PTAB

IPR2025-01304

Cisco Systems Inc v. Dynamic Mesh Networks Inc

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Wireless Local Area Network with Distributed Management
  • Brief Description: The ’243 patent discloses a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) using a distributed approach to manage conflicting latency and throughput needs for diverse applications. Each access point (AP) node in the mesh network locally selects a parent node to establish a communication path, based on functioning parameters set by a central access server.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness of Claims 9, 12, and 13 over Ogier, Shapiro, and Herzog

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Ogier (Application # 2002/0062388), Shapiro (Application # 2002/0161917), and Herzog (Application # 2002/0016840).
  • Core Argument:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Ogier discloses the foundational wireless mesh network where routing nodes (AP nodes) independently select communication paths to a gateway (root node) by applying an algorithm to minimize link costs. Shapiro was cited for its teaching of calculating these link costs based on an "efficiency factor" that incorporates a "goodness factor," such as periodically sampled throughput. Herzog was asserted to disclose a "policy system" residing on a server (access server) that defines network policies (e.g., how to calculate link costs) and distributes them as lower-level instructions to network nodes. The combination allegedly teaches a mesh network where an access server (Herzog) sets functioning parameters (the link cost formula incorporating throughput from Shapiro) that AP nodes (Ogier) use to select a parent node.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Ogier with Shapiro to make routing decisions more context-sensitive by incorporating a known performance metric (throughput) into Ogier’s flexible link-cost calculation. A POSITA would further add Herzog’s policy server because it provided a well-understood, centralized mechanism for a network manager to supply these now-more-complex link cost parameters to the network nodes, a function needed but not detailed in Ogier or Shapiro.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination was predictable because it involved modifying input link costs for Ogier's standard route-selection algorithm (Dijkstra's), which is known to find optimal paths for any cost metric. Herzog's server was designed to distribute exactly these types of policy instructions to network nodes, making the integration straightforward.

Ground 2: Obviousness of Claims 1-7 over Ogier, Shapiro, Herzog, and Cromer

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Ogier (Application # 2002/0062388), Shapiro (Application # 2002/0161917), Herzog (Application # 2002/0016840), and Cromer (Application # 2004/0001467).
  • Core Argument:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground builds on the primary combination of Ogier, Shapiro, and Herzog. Petitioner asserted that Cromer teaches dynamic load balancing in a wireless LAN, where each access point maintains a table that stores its "Max. capacity" and the "aggregate bandwidth" used by its connected clients. This data is used to calculate "extra capacity" and, if a congestion threshold is reached, offload clients. Petitioner argued that incorporating Cromer’s teachings into the nodes of the primary combination would satisfy claim 1 limitations requiring datasets for "amount of AP data traffic" (Cromer's aggregate bandwidth) and "maximum capacity amount of the AP node."
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Cromer with the primary references to enhance Shapiro’s general "goodness factor" with a more specific, critical metric for network health: a node's remaining or "extra capacity." This would improve the network's route selection process by allowing it to favor paths with less congested nodes and explicitly avoid paths through nodes operating at or beyond their maximum capacity, a known goal in network management.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a high expectation of success, as this combination merely involved substituting one known network performance metric (throughput) with a related, more specific set of metrics (aggregate bandwidth, max capacity, and extra capacity) to improve the performance of a known routing algorithm in a predictable manner.

Ground 3: Obviousness of Claims 10 and 11 over Ground I/II in view of O'Neal

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: The combination from Ground 1 or Ground 2, further in view of O'Neal (Application # 2003/0051051).
  • Core Argument:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued O'Neal discloses a system where a parent node maintains a "sibling database" and informs each of its child nodes about the identity of their siblings. If the parent node fails, this awareness allows the child nodes to communicate directly with each other (one child "docks" with its sibling) to establish a new connection and maintain data flow. This combination allegedly teaches claim 10's limitation that the "dataset of child node identifiers is accessible to each child node" and claim 11's requirement for direct data transfer between child nodes.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would be motivated to implement O'Neal's localized failover mechanism to improve the robustness and reduce latency in the Ogier network. When a parent node fails in Ogier's system, a network-wide re-computation of routing paths is required, introducing delay. O'Neal's method provides a faster, localized response that allows sibling nodes to maintain connectivity without waiting for the global reorganization.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination was highly compatible and predictable. Ogier already taught that nodes maintain a list of their children; O'Neal's approach simply extends this by having the parent share this list among the children to enable a well-known type of localized failover technique, yielding the predictable result of improved network resilience.
  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted additional obviousness challenges based on adding Inouchi (Patent 6,839,350) to the primary combinations to explicitly teach a processor and storage medium with instructions, corresponding to the proposed means-plus-function construction for the "means for switching" limitation.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Petitioner argued that the term "a means for switching two-way data communication from a first associated parent node to a second associated parent node based on the functioning parameters of the wireless mesh network," which appears in all challenged claims, is a means-plus-function limitation under 35 U.S.C. §112, ¶6.
  • Proposed Construction: The claimed function is switching communication between parent nodes based on network parameters. The corresponding structure disclosed in the ’243 patent's specification is a processor and a storage medium containing instructions that perform the identified function based on latency and throughput. This construction was central to Petitioner's contingent grounds that add the Inouchi reference to explicitly teach a router with a processor and program memory.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-7 and 9-13 of Patent 7,885,243 as unpatentable.