PTAB

IPR2025-01318

LiveIntent Inc v. Datonics LLC

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: PROVIDING COLLECTED PROFILES TO MEDIA PROPERTIES HAVING SPECIFIED INTERESTS
  • Brief Description: The ’445 patent discloses a method for profile-based behavioral targeting in online advertising. The system involves a central "profile owner" company that identifies media properties interested in specific user profiles and facilitates making those collected profiles available for targeted ad placement.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1-14 are obvious over Beyda in view of Herz.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Beyda (Application # 2005/0165644) and Herz (Application # 2009/0254971).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the combination of Beyda and Herz rendered the challenged claims obvious under 35 U.S.C. §103. Petitioner asserted that Beyda disclosed a network-level advertising system, the Audience Matching Network (AMN), which acts as a central clearinghouse for user profile data collected from a network of affiliated publisher websites. While Beyda taught that this cross-domain profile data could be shared among publishers, it did not specify a precise mechanism for this exchange, leaving the implementation details to a POSITA.

      Petitioner contended that Herz supplied this missing mechanism. Herz described a central data warehouse, the Secure Data Interchange (SDI), where different entities ("agents") can exchange data using "persistent queries." An agent can register an ongoing interest in a certain type of data with the SDI; when new data matching the query is submitted to the warehouse, the system automatically notifies the querying agent and can trigger an action.

      Petitioner argued a POSITA would combine these systems by integrating Herz's persistent query functionality into Beyda's AMN. This combination directly maps to the limitations of independent claim 1. A media property's targeting system (the "computer system" of the claim) would submit a persistent query to the AMN (the "profile owner computer") for profiles with specific interests. When a visitor's activity on an affiliated site generates profile data that satisfies the query, the AMN would automatically select that media property. The AMN would then arrange for the electronic storage of the requested profile at the media property's system, for example, by redirecting the visitor’s browser. This fulfills the limitations of the profile owner computer selecting a media property based on a comparison of visitor profile information against stored requests.

      The media property’s system then stores this profile information in its own database, linked to a unique tag (e.g., a cookie) set on the visitor's device. This maps to the limitations of storing profile information received from the profile owner and using a tag as a link to that profile. Later, when the visitor revisits the media property's website, its system can use the tag to access the stored profile and deliver a targeted advertisement, as recited in the final step of claim 1.

    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner asserted that a POSITA would combine Beyda and Herz for several reasons. First, since Beyda described the goal of data sharing but not the method, a POSITA would look to known systems like Herz for a concrete and obvious implementation, making the use of persistent queries a logical choice. Second, the combination would enable "first-time personalization" (a benefit from Herz), allowing a publisher to serve a targeted ad to a user on their very first visit by using profile data collected from other domains. Third, the combination would create a new and efficient revenue model, allowing publishers to sell valuable, fresh profile data to interested parties automatically, which aligns with the commercial goals described in both references.

    • Expectation of Success: Petitioner argued a POSITA would have had a high expectation of success in combining the references. Both Beyda and Herz operated in the same technical field of online data management and ad targeting and addressed analogous problems. Integrating Herz's well-defined query-based data exchange mechanism into Beyda's centralized network architecture was presented as a straightforward application of known software principles to achieve the predictable result of more efficient and scalable profile sharing.

4. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-14 of Patent 10,984,445 as unpatentable.