different players' real-world locations. Petitioner asserted that this weather condition is a "local element," and the resulting in-game action (e.g., creating a "rain potion" or increasing a weapon's damage) is the claimed "local element script." This script is shown to modify virtual character statistics (e.g., damage output, health) and plot nodes (the outcome of a battle). Critically, Petitioner argued Kolo teaches actuating this script only when a player's location meets certain criteria relative to another player's location, satisfying the key limitation of claim 1 that the script is actuated only when the player's location is "not represented by another player."
  • Key Aspects: The argument hinges on interpreting Kolo's location-dependent battle mechanics (e.g., weather effects on weapon damage between two players at different locations) as disclosing the entire claimed method, including the conditional actuation of a "local element script."

Ground 2: Claims 23, 25, 26, and 28 are obvious over Kolo in view of Zyda

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Kolo (Application # 2012/0244945) and Zyda (Application # 2011/0214071).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner asserted that Kolo provides a base location-aware MMO game, while Zyda teaches enhancing such games by incorporating a broader range of real-world news and events. Zyda explicitly discloses receiving real-world news in real-time and modifying virtual world attributes, such as introducing non-player characters (NPCs), based on those occurrences. Petitioner argued that combining these teachings would render the remaining claims obvious. For instance, claim 25, which requires introducing a "crowd of non-player characters" based on a news item, was alleged to be obvious by applying Zyda's teaching of modifying NPCs based on real-world events to Kolo's game, where players may be in public areas. Similarly, Zyda's disclosure of extracting keywords from news streams was mapped to claim 26, and its teaching of modifying gameplay based on any type of news was mapped to claims covering local celebrities or news figures (claims 23 and 28).
  • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Kolo and Zyda to improve the game's interactivity and create a more immersive experience. Expanding Kolo's location-based system from simple weather effects to include the dynamic, real-world events taught by Zyda was presented as a logical step to increase player engagement by making the virtual world better reflect the player's actual surroundings.
  • Expectation of Success: Petitioner argued that the combination required only the application of known techniques, such as accessing news feeds based on geographic location and extracting keywords, to a known game system (Kolo) to achieve the predictable result of a more dynamic and customized game.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

• "storage means": Petitioner argued that this term, as used in claims 1, 11, and 12, should not be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. §112(f) as a means-plus-function limitation. Petitioner contended that the word "storage" itself connotes sufficient, definite structure (i.e., memory) to a person of ordinary skill in the art, thereby overcoming the presumption that "means" invokes means-plus-function treatment.
• "local element script": In the alternative, should the Board find this term to be a means-plus-function limitation, Petitioner contended that the specification discloses the corresponding structure (a processor and memory) and that the prior art discloses the same or equivalent structure for performing the claimed functions.

5. Relief Requested

• Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review (IPR) and cancellation of claims 1-28 of the ’284 patent as unpatentable.