Southwest Airlines Co v. Regents Of University Of California

1. Case Identification

• Case #: IPR2025-01511
• Patent #: 7,712,080
• Filed: September 22, 2025
• Petitioner(s): American Airlines, Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co.
• Patent Owner(s): The Regents of the University of California
• Challenged Claims: 1-18

2. Patent Overview

• Title: Systems and Methods for Parallel Distributed Programming
• Brief Description: The ’080 patent discloses methods and systems for creating a parallel distributed program from a distributed sequential program. The technology involves using "self-migrating threads" or mobile agents, which can spawn child programs to run concurrently, thereby performing parallel or pipelined computing across multiple processors and memories using distributed shared variables.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Anticipation by Fukuda '98 - Claims 1-18 are anticipated by Fukuda '98 under 35 U.S.C. §102.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Fukuda '98 (Munehiro Fukuda et al., Distributed Coordination with Messengers, Science of Computer Programming, July 1998).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Fukuda '98, a journal article co-authored by two of the ’080 patent’s named inventors, describes the same "MESSENGERS" programming paradigm that is presented as the invention in the patent. Petitioner asserted that Fukuda '98 discloses every limitation of the challenged claims. For independent method claim 1, Petitioner mapped key limitations as follows:
    • The "establishing at least one distributed shared variable" limitation [1a] was allegedly disclosed by Fukuda '98's description of "node variables," which are resident in nodes and shared by all "Messengers" (mobile agents) currently running on the same logical node.
    • The "developing at least one distributed sequential computing program" limitation [1b] was mapped to Fukuda '98’s description of how individual Messengers are used as a control language to coordinate compiled C functions residing on different nodes of a network.
    • The core limitation of "transforming the... sequential computing program into... a parallel computing program by spawning at least one child... program" [1c] was argued to be disclosed by Fukuda '98's exec() statement. This statement spawns a separate Unix process that operates concurrently with the invoking Messenger.
    • The requirement that the parent and spawned child programs "concurrently use" each other to "perform parallel processing" [1d] was also met by the exec() statement, which creates a separate, concurrent process.
    • The "intermediate condition comprising one intermediate result" limitation [1e] was met by the arguments passed to the new process via the in parameter and the results returned via the out parameter in the exec() statement.
  • Key Aspects: Petitioner emphasized that Fukuda '98 was not before the Examiner during prosecution. The applicants allegedly secured the patent by arguing that prior art of record did not teach transforming a distributed sequential computing (DSC) program into a distributed parallel computing (DPC) program by spawning a child process. Petitioner contended that Fukuda '98 directly teaches this allegedly novel feature. Petitioner's arguments for system claim 9 and all dependent claims followed a similar mapping, asserting that Fukuda '98’s description of the MESSENGERS system and its mobile agents inherently discloses each claimed feature.

4. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

• Petitioner argued that discretionary denial under Fintiv is not warranted. To support this, Petitioner stipulated that if the IPR is instituted, it will not pursue in the parallel District Court litigation any invalidity ground that was raised or could have been reasonably raised in the IPR petition.

5. Relief Requested

• Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-18 of the ’080 patent as unpatentable.