Symantec Corporationv.the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New YorkDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJun 17, 201510208432 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 17, 2015) Copy Citation Trials@uspto.gov Paper 13 571-272-7822 Date Entered: June 17, 2015 UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE _____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ SYMANTEC CORP., Petitioner, v. THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK, Patent Owner. ____________ Case IPR2015-00370 Patent 7,487,544 B2 ____________ Before HOWARD B. BLANKENSHIP, BRYAN F. MOORE, and ROBERT J. WEINSCHENK, Administrative Patent Judges. BLANKENSHIP, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION Denying Institution of Inter Partes Review 37 C.F.R. § 42.108 I. BACKGROUND Symantec Corp. (Petitioner) requests inter partes review of claims 1–43 (all the claims) of U.S. Patent No. 7,487,544 B2 (“the ’544 patent”) (Ex. 1001) under 35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319. Paper 2 (“Petition” or “Pet.”). The IPR2015-00370 Patent 7,487,544 B2 2 Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York (Patent Owner) filed a preliminary response (Paper 10, “Prelim. Resp.”). We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 314. For the reasons that follow, we do not institute an inter partes review as to any of the challenged claims of the ’544 patent. Related Proceeding According to the parties, the ’544 patent is involved in the following lawsuit: The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York v. Symantec Corp., No. 3:13-cv-808 (E.D. Va.). Pet. 1; see Paper 6, 2. The ’544 Patent The ’544 patent issued from an application filed July 30, 2002. Ex. 1001. The patent relates to a system and methods for detecting malicious executable attachments at an email processing application of a computer system using data mining techniques. Id. (Abstract). Illustrative Claim Claim 1 is illustrative. 1. A method for classifying an executable attachment in an email received at an email processing application of a computer system comprising: a) filtering said executable attachment from said email; b) extracting a byte sequence feature from said executable attachment; and c) classifying said executable attachment by comparing said byte sequence feature of said executable attachment with a classification rule set derived from byte sequence features of a set of executables having a predetermined class in a set of classes to determine the probability whether said executable IPR2015-00370 Patent 7,487,544 B2 3 attachment is malicious, wherein extracting said byte sequence features from said executable attachment comprises creating a byte string representative of resources referenced by said executable attachment. Prior Art and Other Evidence Included with Petition Chen et al. US 5,832,208 Nov. 3, 1998 (Ex. 1007) (“Chen”) Forman et al. US 6,823,323 B2 Nov. 23, 2004 (Ex. 1011) (“Forman”) Kelley J. Cardinale and Hugh M. O’Donnell, A Constructive Induction Approach to Computer Immunology, (March 1999) (Master of Science Thesis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Air Force Institute of Technology) (Air University, Air Education and Training Command) (“Cardinale”) (Exhibit 1008). William Arnold and Gerald Tesauro, Automatically Generated WIN32 Heuristic Virus Detection, Virus Bulletin Conference (September 2000) at 51–60 (“Arnold”) (Exhibit 1009). Peter Szor, Attacks on WIN32, Virus Bulletin Conference (October 1998) at 57–84 (“Szor”) (Exhibit 1010). Charles Elkan, Boosting and Naive Bayesian Learning, Technical Report No. CS97-557, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, San Diego (September 1997) (“Elkan”) (Ex. 1012). Declaration of Michael T. Goodrich, PhD (Ex. 1003). IPR2015-00370 Patent 7,487,544 B2 4 Asserted Grounds of Unpatentability Petitioner asserts the following grounds of unpatentability for obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) (Pet. 14–48): Evidence Claim(s) Chen and Cardinale 34 Chen, Cardinale, and Forman 6, 7, 10–15, 35, and 38–40 Cardinale, Admitted Prior Art (“APA”), and Forman 43 Chen, Cardinale, Arnold, and Szor 1, 2, 5, 28, 29, 31–33, 41, and 42 Chen, Cardinale, and Elkan 36 and 37 Cardinale, APA, Szor, and Arnold 16, 17, and 25–27 Chen, Cardinale, Arnold, Szor, and APA 3 and 30 Chen, Cardinale, Arnold, Szor, and Forman 4 Chen, Cardinale, Forman, and Elkan 8 and 9 Cardinale, APA, Szor, Arnold, and Chen 24 Cardinale, APA, Szor, Arnold, and Forman 18, 19, and 21–23 Cardinale, APA, Szor, Arnold, and Elkan 20 IPR2015-00370 Patent 7,487,544 B2 5 II. ANALYSIS Scope of Inter Partes Review The scope of an inter partes review is limited. 35 U.S.C. § 311(b) provides: A petitioner in an inter partes review may request to cancel as unpatentable 1 or more claims of a patent . . . only on the basis of prior art consisting of patents or printed publications. Printed Publication We look to the underlying facts to make a legal determination as to whether a document is a printed publication. Suffolk Techs., LLC v. AOL Inc., 752 F.3d 1358, 1364 (Fed. Cir. 2014). The determination of whether a document is a “printed publication” under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) involves a case-by-case inquiry into the facts and circumstances surrounding its disclosure to members of the public. In re Klopfenstein, 380 F.3d 1345, 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2004). Public accessibility is a key question in determining whether a document is a printed publication. Suffolk Techs., 752 F.3d at 1364. To qualify as a printed publication, a document “must have been sufficiently accessible to the public interested in the art.” In re Lister, 583 F.3d 1307, 1311 (Fed. Cir. 2009). Cardinale (Ex. 1008) The Petition submits that Cardinale was “published March 1999” and is, thus, “prior art to the ’544 patent under pre-AIA §§ 102(a) and (b).” Pet. 3. We do not find any discussion in the Petition in support of the allegation that Cardinale was published in March 1999. IPR2015-00370 Patent 7,487,544 B2 6 Page 3 of Cardinale is reproduced below. Cardinale at 3 states that the document is a “THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Engineering of the Air Force Institute of IPR2015-00370 Patent 7,487,544 B2 7 Technology Air University Air Education and Training Command In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science.”1 The page contains the date “March 1999,” with the further notation “[a]pproved for public release; distribution unlimited.” The page also contains the designation “AFIT/GCS/ENG/99M-02.” The next page (page 4) of Cardinale contains the signature of four persons (presumably, faculty members), each dated March 8, 1999. Ex. 1008, 4. Cardinale contains a government-standard “report documentation page.” Ex. 1008, 243. The “report date” is March 1999, and the “report type” is “Master’s Thesis.” Id. The page reveals further that the designation “AFIT/GCS/ENG/99M-02” is a “performing organization report number.” Id. A document purporting to be a thesis, without more, does not establish that the document is a printed publication. Although the Petition does not point to any evidence in the record that Cardinale was ever placed in a library, mere defense of a thesis and placement of the document in a library is insufficient to establish that the thesis is a publication. A predecessor court of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals in In re Bayer, 568 F.2d 1357 (CCPA 1978), held: [W]e are unconvinced that appellant’s thesis defense before the graduate committee in its official capacity as arbiter of appellant’s entitlement to a master's degree was somehow transmuted into a patent-defeating publication merely by depositing the thesis in the university library where it remained uncatalogued and unshelved as of the critical date in question. 1 We cite to the pagination of Exhibit 1008 rather than the document’s pagination. IPR2015-00370 Patent 7,487,544 B2 8 Bayer, 568 F.2d at 1362. The Court explained that the thesis was not a printed publication under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b). Because the “thesis could have been located in the university library only by one having been informed of its existence by the faculty committee[,] . . . ‘the probability of public knowledge of the contents of the [thesis]’ . . . was virtually nil.” Bayer, 568 F.2d at 1361 (citation omitted). Indexing is not “a necessary condition for a reference to be publicly accessible.” Lister, 583 F.3d at 1312. But “indexing is a relevant factor in determining accessibility of potential prior art, particularly library-based references.” Voter Verified, Inc. v. Premier Election Solutions, Inc., 698 F.3d 1374, 1380 (Fed. Cir. 2012) ((citing In re Hall, 781 F.2d 897 (Fed. Cir. 1986) (holding that a dissertation indexed in a university library catalog was a publicly accessible printed publication) and Bayer, 568 F.2d 1357 (holding that a thesis housed, but neither shelved nor catalogued, within a university library was not publicly accessible)). In this case, Petitioner provides insufficient evidence by declaration or documentation tending to show the public accessibility of Cardinale prior to the filing date of the ’544 patent. Cf. Hall, 781 F.2d at 899 (examining affidavit in support of public availability of dissertation). We acknowledge that Cardinale contains the notation “[a]pproved for public release; distribution unlimited.” Ex. 1008, 3; see also id. at 243 (“Distribution Availability Statement”). Petitioner, however, has not provided evidence extrinsic to Exhibit 1008 tending to show when the thesis actually may have been released or distributed to the public. We observe also that Cardinale includes an Abstract and a list of subject terms (Ex. 1008, 243) that appear IPR2015-00370 Patent 7,487,544 B2 9 suited for facilitating an electronic-database search. The Petition points to no evidence, however, that the thesis was entered into an electronic database prior to the critical date, much less into a publicly accessible database prior to the critical date. Nor has Petitioner shown, for that matter, that the thesis was otherwise “sufficiently accessible to the public interested in the art.” Lister, 583 F.3d at 1311. “A given reference is ‘publicly accessible’ upon a satisfactory showing that such document 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.” SRI Int’l, Inc. v. Internet Sec. Sys., Inc., 511 F.3d 1186, 1194 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (quoting Bruckelmyer v. Ground Heaters, Inc., 445 F.3d 1374, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2006)). We conclude that, on this record, Petitioner has failed to meet its burden of at least a preliminary showing that Cardinale is a printed publication as contemplated by 35 U.S.C. §§ 102 and 311(b). III. CONCLUSION Because each proposed ground of rejection against the claims relies on a combination that includes Cardinale, the Petition fails to demonstrate a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on the grounds that the challenged claims are obvious over the prior art. IV. ORDER In consideration of the foregoing, it is ORDERED that the petition is denied as to all challenged claims and no trial is instituted. IPR2015-00370 Patent 7,487,544 B2 10 For Petitioner: David D. Schumann Brian M. Hoffman FENWICK & WEST LLP dschumann@fenwick.com bhoffman@fenwick.com For Patent Owner: Hong Zhong IRELL & MANELLA LLP hzhong@irell.com Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation