Takeaway: When the public accessibility of a reference relied upon to establish unpatentability may be challenged, Petitioner should identify the circumstances and manner in which persons interested and ordinarily skilled in the subject matter could locate the reference.

In its Decision, the Board denied institution of inter partes review of claims 1-25 and 34-41 of U.S. Patent No. 6,845,389 B1.

The ’389 patent is directed to “a system and method of broadband multi-user communication sessions.” For example, in a gaming application, the ’389 patent “supports QoS [quality of service] provisioning and avoids the bottleneck of routine gaming communications . . . through a game server.” The ’389 patent discloses “using SIP [Session Initiation Protocol], Sessional Announcement Protocols, and Session Description Protocols to identify the QoS requirements for the session, and reserve the necessary resources.” Continue reading →

Takeaway: The publication of a court’s decision in the Federal Supplement reporter does not make the underlying litigation documents sufficiently publicly accessible to qualify them as printed publications for the purposes of prior art.

In its Decision, the Board decided to institute inter partes review of only claims 1-5 and 8 of the ’501 patent on one ground of unpatentability and denied institution as to every other asserted ground and challenged claim.  The ’501 patent “relates to a play gym which suspends an object over a mat within a play yard.” Continue reading →

Takeaway: A reference is publicly accessible upon a satisfactory showing that the reference has been disseminated or otherwise made available to the extent that persons interested and ordinarily skilled in the subject matter or art exercising reasonable diligence can locate it.

In its Decision, the Board denied the Petition as to all challenged claims. Thus, no trial was instituted. Continue reading →