In its Decision, the Board instituted inter partes review of claims 1-39 of the ‘147 patent. The basis for the Board’s institution was the potential obviousness of these claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103 in view of the CRD Manual and the HP Journal. The Board gave consideration to the Declaration of Petitioners’ expert Dr. Andrew Hospodor in conducting its analysis.
The ‘147 patent relates to a storage router allowing workstations to communicate with storage devices via using “native low level, block protocol.” Use of such protocol provides that advantage of “greater access speed when compared to network protocols that must first be translated to low level requests, and vice versa, which reduces access speed.”
The Board began its analysis by concluding that there were not any terms in the challenged claims currently requiring express construction. Also, it noted that Patent Owner’s Preliminary Response “did not dispute that one of ordinary skill would have combined the teachings of the different articles in the HP Journal cited by Petitioners.” The Board went on to consider the evidence with these points in mind.
For each of the challenged claims, the Board found Petitioners had adequately shown for purposes of this Decision “that the combination of the CRD Manual and the HP Journal teaches or suggests each limitation of claims 14-39.” Thus, Patent Owner asserted that a person of ordinary skill in the art would not have combined the CRD Manual and the HP Journal. In particular, Patent Owner challenged “Petitioners’ contention that skilled artisans were informed by an alleged product datasheet that the CRD-5500 controller disclosed in the CRD Manual was designed to support FC technology.”
The Board was not persuaded by this argument by Patent Owner. According to the Board, Petitioners had provided multiple other reasons, backed up by evidence and an articulation of sufficient rational underpinnings, as to why one skilled in the art would have combined the two asserted references, in addition to the reason challenged by Patent Owner. In view of such unrebutted motivations, the Board found Petitioners’ arguments and evidence to be persuasive.
Finally, Patent Owner had argued that the Petition should be denied under 35 U.S.C. § 325(d) because the USPTO had already considered the arguments in the Petition during original prosecution and in other reexaminations and petitions for inter partes review. The Board declined to exercise its discretion to decline the Petition, finding that Patent Owner did not dispute that the asserted references were not substantively addressed during original prosecution; that the reexaminations “concerned different, albeit related, patents”; and that the other petitions for inter partes review did not rely on identical prior art.
Cisco Systems, Inc. and Quantum Corporation v. Crossroads Systems, Inc., IPR2014-01544
Paper 9: Decision on Institution of Inter Partes Review
Dated: April 3, 2015 Patent 7,051,147 B2
Before: Kalyan K. Deshpande, Matthew R. Clements, and J. John Lee
Written by: Lee
Related Proceedings: Crossroads Sys., Inc. v. Oracle Corp., No. 1:13-cv-00895-SS (W.D. Tex.); Crossroads Sys., Inc. v. Huawei Techs. Co., No. 1:13-cv-01025-SS (W.D. Tex.); Crossroads Sys., Inc. v. Cisco Sys., Inc., No. 1:14-cv-00148-SS (W.D. Tex.); Crossroads Sys., Inc. v. NetApp, Inc., No. 1:14-cv-00149-SS (W.D. Tex.); Crossroads Sys., Inc. v. Quantum Corp., No. 1:14-cv-00150-SS (W.D. Tex.); Oracle Corp. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2014-01207; Oracle Corp. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2014-01209; NetApp, Inc. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2015-00773; Oracle Corp. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2015-00852; Crossroads Sys., Inc. v. 3PAR, Inc., No. 1:10-cv-00652 (W.D. Tex.); Oracle Corp. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2014-01177; Oracle Corp. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2014-01197; Cisco Sys., Inc. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2014-01226; NetApp, Inc. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2014-01233; Cisco Sys., Inc. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2014-01463; NetApp, Inc. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2015-00772; NetApp, Inc. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2015-00776; NetApp, Inc. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2015-00777; Dot Hill Sys. Corp. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2015-00822; Oracle Corp. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2015-00825; Oracle Corp. v. Crossroads Sys., Inc., Case IPR2015-00854; Case IPR2014-01177 (Petition denied); and Case IPR2014-01233 (Petition denied)