Filed on behalf of Patent Owner Massachusetts Institute of Technology by:
`Owen K. Allen
`Donald R. Steinberg
`David H. Judson
`Reg. No. 71,118
`Reg. No. 37,241
`Reg. No. 30,467
`WilmerHale
`Peter M. Dichiara
`Suite 225
`950 Page Mill Road
`Reg. No. 38,005
`15950 Dallas Parkway
`Palo Alto, CA 94304
`WilmerHale
`Dallas, TX 75248
`60 State Street
`Boston, MA 02109
`
`UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
`_____________________________________
`BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
`_____________________________________
`LIMELIGHT NETWORKS, INC.,
`Petitioner,
`v.
`MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY,
`Patent Owner.
`_____________________________________
`Case IPR2017-00249
`U.S. Patent 7,693,959
`_____________________________________
`EXPERT DECLARATION OF HENRY H. HOUH, PH.D.
`
`MIT 2004
`Limelight v. MIT
`IPR2017-00249
`
`
`Owen K. Allen
`Donald R. Steinberg
`David H. Judson
`Reg. No. 71,118
`Reg. No. 37,241
`Reg. No. 30,467
`WilmerHale
`Peter M. Dichiara
`Suite 225
`950 Page Mill Road
`Reg. No. 38,005
`15950 Dallas Parkway
`Palo Alto, CA 94304
`WilmerHale
`Dallas, TX 75248
`60 State Street
`Boston, MA 02109
`
`UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
`_____________________________________
`BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
`_____________________________________
`LIMELIGHT NETWORKS, INC.,
`Petitioner,
`v.
`MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY,
`Patent Owner.
`_____________________________________
`Case IPR2017-00249
`U.S. Patent 7,693,959
`_____________________________________
`EXPERT DECLARATION OF HENRY H. HOUH, PH.D.
`
`MIT 2004
`Limelight v. MIT
`IPR2017-00249
`
`
`
`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
`I, Henry H. Houh, Ph.D., have been retained by counsel for Akamai
`1.
`
`Technologies, Inc. (“Patent Owner”) as an expert in this proceeding.
`
`2.
`
`I understand that in a May 18, 2017 decision, the Patent Trial and
`
`Appeal Board (the “Board”) instituted inter partes review of U.S. Patent No.
`
`7,693,959 (the ’959 patent) on a single ground of obviousness:
`
` Ground 1: Claims 1, 2, 4, 9-12, 15, 16, 26, 28 and 58 are rendered obvious
`
`over U.S. Patent No. 6,154,777 (“Ebrahim”), U.S. Patent No. 6,167,427
`
`(“Rabinovich-427”) and Rabinovich et al., “Dynamic Replication on the
`
`Internet.” (“Rabinovich Memo”)
`
`Petition (Paper No. 1), 3; Institution Decision (Paper No. 9), 27.
`
`3.
`
`I have been asked to review the challenged claims of the ’959 patent
`
`and the references identified in the petition requesting inter partes review, and
`
`evaluate whether the cited references alone or in combination render the
`
`challenged claims unpatentable. A list of the materials that I considered in arriving
`
`at my opinions, as set forth in this declaration, is attached as Appendix A.
`
`QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE
`4.
`My professional career has spanned more than 25 years. As set forth
`
`in my curriculum vitae, a copy of which is attached to this report as Appendix B,
`
`during these years I have gained extensive experience in web content delivery, web
`
`
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`site architectures, dynamically generated web pages, distributed network
`
`applications, data caching, and protocols and languages for the web including
`
`HTTP, HTML, and JavaScript.
`
`5.
`
`I was awarded a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer
`
`Science in February 1998 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). I
`
`also received a Master of Science (M.S.) in Electrical Engineering and Computer
`
`Science (February, 1991), a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and
`
`Computer Science (June, 1989) and a Bachelor of Science in Physics (February,
`
`1990) from MIT.
`
`6.
`
`I defended and submitted my Ph.D. thesis, titled “Designing Networks
`
`for Tomorrow’s Traffic,” in January 1998. As part of my thesis research, I
`
`analyzed local-area and wide-area data flows to show a more efficient method for
`
`routing content (including email, web pages, and streaming media such as voice
`
`and video) in a network, based on traffic patterns at the time.
`
`7. My research and work experience in multimedia content delivery over
`
`the Internet, streaming media over the Internet, networking, and network
`
`architecture dates back to the invention of the Web in the early 1990s and
`
`coincides with when I started my doctoral research at MIT. After returning full
`
`time to MIT for graduate school after completing an internship at AT&T Bell
`
`Laboratories, I worked as a research assistant in the Telemedia Network Systems
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`(TNS) group at the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT. The TNS group
`
`built a high speed gigabit network and applications which ran over the network,
`
`such as remote video capture, processing, and display on computer terminals. I
`
`designed the core networking hardware and software, including the high speed data
`
`links and the device drivers for the network interface cards.
`
`8. My group’s work focused on high speed networking and the types of
`
`applications that require increased network bandwidth and computing power. One
`
`of the applications I investigated was live streaming video, and real-time
`
`processing of such video. My work was focused around the transport, switching,
`
`and routing of data (including video streams), and the integration of TNS’s
`
`network into the computing environment, including the protocols, IP/ATM
`
`integration, operating system software and device drivers. TNS created a
`
`computing environment where it was possible to stream video live, and also
`
`created software processing modules to further process video to perform advanced
`
`functions such as green screening, scene change detection, motion detection,
`
`compression, video blending and video overlay, among the many features – all in
`
`real-time while displaying the processed video live. While the Internet at the time
`
`did not have the capability for such applications to be widely deployed, my group
`
`at TNS researched what would be possible when the required network and
`
`computing power became available. As discussed above, my Ph.D. thesis work
`
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`focused on studying the routing resources required to route streams of video
`
`through the network, proposing several alternative labeling strategies to speed up
`
`network routing. Part of what I proposed was borne out later in the form of
`
`Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), which is a method of tagging packets at
`
`the edge of the network to enable more efficient routing inside the network.
`
`9.
`
`During the early part of my graduate studies, a time when there were
`
`perhaps a hundred or so web servers in existence, I set up a web server on one of
`
`our lab computers, and created content rich web pages for my research group and
`
`my research activities. Eventually, I, together with others I was working with,
`
`added live video demonstrations to TNS’s web site. TNS’s web site was one of the
`
`first several hundred web servers to exist, and the first to offer live video
`
`demonstrations initiated from the web site to computers utilizing the X-Windows
`
`computer windowing system. In addition to TNS’s live video demonstrations,
`
`TNS offered pre-recorded video and computer-processed video demonstrations.
`
`TNS’s web site was nominated for the Best of the Web 1994 Awards in “Best
`
`Entertainment Servers” and “Best Use of Multiple Media,” and received an
`
`honorable mention in the “Best Use of Multiple Media” category.
`
`10. TNS’s web site was among the first, if not the first, to initiate a remote
`
`video display using a web browser. Vice President Al Gore visited my group in
`
`1996 and received a demonstration of – and remotely drove – a radio controlled
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`toy car with a wireless video camera mounted on it; the video was encoded by
`
`TNS-designed hardware, streamed over the TNS-designed network, and displayed
`
`using TNS-designed software. The demonstration showed the successful
`
`application of live, interactive video streaming applications, and real-time remote
`
`control using video streamed across a network.
`
`11.
`
`I co-authored several papers about web site development which were
`
`presented at the very first World-Wide Web conference held in 1994 at CERN in
`
`Geneva, Switzerland. CERN is the birthplace of the Web, and the conference was
`
`chaired by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World-Wide Web. One of the
`
`papers, “The Media Gateway: Live Video on the World Wide Web,” was about
`
`TNS’s web-based video demonstrations that I worked on, and the other paper,
`
`“Active Pages: Intelligent Nodes on the World Wide Web” discussed database
`
`backed web pages which were generated from a computer program accessing a
`
`database each time the page was requested. Today, many content providers use
`
`this method to generate dynamic and personalized web sites.
`
`12.
`
`I started a web consulting business in 1994, and won contracts to set
`
`up and manage web sites for various companies, including Bay Networks and Data
`
`Communications Magazine. Our customers at the time were concerned about web
`
`server load, and how to scale their web sites in case the load became unmanageable
`
`for a single web server. My company investigated many methods of load
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`balancing and distributing the load over multiple servers. My web company also
`
`created software for staging updates to the web site and pushing approved changes
`
`into production through a system of multiple servers. As part of this start-up, I
`
`registered various domain names for my company and other organizations such as
`
`MIT’s World Wide Web consortium, (which was formed after Tim Berners-Lee
`
`left CERN to come to MIT), and various other organizations with which I had a
`
`volunteer advisory role. The World Wide Web Consortium to this day helps set
`
`standards for the World Wide Web. At the time, commercial Domain Name
`
`services did not exist. I also set-up, configured, and managed the domain name
`
`servers for many of the domains I registered, creating and managing the domain
`
`name records for these domains by manually creating and editing DNS zone files.
`
`13.
`
`I authored or co-authored twelve papers and conference presentations
`
`on my group’s research at TNS. I also co-edited, with the Professor and Senior
`
`Research Scientist of the group, David Clark, who is generally considered to be
`
`one of the fathers of the Internet Protocol, TNS’s final report on its gigabit
`
`networking research effort. I have also participated in various Internet Engineering
`
`Task Force (IETF) working groups, and attended IETF meetings in the mid-to-late
`
`1990’s.
`
`14. As an undergraduate at MIT, I was a Laboratory Teaching Assistant,
`
`head Laboratory Teaching Assistant, and Teaching Assistant. I was also a
`
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`Teaching Assistant and head Teaching Assistant when I was a graduate student
`
`there. One class that I was a Teaching Assistant for was a Computer Architecture
`
`course, which was a required class for all Electrical Engineering and Computer
`
`Science majors. Among the concepts taught in this course was the concept of
`
`caching, which is holding frequently-accessed memory values in faster memory
`
`that was closer to the central processing unit (CPU), as well as concepts regarding
`
`maintaining the coherence (synchronization) of a cache with the main memory
`
`under various circumstances. Caching techniques may also be applied to the
`
`Internet as well, and many of the same principles apply.
`
`15. During my time as a graduate student in the MIT Laboratory for
`
`Computer Science (“LCS,” now known as the Computer Science and Artificial
`
`Intelligence Laboratory or “CSAIL”), I discussed with the other graduate students
`
`many new networking and information technologies, including such topics as the
`
`MBONE (multicast backbone), the World Wide Web, and new methods of
`
`distributing Internet content such as those being pioneered within LCS, including
`
`those being investigated by LCS Professor Tom Leighton and LCS graduate
`
`student Daniel Lewin, who together founded Akamai. Because I was very much
`
`involved with the World Wide Web throughout my time as a graduate student, I
`
`earnestly followed developments in any technology for the Internet. Even after
`
`graduate school, I followed companies such as Akamai, because of the
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`sophisticated solutions it proposed to help with web content distribution, scalability
`
`and reducing load at the content provider.
`
`16. Since the 1990s, as a researcher and practitioner in the field of web
`
`content delivery, I followed the development and studied the operation of content
`
`delivery networks (CDNs). I have also provided technical consulting services in
`
`networking, streaming media, mobile applications, and other areas, and some of
`
`my clients’ applications utilize content delivery networks (CDNs). In servicing
`
`these clients, I have studied CDNs in the context of applications such as video
`
`streaming services for both live and pre-recorded video, involving how the back
`
`end origin servers distribute content to the edge servers and whether the delivery
`
`methods of CDNs are part of infringing systems.
`
`17. From 1997 to 1999, I was a Senior Scientist and Engineer at NBX
`
`Corporation, a start-up that made business telephone systems that streamed
`
`packetized audio over data networks instead of using traditional telephone lines.
`
`NBX was later acquired by 3Com Corporation, and the telephone system is still
`
`available and being used by tens of thousands of businesses or more. As part of
`
`my work at NBX, I designed the core audio reconstruction algorithms for the
`
`telephone systems, as well as the packet transmission algorithms. I also designed
`
`and validated the core packet transport protocol used by the telephone system. The
`
`protocol was used millions of times a day. Two of the company founders and I
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`were co-inventors on U.S. Patent No. 6,697,963 titled “Telecommunication
`
`method for ensuring on-time delivery of packets containing time-sensitive data,”
`
`that covered some of the work I did at NBX.
`
`18. From 2001 to 2004, I was chief technologist for the Web Application
`
`Test Group of Empirix. Empirix was a spin-out company of Teradyne, a company
`
`known for making semiconductor testing equipment used by computer chip
`
`manufacturers, and at the time I was there achieved $1 billion in quarterly
`
`bookings. The Teradyne founder and chairman, Alex d’Arbeloff, wanted to
`
`improve formalized testing for telecommunications systems and information
`
`systems. My division provided software and services for testing web sites.
`
`Empirix’s customers included many large companies with highly complex web
`
`sites, such as Dell (a full e-commerce web site for configuring and ordering
`
`computers) and H&R Block (a web site for filing income taxes). The software
`
`emulated individual users exercising the complex features of a web site, such as
`
`filling out tax forms or configuring computers for purchase. The software could
`
`also create the load of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of users hitting a
`
`particular web site at once, all using complex features (rather than just accessing
`
`the home page). Because of the complex and highly varying web sites of
`
`Empirix’s customers, I had to understand many different types of web site
`
`architectures, and the various methods of creating and delivering dynamic content
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`from a web site. I was the architect for my division’s next-generation web testing
`
`product, for which I helped write a JavaScript interpreter that ran the code on a
`
`web site similar to a standard web browser so that the software could understand
`
`the dynamic aspects of the code on a web site.
`
`19.
`
`I worked at BBN Technologies from 2004 to 2009. BBN
`
`Technologies, formerly known as Bolt, Beranek and Newman, was a pioneer of the
`
`Internet. BBN received the first contract to build components of a packet switched
`
`network as part of the ARPANET, a U.S. Department of Defense effort funded
`
`through the Advanced Projects Research Agency (ARPA). BBN has a storied
`
`history of networking research, and BBN’s domain name, “bbn.com” was the
`
`second dot-com domain ever registered.1 While this effort preceded my time at
`
`BBN by many years, BBN continued to maintain a strong presence in network
`
`research and development. In 2006, as part of my role at BBN Technologies, I
`
`helped found PodZinger Inc., now known as RAMP Inc. PodZinger utilized
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`BBN’s speech recognition algorithms to search through the spoken words inside
`
`audio and video. After managing the creation of the initial prototype system,
`
`PodZinger built out a full web-based streaming audio and video search solution
`
`when I was the Vice President of Operations and Technology there. The web site
`
`1 Today, there are over 128 million dot-com domain names registered. See
`
`https://www.verisign.com/assets/domain-name-report-Q12017.pdf at p. 2.
`
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`had a full load-balanced back end which provided search and indexing solutions
`
`for our hosted multimedia (audio and video) content. I was responsible for
`
`procuring, configuring, and deploying all the servers into our data center. Our
`
`back-end consisted of over 40 individual servers. I also researched and evaluated
`
`various content-delivery network solutions available at the time to understand how
`
`our site may utilize such services.
`
`20.
`
`In 2012, I founded Einstein’s Workshop, a science, technology,
`
`engineering and math enrichment program for kids of all ages, which I still operate
`
`today. The Workshop teaches programming, robotics, “making” (akin to creating,
`
`building and tinkering), engineering, 3D CAD and many other subjects. We
`
`operate year-round, with weekly school-year programs as well as week-long
`
`vacation programs. We also created and developed BlocksCAD, a 3D CAD
`
`system for kids and adults. BlocksCAD is used world-wide and has over 8,500
`
`registered users and 35,000 stored CAD projects. BlocksCAD is being used in
`
`maker spaces worldwide and is integrated into school curriculum in various school
`
`systems in the U.S. at elementary, middle, and high school levels. BlocksCAD is
`
`delivered as a web-based application, and we have created a rich application and
`
`content-sharing site for users. Recently, BlocksCAD was spun out into a separate
`
`company which was accepted as part of the LearnLaunch business accelerator
`
`program for educational technologies.
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`I am a co-inventor on eight U.S. Patents and two European/German
`
`21.
`
`Patents, as well as several pending patent applications including:
`
` U.S. Patent No. 9,697,231, titled “Methods and apparatus for
`
`providing virtual media channels based on media search,” July 4,
`
`2017. This patent relates to providing virtual media channels utilizing
`
`rules and media search.
`
` U.S. Patent No. 9,697,230, titled “Methods and apparatus for dynamic
`
`presentation of advertising, factual, and informational content using
`
`enhanced metadata in search-driven media applications,” July 4, 2017.
`
`See also WO2007056485. This patent relates to the placement of
`
`advertising content within a playback stream.
`
` U.S. Patent No. 7,975,296, titled “Automated security threat testing of
`
`web pages,” July 5, 2011. This patent relates to automatically finding
`
`security holes in web sites.
`
` U.S. Patent No. 7,877,736, titled Computer language interpretation
`
`and optimization for server testing,” January 25, 2011. This patent
`
`relates to interpreting the code in a web site in order to interpret any
`
`dynamic content generated on the web pages.
`
` U.S. Patent No. 7,801,910, titled “Method and apparatus for timed
`
`tagging of media content,” September 21, 2010. This patent relates to
`
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`using timed data of when spoken words appear in an audio or video
`
`file to build a search index and to synchronize words in a transcript to
`
`the media file itself.
`
` US Patent Number 6,697,963, titled “Telecommunication method for
`
`ensuring on-time delivery of packets containing time-sensitive data”
`
` US Patent Publication Number 20070106685, “Method and apparatus
`
`for updating speech recognition databases and reindexing audio and
`
`video content using the same”
`
` US Patent Publication Number 20070106693, “Methods and
`
`apparatus for providing virtual media channels based on media
`
`search”
`
` US Patent Publication Number 20070106760, “Methods and
`
`apparatus for dynamic presentation of advertising, factual, and
`
`informational content using enhanced metadata in search-driven
`
`media applications”
`
` US Patent Publication Number 20070112837, “Method and apparatus
`
`for timed tagging of media content”
`
` US Patent Publication Number 20070118873, “Methods and
`
`apparatus for merging media content”
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
` US Patent Publication Number 20090222442, “User-directed
`
`navigation of multimedia search results.”
`
`22.
`
`In addition to the patents and applications listed above, I am an
`
`inventor/co-inventor on several other U.S. Patents, European Patents and Patent
`
`Publications that are listed in my C.V., Appendix B to this declaration.
`
`23. Based on my academic and work experiences relating to computer
`
`networking, distributed systems and content delivery technology, I believe I am
`
`well-positioned to understand and address the skills and mindset of a person of
`
`ordinary skill in this field circa 1998.
`
`A. Compensation
`24.
`I am being compensated $500 per hour at my normal agency
`
`consulting rate for my work. My compensation is not dependent on and in no way
`
`affects the substance of my statements in this Declaration.
`
` LEGAL PRINCIPLES ON OBVIOUSNESS
`25.
`I have been informed and understand that in order to invalidate a
`
`patent claim as obvious in the context of an inter partes review, it must be shown
`
`by a preponderance of the evidence that the claim would have been obvious to a
`
`person of ordinary skill at the time the invention was made. The prior art does not
`
`need to render obvious every possible embodiment within the scope of the claim:
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`the prior art renders the claim obvious if the combined teachings disclose an
`
`embodiment that is within the scope of the claim.
`
`26.
`
`I have been informed and understand that factors relevant to the
`
`determination of obviousness include the scope and content of the prior art, the
`
`level of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention, differences between
`
`the claimed invention and the prior art and “secondary considerations” or objective
`
`evidence of non-obviousness.
`
`27.
`
`I have been informed and understand that obviousness can be
`
`established by combining or modifying the teachings of the prior art to produce the
`
`claimed invention where there is some teaching, suggestion or motivation to do so;
`
`and that a reasonable expectation of success in achieving the subject matter of the
`
`claim at issue must also be shown. Further, I have been informed and understand
`
`that the teaching, suggestion or motivation test is flexible and that an explicit
`
`suggestion to combine the prior art is not necessary – the motivation to combine
`
`may be implicit and may be found in the knowledge of one of ordinary skill in the
`
`art, from the nature of the problem to be solved, market demand or common sense.
`
`28.
`
`I have been informed and understand that a patent claim composed of
`
`several limitations is not obvious merely because each limitation was
`
`independently known in the prior art. Hindsight reasoning is not an appropriate
`
`basis for combining references to form an obviousness combination. I also have
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`been informed and understand that it can be important to identify a reason with
`
`rational underpinnings that would have prompted a person of ordinary skill in the
`
`relevant field to combine the limitations in the way the claimed new invention
`
`does.
`
`29.
`
`In undertaking an obviousness analysis, I have been informed and
`
`understand that I may take into account the inferences and creative steps that a
`
`person of ordinary skill would have employed in reviewing the prior art at the time
`
`of the invention. If the claimed invention combines elements known in the prior
`
`art and the combination yields results that would have been predictable to a person
`
`of ordinary skill at the time of the invention, then this evidence would make it
`
`more likely that the claim was obvious.
`
`30.
`
`I have also been informed and understand that obviousness may be
`
`established if the combination of prior art elements was obvious to try, even if no
`
`one attempted the combination. For a combination to be obvious to try, however, a
`
`solution must be among a finite number of identified, predictable solutions.
`
`31.
`
`I have been further informed and understand that evidence of
`
`secondary considerations of non-obviousness also must be considered and that
`
`those considerations include among others: (1) whether products incorporating the
`
`invention were commercially successful; (2) whether the invention received praise
`
`in the industry; (2) whether or not there was a long felt but unresolved need in the
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`art that was satisfied by the invention. I have also been informed and understand
`
`that any assertion of the above indicia must be accompanied by a nexus between
`
`the claimed invention and the evidence offered; without a nexus, the evidence does
`
`not actually tend to show the evidence was non-obvious. I also understand that not
`
`all evidence of non-obviousness due to secondary considerations is compelling
`
`enough to overcome a strong showing of obviousness in light of prior art.
`
` LEVEL OF ORDINARY SKILL IN THE ART
`32.
`I agree with Petitioner’s expert, Dr. Freedman, that a person of
`
`ordinary skill in the art (“POSITA”) for purposes of the ’959 patent is an
`
`individual having at least a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Computer
`
`Engineering, or the equivalent, and several years of experience in the field of
`
`distributed systems, name services or Internet content delivery. Freedman Decl. ¶
`
`28.
`
` OPINIONS REGARDING THE CHALLENGED PATENT
`A. The Challenges Addressed by the ’959 Patent
`33. The ’959 patent describes a system and method for delivering web
`
`content (e.g., photos, videos, articles) over the Internet. Ex. 1001 (’959 patent),
`
`1:22-24. At the time of the invention, the delivery of content over the Internet was
`
`often slow and unreliable. As the patent’s Background explains, some content
`
`providers had attempted to address this issue by distributing mirrored copies of
`
`their content servers in different geographical locations, either using their own
`- 17 -
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`equipment or “Web hosting farms.” See id., 1:47-51 (“[A]t present, the only
`
`method for a Content Provider to place its content closer to its readers is to build
`
`copies of its Web site on machines that are located at Web hosting farms in
`
`different locations domestically and internationally. These copies of Web sites are
`
`known as mirror sites.”).
`
`34. The ’959 patent provides a number of criticisms of the mirroring
`
`approach:
`
`35. Economically disadvantageous - Mirroring places “unnecessary
`
`economic and operational burdens on Content Providers.” Id., 1:52-53. As the
`
`patent explains, “the overall cost to a Content Provider with one primary site and
`
`one mirror site is more than twice the cost of a single primary site.” Id., 1:54-56.
`
`This is because “the Content Provider must contract with a separate hosting facility
`
`for each mirror site” and “must incur additional overhead expenses associated with
`
`keeping the mirror sites synchronized.” Id., 1:57-61.
`
`36. Failure to scale - Mirroring fails to address the “problem of
`
`scalabilty”—i.e., “the [mirroring] technology itself will not scale beyond a few
`
`(i.e., less than 10) Web sites.” Id., 1:67-2:3.
`
`37. Operational impediments - mirroring causes “operational
`
`difficulties” concerning the need to purchase or lease software and infrastructure
`
`over far-reaching geographic areas. See id., 2:5-9 (“A Content Provider that uses a
`
`- 18 -
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`mirror site must not only lease and manage physical space in distant locations, but
`
`it must also buy and maintain the software or hardware that synchronizes and load
`
`balances the sites.”). Managing this vast infrastructure “requires Content Providers
`
`to waste … resources on functions that are not relevant to their core business of
`
`creating content.” Id., 2:12-14.
`
`B.
`The Solution of the ’959 Patent
`38. The ’959 patent provides a new solution for Internet content delivery,
`
`one that has been recognized as a “great historical shift[].” Ex. 2006 (1999-Wired-
`
`Article), 2. The stated goal of the ’959 patent is to create a “fundamentally new
`
`and better method to distribute Web-based content” using a widely-distributed
`
`“hosting” network. Ex. 1001 (’959 patent), 2:38-48. Rather than having a content
`
`provider mirror and distribute its own content, this new system, called a “content
`
`delivery network” or “CDN,” instead features a separate “service provider” that
`
`operates “CDN content servers” and “CDN name servers” to deliver content “on
`
`behalf of multiple content providers.” See, e.g., id., claims 1, 34, 58; see also infra
`
`VI (Claim Construction). The claimed CDN enables a service provider to form an
`
`“organic, massively fault-tolerant infrastructure,” “mov[ing] content close to the
`
`user” and “speed[ing]-up” content delivery, through the deployment of “preferably
`
`hundreds of hosting servers.” Ex. 1001 (’959 patent), 2:38-60. The invention thus
`
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`“shifts the burden of Web content distribution from the Content Provider” to the
`
`CDN. Id., 2:66-3:2.
`
`39. Figure 3 of the ’959 patent (annotated below) depicts “a high level
`
`diagram” of an exemplary “global hosting system.” Id., 4:53-54.
`
`
`
`
`
`This hosting system 35 (red) (referred to as a “content delivery network” or
`
`“CDN” in the claims) includes “global hosting servers” (“ghosts”) 36 and “DNS
`
`servers” 38, 40 (referred to as “CDN content servers” and “CDN name servers,”
`
`respectively, in the claims). Id., 3:15-27, 5:48-6:8; see also, e.g., claims 1, 58. As
`
`depicted and described, this global hosting system (CDN) (red) is distinct from and
`
`positioned logically between the clients or end users (yellow) and the content
`
`provider infrastructure 45 (blue). Id., 6:29, 10:55-58. The patent explains that a
`
`service provider uses this “global hosting” system (i.e., CDN) to deliver content on
`
`behalf of multiple content providers. Id., claims 1, 58, 15:21-23 (“Because the ISP
`
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`is aggregating many [Content] Providers together on the same global network,
`
`resources are more efficiently used.”).
`
`40. The claimed ’959 invention uses a “CDN name server” receiving and
`
`responding to a “Domain Name System (DNS) query”—in which the DNS query
`
`contains a “name maintained by the CDN service provider”—so that requests for
`
`content providers’ content are directed to the CDN, instead of content providers’
`
`servers. See, e.g., Ex. 1001, (’959 patent), claims 1, 58 (requiring a DNS query
`
`including a “name maintained by the CDN service provider”).
`
`41. For example, according to the patent, the URL for a content object to
`
`be served from the content provider’s site (“www.provider.com”) may look like:
`
`“<IMG SRC=http://www.provider.com/TECH/images/space.sto
`ry.gif>”
`Id., 8:3-5. 2 To allow service of the object by the CDN (e.g., Akamai’s CDN
`
`servers) rather than the content provider’s servers, in this embodiment, the
`
`hostname portion of the URL (which is the portion used in the DNS query) is
`
`“rewritten” to replace the hostname of the content provider with the name of the
`
`service provider (e.g., “akamai,” which is maintained by service provider Akamai):
`
`“<IMG SRC=http://ghost1467.ghosting.akamai.com/www.prov
`ider.com/TECH/images/space.story.gif>”
`
`
`2 All emphasis added, unless otherwise specified.
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`IPR2017-00249
`Expert Declaration of Henry H. Houh, Ph.D.
`Id., 8:6-10. The domain n
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