PTAB

IPR2026-00183

Microsoft Corp v. Qomplx LLC

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Petition
petition Intelligence

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: System and Method for Midserver Facilitation of Long-Haul Transport of Telemetry for Cloud-Based Services
  • Brief Description: The ’663 patent relates to a system using a "midserver" that functions as an on-premise gateway to collect, aggregate, transform, and securely transmit telemetry data from a multitude of local computing devices to a remote, cloud-based service.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1 and 4 are obvious under 35 U.S.C. §103 over Maturana in view of Kashyap.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Maturana (Application # 2015/0281355) and Kashyap (Application # 2012/0246639).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Maturana disclosed a system analogous to the claimed invention, teaching an on-premise "cloud agent" (a midserver) that performs the core functions recited in the independent claims. This agent receives data from a plurality of local industrial devices, applies a plurality of transformations to the data (including compression, encryption, aggregation, and format conversion), establishes a secure connection (e.g., HTTPS/SSL) to a cloud platform, and retransmits the processed data as a single aggregated packet. Petitioner contended that Kashyap supplied the final key limitation by teaching a standard, well-known method for automatically deploying and configuring such an application. Specifically, Kashyap disclosed packaging an application as a virtual appliance using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF), which enables automatic installation and, via boot-time scripts, the automatic loading of a plurality of stored configurations.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Maturana's cloud agent system with Kashyap's standardized deployment techniques to achieve a more reliable, repeatable, and easily installable product. Petitioner asserted that while Maturana disclosed its agent running on a virtual machine, it lacked a specific deployment mechanism. Kashyap addressed this exact need by providing a widely adopted OVF-based solution for deploying applications on virtual machines, offering the predictable benefits of improved manageability and ease of installation across multiple customer sites. The references were argued to be complementary, as Kashyap’s automated configuration method directly enabled the goal stated in Maturana of having an agent that could "automatically detect and communicate" upon installation at any facility.
    • Expectation of Success: Petitioner argued a POSITA would have a high expectation of success in making the combination. The proposed modification involved implementing a VM-based application (Maturana) using a standard and fully compatible VM deployment framework (Kashyap's OVF method). This was characterized as a routine integration of compatible technologies, well within the ordinary skill in the art of cloud computing systems at the time.

4. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1 and 4 of the ’663 patent as unpatentable.