PTAB

IPR2025-01514

Google LLC v. CardWare Inc

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Electronic or Smart Card Devices for Payment Transactions
  • Brief Description: The ’538 patent describes electronic devices, such as smart cards or smartphones, capable of generating a single-use or "limited-duration number" to enhance security during a payment transaction.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Gomez, Phillips, and Casey - Claims 1-3, 11-19, 21-22, 24-26, and 28-30 are obvious over Gomez in view of Phillips and Casey.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Gomez (Patent 9,600,808), Phillips (Application # 2012/0310760), and Casey (Patent 8,255,323).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Gomez taught the core of the claimed invention: a payment system using a secure, time-limited "authentication cryptogram" generated uniquely for each transaction to prevent fraud. Gomez's system, however, was described in the context of a smart card. Petitioner asserted that Phillips taught improving such systems with a smartphone graphical user interface that allows a user to store and select from multiple payment cards. Casey was cited for teaching user authorization and confirmation steps on a mobile device, such as receiving a payment request via Near Field Communication (NFC), displaying transaction details, and requiring a user input (e.g., PIN entry or a screen gesture) to confirm the payment before transmitting payment information. The combination of these references allegedly disclosed all limitations of the challenged claims, including receiving a payment request via NFC (Casey), displaying payment options (Phillips), dynamically generating limited-use payment information (Gomez), and transmitting it for processing (Gomez, Casey).
    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner contended a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine these references to improve upon Gomez’s known security system. A POSITA would have been motivated to implement Gomez's secure cryptogram generation on a more versatile smartphone platform, incorporating the well-understood user interface features of Phillips (multiple card selection) and the user authorization flow of Casey (transaction confirmation) to enhance the user experience, improve security, and provide greater user control. This would have been a predictable combination of known elements to yield a more modern and functional mobile payment system.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success because all three references operate in the same field of mobile and secure payments. The proposed modifications involved applying known user interface and security confirmation techniques from Phillips and Casey to Gomez’s underlying secure transaction processing system, which would have yielded predictable results.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Gomez, Phillips, Casey, and Law - Claims 5-6, 8-10, 23, and 27 are obvious over Gomez, Phillips, and Casey in view of Law.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Gomez (Patent 9,600,808), Phillips (Application # 2012/0310760), Casey (Patent 8,255,323), and Law (Application # 2015/0134540).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground builds upon the combination in Ground 1 and adds the teachings of Law to address claims requiring the generation of limited-use information from a more specific "secure combination" of data elements. Petitioner argued that while Gomez taught generating a cryptogram from a "seed value" and a "temporal signal," Law disclosed a more detailed method for creating dynamic, one-time-use payment data. Law taught generating this data from a specific combination of inputs, including a device transaction sequence counter (an Application Transaction Counter or ATC), a device account number (a funding card identifier), device-unique information (mobile device ID), and payment-authority recognizable information (cryptographic keys like Kpan and Ksec). This combination in Law allegedly met the specific limitations recited in claims such as 5 and 8.
    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner argued that a POSITA, starting with the Gomez-Phillips-Casey system, would have been motivated to incorporate the more robust security techniques taught by Law. Law's method of cryptographically generating dynamic data using an explicit transaction counter and device-specific identifiers provided an improved layer of security over Gomez's teachings. A POSITA would have sought to augment the payment information with the additional data types taught by Law to enhance transaction security, prevent fraudulent use of a substituted account number, and allow a payment processor to more easily identify the user's actual account for processing.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination represented the predictable use of a known technique for improving security (Law's dynamic data generation) with a similar existing system (the Gomez-based combination) to achieve the predictable result of enhanced transaction security.

4. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review (IPR) and cancellation of claims 1-3, 5-6, 8-19, and 21-30 of the ’538 patent as unpatentable.