throbber

`
`
`
`
`
`
`UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
`____________
`
`BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
`____________
`
`UNIFIED PATENTS INC.,
`Petitioner,
`
`v.
`
`PLECTRUM LLC,
`Patent Owner.
`____________
`
`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`____________
`
`Record of Oral Hearing
`Held: August 2, 2018
`____________
`
`
`
`
`Before KEN B. BARRETT, MIRIAM L. QUINN, and
`SHEILA F. McSHANE, Administrative Patent Judges.
`
`
`
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`
`
`APPEARANCES:
`
`ON BEHALF OF THE PETITIONER:
`
`
`MATTHEW J. LEARY, ESQUIRE
`DAVID L. CAVANAUGH, ESQUIRE
`Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, LLP
`1875 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
`Washington, D.C. 20006
`
`
`
`ON BEHALF OF THE PATENT OWNER:
`
`
`C. RYAN PINCKNEY, ESQUIRE
`Antonelli, Harrington & Thompson, LLP
`4306 Yoakum Boulevard
`Suite 450
`Houston, Texas 77006
`
`
`
`
`The above-entitled matter came on for hearing on Thursday, August 2,
`
`2018, commencing at 10 a.m., at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, 600
`Dulany Street, Alexandria, Virginia.
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`2
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`
`P R O C E E D I N G S
`- - - - -
`JUDGE McSHANE: Good morning. We are here this morning to
`conduct an oral hearing in Unified Patents Inc. v. Plectrum, LLC. That's
`IPR2017-01430. Can we have appearances, please.
`MR. LEARY: Your Honor, my name is Matthew Leary. With me
`I have Dave Cavanaugh on behalf of the petitioner, Unified Patents.
`MR. PINCKNEY: Your Honor, Ryan Pinckney for patent owner,
`Plectrum, LLC.
`JUDGE McSHANE: Thank you. We included a general order of
`the arguments for today's hearing in the trial hearing order. And to review,
`petitioners will present their case or petitioner will present its case and will
`have 45 minutes, and you may reserve rebuttal time. Patent owner will then
`argue its opposition. You will have 45 minutes. And then petitioner can
`come back and rebut its -- present any rebuttal in its remaining time.
`A couple of reminders here, if you will, I don't know if you have
`been here before, perhaps you have, but if you are using demonstratives,
`please try to identify the page number you are on or the slide number you are
`on. It helps the record, and also it helps our judge, in particular Judge Quinn
`is in Dallas today, and she's attending remotely. So it helps her because
`she's looking at paper copies of the demonstratives. If you could, please,
`again, use the microphone, and that would help not only the court reporter,
`but Judge Quinn as well. Please don't interrupt the other party if you have
`objections. You can address your objections in your argument time. So just
`hold fire on that.
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`
`3
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`
`One more thing. We received an e-mail on July 26, 2018, where
`you stated that both parties had objections to the demonstratives. Are those
`objections still standing?
`MR. LEARY: Yes, Your Honor.
`MR. PINCKNEY: Yes, Your Honor.
`JUDGE McSHANE: So I'm just going to make a comment or two.
`Let's start with the understanding that demonstratives are not evidence and
`are used as visual aids only, and any arguments and evidence that are not in
`the record will not be considered by the panel in rendering a final decision.
`That said, we are going to decline to strike some of the demonstratives
`today. We note that petitioner's objections to patent owner's demonstratives
`are directed to alleged new improper arguments in the petitioner's reply, and
`the objection there is that the assertions are late raised. Here the Board can
`discern the appropriateness of the arguments when we are looking at them.
`Patent owner objects to alleged new arguments in some of the
`petitioner's demonstratives, and we note that some of the slides at issue
`include figures that do not seem to appear in the record. If some of the
`figures and arguments in the set are not in the record, they will be
`disregarded. But again, the Board can discern the appropriateness of the
`arguments and the evidence. Any questions on that?
`MR. LEARY: No, Your Honor.
`MR. PINCKNEY: No, Your Honor.
`JUDGE McSHANE: Thank you. With that, we may proceed.
`And petitioner, do you wish to reserve rebuttal time?
`MR. LEARY: Yes, Your Honor, we expect to -- per your
`instruction, let me get to the microphone. We expect to use about
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`26
`
`4
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`35 minutes for our principal presentation. And if it's okay with the Board,
`we would like to reserve the final 10 minutes for rebuttal and possibly split
`that time with my colleague, Dave Cavanaugh.
`JUDGE McSHANE: Okay. And on that, what I'm going to do is
`set it for the full 45 and then we'll see how we go. So just let me know when
`you are ready to go.
`MR. LEARY: May it please the Board, good morning. My name
`is Matthew Leary for the petitioner. I put up on the screen petitioner's
`exhibit Unified 1023, and hopefully for Judge Quinn, she's got that. Turning
`to slide 2, in addition to some background today, there are two main topics
`that the petitioner will discuss. First I'll discuss claims 8 and 11. I'll explain
`why it would have been obvious to have used a CRC hash such as that in the
`Jain article in place of the XOR hash that is disclosed in the Cheriton patent.
`I will also explain why the Cheriton patent discloses both an input and an
`output packetizer.
`Second, separately I would like to address the remaining
`row-based claims and explain why it would have been obvious to have used
`row-based SRAMs in the system disclosed in the Cheriton patent and how
`doing so would meet each of the row-based limitations.
`If at any point the Board has any questions, we would hope that
`you would just ask at that time and we could address it as they come up.
`Turning now to slide 4, I would like to start with an overview of
`the '951 patent. That patent is directed to providing memory cache to store
`and look at network addresses. That cache is situated within a network
`device such as a switch or a router or a bridge. The top half of slide 4 shows
`Dr. Seshan's high-level explanation of these types of network devices. The
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`26
`
`5
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`basic problem that they solve is how to route an incoming packet to get to
`where the packet is going.
`As shown by the red arrows here in the top of slide 4, a data packet
`enters the device from the left-hand side and the device has to determine
`internally which output port to route the packet to in order to get to where
`it's going. And as the summary of the invention of the patent states, which is
`shown here at the bottom of slide 4, the system performs three basic actions
`to perform that routing. First, it parses out address information from the
`incoming packet; two, it looks up that information in a cache to try to
`determine, for instance, what output port the destination device is on; and
`finally, it routes the packet to that port.
`JUDGE QUINN: Counsel, I think that maybe you are overstating
`the invention. The way I read it is that the meat of the inventive concept
`here has to do with how the addresses are looked up because that tends to be
`the most computation-intensive activity for a packet to be processed so
`quickly to achieve line speed. So with a cache organized the way it is so that
`it could be -- hold a large number of addresses and look them up efficiently,
`that's what made this useful since packet processing has been around before
`that. So you know, with particular to the specific structure that this patent
`discloses, I'm interested in your thoughts as to how this four-way associative
`-- four-set associative cache, the improvement of that is what we are really
`looking at with respect to the prior art.
`MR. LEARY: Absolutely, Your Honor. And that's our
`understanding as well. It's the cache that's situated in this processing
`environment. That's the focus of, in fact, the very next slide I was going to
`put up. As Your Honor noted, it's the cache that is the focus of the patent
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`26
`
`6
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`claims within this processing environment. We just wanted to provide a
`quick overview of the application in which that cache works.
`JUDGE QUINN: Well, and my question really goes to, you know,
`the arguments about the rows of the cache and the looking up of the cache.
`We denied institution because we didn't see Cheriton as disclosing the rows.
`And as I see the claims, do you think that this is something that needs claim
`construction in order to really define the invention with respect to this
`four-way set associative cache with the rows organized in the manner which
`are described, which is to have four sets within each of the rows?
`MR. LEARY: Your Honor, we don't see a reason for claim
`construction at this point. What we would like to do, if we could, would be
`to focus first on claims 8 and 11 which, as you know, are the claims that
`don't deal with the row operation, and then address the row-based claims
`second. But I would like to address both here in this example of the
`high-level operation. In fact, we are setting this example in the context of
`claim 2 which, as Your Honor knows, is one of the row-based claims.
`JUDGE QUINN: What I'm trying to figure out here, we have to
`issue a final written decision on these claims, okay. So in order to
`distinguish how we see the claims vis-a-vis what you have presented to us, is
`this an issue of claim construction? And if it is, what should be the
`construction in that situation. And that goes to the independent claims,
`obviously. I know you want to discuss the dependent claims, but to help us
`out in understanding how you see the case and with respect to that claim
`term.
`
`MR. LEARY: So we do not think that any claim construction is
`necessary to resolve the issues here. We think, as I will present later, that
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`26
`
`7
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`the Cheriton patent discloses the actions and the actions on the data that is
`claimed in the row-based claims and that one of ordinary skill in the art
`would know how to implement the Cheriton patent using the known
`row-based SRAMs such as those that were described in the Fujishima
`patent. It was my hope that we could discuss at a high level the patent and
`then move to those specific disclosures, if that would be okay with Your
`Honor in terms of the order of our presentation.
`JUDGE QUINN: Just go ahead. I guess we'll get to it later, then.
`MR. LEARY: I'm sorry, Your Honor. I want to make sure I
`answer your question. We didn't think that claim construction is required to
`resolve the issues. Is there another part of your question that I can answer?
`JUDGE QUINN: Well, I mean, I want to understand. You are
`telling us now that someone of ordinary skill in the art would understand
`Cheriton to have it, but if we don't agree that it has it because the claim
`construction does not lend itself to that understanding, then we would have
`to resolve that conflict. And you are saying Cheriton has it. I want to know
`how is that different than what we already told you in the decision on
`institution?
`MR. LEARY: Sure, Your Honor. So I should clarify that it is not
`the petitioner's position that Cheriton explicitly discloses row-based
`SRAMs. And if Your Honor turns -- just to base this in the petition, if Your
`Honor would turn in the petition to page 23, on page 23, about four lines
`from the top, it says the petition noted that one of skill, quote, would
`organize Cheriton's SRAMs in a row-based manner. We didn't say, you
`know, that it would have to be organized in that way or some other
`talismanic signal that this was talking about inherency. And in so doing,
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`26
`
`8
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`when the petition said that in page 23, the petitioner recognized that
`Cheriton did not explicitly disclose row-based SRAMs. And instead
`page 23 tried to make clear that the element-by-element mapping in the
`subsequent pages were each directed at showing how the claims were
`unpatentable under that statutory ground of single-reference obviousness
`which was flagged on page 21 as the section header for all of these
`independent claims. So I just wanted to make sure that we were clear that
`the statutory ground was single-reference obviousness based in the Cheriton
`patent. And as we've said, we were not claiming anticipation or anticipation
`via inherency for these claims.
`Specifically on page 23, it said that the row-based SRAMs were
`known. They were -- and there's corroborating evidence there in terms of
`Fujishima. And what followed page 23 in each of the element-by-element
`mappings was an explanation of how the claims were obvious in view of
`Cheriton as used with row-based claims, which would be obvious.
`JUDGE QUINN: Well, there's a difference here as far as I'm
`understanding what you have in the petition, is that there's a difference
`between saying it would be obvious to have values indexed and stored in
`rows in an SRAM. It is different to say like what I read in the patent that
`you have different -- the four sets are in the same row. So you are trying to
`equate storing sets within a row with storing rows, four rows in four sets of
`memory. Is that how you are seeing it?
`MR. LEARY: No, Your Honor. I guess the rubric in which we
`put this is if you take Cheriton with its existing actions which, for instance,
`include storing multiple entries in a single row -- sorry, in a single set of
`SRAMs, if you take Cheriton's teachings of storing entries and SRAMs and
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`26
`
`9
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`you implement Cheriton as we believe would be obvious using row-based
`SRAMs and in particular in the way shown in Figure 6 of the Cheriton
`patent, that that same action of storing entries with the same data, including
`network address, is stored within the rows of that SRAM -- of those SRAMs
`because that's the way the SRAMs work.
`And Your Honor, I wanted to point out that for each of the
`mappings when we discuss what it is Cheriton discloses, that discussion is in
`the context of Cheriton as implemented with row-based SRAMs. And I
`recognize, Your Honor, that in some places the resulting language in the
`petition might have said things along the lines of Cheriton discloses that data
`is stored in a row or something to that effect. But that disclosure was always
`in the context of Cheriton as implemented using row-based SRAMs.
`So for instance, when Cheriton discloses taking a network address
`and storing it in an SRAM, if that SRAM was a row-based SRAM, which
`was known and disclosed in references such as Fujishima, then the data that
`Cheriton stores necessarily is in a row because that's how row-based SRAMs
`work. Row-based SRAMs store their data in rows. They arrange it in rows.
`And when you are looking to identify or locate data in those row-based
`SRAMs, it's performed using a row address or index. And all of that
`disclosure of the structure of the claims comes from the knowledge of one of
`skill in the art of row-based SRAMs such as those in Fujishima.
`So with respect to your original question, which as I understood,
`was does Cheriton store its entries in four -- a different entry in each row,
`that's not our point. Cheriton, when used and implemented with a SRAM
`would store its entries exactly the way that Cheriton always describes storing
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`
`10
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`its entries, which is it stores it in the SRAM, and for row-based SRAMs
`there would be a row in which that would be stored.
`Your Honor, that's one of the reasons we noted had that there are
`no modifications to Cheriton that need to take place in order for it to use
`row-based SRAMs, because all of the actions and the data in Cheriton are
`agnostic as to how the SRAMs are set up. They just know that they are
`going to take, for instance, four entries or a destination address and store it
`in an SRAM. And if that SRAM was row-based, that storage, of course,
`occurs in a row. And if you need to locate information that Cheriton
`discloses using a hash index to look up a location in the SRAM, if you are
`using row-based SRAMs, that lookup is performed by looking up a
`particular row number at an address or an offset.
`Does that better answer your question, Your Honor?
`JUDGE QUINN: Yeah, I understand your point. I know where
`you are coming from and I don't think you are going to tell me differently,
`but I just wanted to kind of play with the understanding here that the patent
`describes a very interesting way of storing cache entries, four of them per
`row. And when you index into a row, you have four possible sets from
`which to look for, and that's why the patent talks about the first entry and
`things like that. Whereas, Cheriton doesn't have that as a parallel search into
`four different caches in parallel. So it is different. It's a question of how you
`are looking at it to make it fit the claim language. So trying to figure that
`out.
`
`MR. LEARY: Thank you, Your Honor. And I think we'll get into
`that in more detail here in a minute. With that, I would like to turn to, in the
`interest of time, turn to claim 8. That's on slide 6 of our presentation. And
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`26
`
`11
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`this slide just highlights some of the higher -- I'm sorry. This slide, slide
`number 6, describes the high-level features of independent claim 8 which the
`Board instituted on originally.
`And two of the things I wanted to point out here was, one, that
`claim 8, of course, does not deal with row-based -- does not claim row-based
`access or storage. Instead, claim 8 is directed mostly at how the data is
`processed within the system. For instance, the incoming parsed address
`information is hashed to form an address using a CRC generator. Whereas,
`some of the other claims don't include that. And that hash then is used along
`with address information in an input packetizer to group that information
`together, send it to the cache for a lookup, and then the resulting information
`of that lookup is packaged by an output packetizer to send the resulting, for
`instance, address report information to the output side of the switch.
`So it's independent claim 8 that we wanted to focus on first
`because it doesn't have these row-based limitations and of course sort of
`different issues attached given that it was originally instituted.
`JUDGE QUINN: I guess I should apologize for hijacking your
`presentation.
`MR. LEARY: That's quite all right, Your Honor. We like to
`answer your questions first and foremost.
`So I would like to move to slide 22 and just discuss particular
`issues raised by the Board and by the patent owner. And I'll start with the
`Board's decision on institution, which of course, included claims 8 and 11.
`And when the Board instituted on those claims, of course it evaluated those
`claims in light of the patent owner's preliminary response, and presumably
`the Board didn't agree with the arguments in that preliminary response.
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`26
`
`12
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`
`And that's notable, Your Honors, because nothing has happened
`since that preliminary response with the Board changing its initial position
`that those claims would be unpatentable. If anything, the case now is even
`stronger for these two claims.
`As you are aware, the patent owner produced no new documents in
`this case. They didn't bother to depose the petitioner's expert. Nor did they
`provide an expert of their own to rebut Dr. Seshan. They developed no
`discovery to rebut either the petitioner or Dr. Seshan. And importantly,
`there's no secondary considerations here in this proceeding.
`But most importantly, the patent owner's response after the
`institution also did nothing to change the state of play following that. If we
`move to slide 23, this lists the various issues raised by the patent owner or
`by the Board. For claims 8 and 11, of course, the issues raised were brought
`by the patent owner. For these claims, the response essentially repeated
`verbatim the same arguments made in the preliminary response. And for
`example, regarding the obviousness of using a CRC hash such as that in Jain
`instead of an XOR hash, if the Board were to compare pages 13 and 14 of
`the POPR to pages 5 and 6 of the POR, you'll see it's the identical argument,
`and for the most part it's verbatim.
`JUDGE QUINN: The way I see it, though, and we see this all
`time, is that we may institute based on the evidence of record at the time and
`as a preliminary finding, of course, that you have some likelihood of
`prevailing, a reasonable likelihood of prevailing. But it's another kind of
`analysis we do at the end when we are looking at “is there a preponderance
`of the evidence.” So with regards to what patent owners decide to do in this
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`
`13
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`situation, I see them calling into question whether there is sufficient
`evidence in the petition as it stands to go the distance.
`So I looked at what your rationales were, and it looked like you
`relied on the substitution rationale, substitute the XOR with a CRC hashing.
`And they have called that into question. So your response to that is, what I
`see is, more rationales to combine. So what do we do with these extra
`rationales when your initial rationale was the substitution?
`MR. LEARY: First of all, I think the initial rationale, which was a
`substitution, was sufficient in and of itself not only to make our prima facie
`case under the burden that we had at the initiation of these proceedings, but
`also more than sufficient to also meet our burden now as Your Honors are
`deciding in a final written decision how to dispose of those claims.
`And I wanted to talk both about the original petition and what it
`gave in terms of rationales and what it gave in terms of a motivation for the
`replacement or substitution of the CRC with an XOR hash.
`As background, of course, the patent owner didn't dispute that the
`Jain reference discussed the CRC hash function as an alternative to the
`XOR. There's no real dispute that it would have been possible to have made
`that substitution. I think the thrust of the argument that the patent owner
`made regarding these claims in its response was that they argued that there
`wasn't a sufficient reason to make that substitution.
`And what I wanted to point out for the Board initially in the
`petition is that in the petition, and this is cited among other places at
`page 57, the Jain patent not only stated that CRCs were known and that they
`were an alternative to an XOR, the Jain patent explicitly stated that the CRC
`was, quote, a preferred hash algorithm for use in its network address cache
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`26
`
`14
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`even though it said that an XOR could also be used. For Your Honors, that
`would be in the Jain reference at page 6, lines 1 through 4.
`So that preference in our petition alone implicates several
`rationales and motivations to use CRCs instead of the XOR in Cheriton.
`And that preference is also evidence of an expectation of success in making
`that substitution because you have Jain, which is an application that is
`almost identical to Cheriton's application. Specifically it's looking up
`network addresses in a network device. And Jain has a teaching that says as
`between XORs and CRCs, we prefer a CRC. That alone, I believe, is
`enough to make out both the rationale and also an expectation of success.
`The fact that in our reply brief we also added additional rationales
`and pointed out additional motivations, Your Honor, we think that's entirely
`permissible given that that was a direct response in rebuttal to the patent
`owner's assertion that there were no such rationales or motivations. And so
`we believe, Your Honors, when evaluating this for the final written decision
`should be able to properly look at both the prima facie case, which was
`already quite strong in the petition, as well as our direct responses to the
`patent owner in our reply.
`I'm sorry, Your Honor?
`JUDGE QUINN: Well, I'm going to disagree with you on whether
`we can do that or not. But my concern is first what is your evidence in the
`petition. You said that you have provided the substitution and then you
`supported that with your expert declaration. Was there a cross-examination
`of the expert where he expounded on that the substitution would work in the
`same manner with this reasonable expectation of success or is the testimony
`all we have?
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`26
`
`15
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`
`MR. LEARY: So the testimony from Dr. Seshan that that
`substitution would have been routine and the teaching in the Jain patent that
`he corroborated his testimony with saying that the CRCs would, in fact, be
`preferred for this exact same application of looking up network addresses,
`that testimony, Your Honor, is completely unrebutted. There was no
`deposition taken of Dr. Seshan, although, of course, he was offered. He was
`also offered, just so you know, in July even after the supplemental reply, and
`patent owner elected not to do so. So all of that evidence, that testimony is
`completely unrebutted at this point, at this state of the evidence in the record.
`JUDGE QUINN: Thank you.
`MR. LEARY: Turning to the expectation of success we were just
`discussing, both in the petitioner's reply and also in the petition, as I said, I
`think there was more than sufficient expectation of success.
`In addition, in the reply we pointed to other references by the same
`author which, in fact, were noted by the author of the Jain reference, which
`provided even more evidence saying that a CRC hash would be known to
`work efficiently in the same application as Cheriton in which that
`substitution would be made.
`If Your Honors have any other questions with respect to claims 8
`or 11, I would like to answer them now. If not, I would probably move on to
`row-based claims to address Judge Quinn's questions.
`JUDGE McSHANE: Do you have anything else on the
`packetizing issue?
`MR. LEARY: Your Honor, yes. So I'm looking now at slide 32.
`And the only other dispute for claims 8 and 11 was the input and output
`packetizer terms. We believe the Board correctly described those terms in
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`26
`
`16
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`its decision on institution as involving the assembly and reformatting of
`information that's transmitted between components of the device. And that
`is exactly what the packetizers in the '951 packet are described as doing.
`For example, as the Board correctly recognized, the '951 describes
`the input packetizer as constructing a packet, which the Board said didn't
`have to be in any particular form, but it described constructing a packet with
`information such as the source and the destination address from the
`incoming packet along with the generated hash function and sending that
`package of information up to the lookup unit where that information, of
`course, is used to do the search in the cache, and also on the output side that
`there's circuitry that says, as an example in the '951 patent, that sends the
`resulting information from the search to the output side of the hardware.
`And I'm going to now switch to claims 33 and 34. I'm going to
`touch on them briefly, but Your Honor, the main point of each of these
`slides is that the operation of the input and output packetizers that are
`disclosed in Cheriton is exactly near the operation of the description of those
`input and output packetizers in the patent. In particular here for the input
`packetizer, as shown on slide 33, there is a section of the switch hardware
`and also a part of the hash function logic that takes exactly the same data as
`described in the patent which is source and/or destination information and a
`hash and sends it to the lookup unit, to the portion of the device that's
`performing the lookup using that information.
`Also on the output packetizer side, again, the information or the
`disclosure that we pointed to in Cheriton is identical to the examples given
`in the '951 patent. It's circuitry that takes the resulting address information
`and related information like the output port, packetizes it and sends it from
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`26
`
`17
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`these buffers. For instance, like a buffer is labeled 621 through 624. It
`sends that information to the output side of the switch hardware. Again, all
`of this is completely unrebutted in this case in terms of expert, other
`documents or other expert deposition.
`Your Honor, does that take care of the input and output packetizer?
`JUDGE McSHANE: Yes, thank you.
`MR. LEARY: Now turning to slide 35, I would like to address the
`row-related claims. And especially for Judge Quinn, to preface this, we
`want to let you know that we appreciate where the Board is coming from,
`and we recognize that the Board's initial impression was that the petition was
`deficient for these row-based claims. So in preparing for today we went
`through very carefully the Board's responses and statements it made in its
`earlier findings, and we wanted to answer what we recognized as being some
`of the concerns or questions that the Board had about the petition before we
`even started talking about any of the details on the merits for these claims.
`The first question was whether the petition was legally sufficient.
`And as Your Honors are well aware, for a petition to be sufficient, it requires
`an identification of the challenged claims, the statutory grounds for those
`claims and an application of the evidence to whatever issues are raised by
`those grounds. And we believe we did exactly that.
`As I pointed out a minute ago, on page 21 of the petition, it noted
`this was a single-reference obviousness ground. And consistent with that
`ground, on page 23 it provided the context for the rest of the mapping which
`was that one of skill in the art, quote, would organize Cheriton's RAMs in a
`row-based manner and in so doing, recognized that Cheriton, although it
`didn't explicitly disclose row-based SRAMs, it would be obvious to use
`
`1
`2
`3
`4
`5
`6
`7
`8
`9
`10
`11
`12
`13
`14
`15
`16
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
`23
`24
`25
`26
`
`18
`
`

`

`Case IPR2017-01430
`Patent 5,978,951
`
`row-based SRAMs and then each of the additional claim limitations
`discussed in that context how one of skill in the art would view Cheriton
`when used with the row-based RAMs.
`Second, the second question we understood the Board had was
`whether the petition had adequately provided rationales for why it would be
`obvious to use row-based SRAMs in Cheriton. And the answer to that
`question, we believe, is yes. And the answer to this question starts also on
`page 23. We wanted to point out for the Board that the petition didn't just
`allege simply that row-based SRAMs were known. Instead the petition
`emphasized that row-based

This document is available on Docket Alarm but you must sign up to view it.


Or .

Accessing this document will incur an additional charge of $.

After purchase, you can access this document again without charge.

Accept $ Charge
throbber

Still Working On It

This document is taking longer than usual to download. This can happen if we need to contact the court directly to obtain the document and their servers are running slowly.

Give it another minute or two to complete, and then try the refresh button.

throbber

A few More Minutes ... Still Working

It can take up to 5 minutes for us to download a document if the court servers are running slowly.

Thank you for your continued patience.

This document could not be displayed.

We could not find this document within its docket. Please go back to the docket page and check the link. If that does not work, go back to the docket and refresh it to pull the newest information.

Your account does not support viewing this document.

You need a Paid Account to view this document. Click here to change your account type.

Your account does not support viewing this document.

Set your membership status to view this document.

With a Docket Alarm membership, you'll get a whole lot more, including:

  • Up-to-date information for this case.
  • Email alerts whenever there is an update.
  • Full text search for other cases.
  • Get email alerts whenever a new case matches your search.

Become a Member

One Moment Please

The filing “” is large (MB) and is being downloaded.

Please refresh this page in a few minutes to see if the filing has been downloaded. The filing will also be emailed to you when the download completes.

Your document is on its way!

If you do not receive the document in five minutes, contact support at support@docketalarm.com.

Sealed Document

We are unable to display this document, it may be under a court ordered seal.

If you have proper credentials to access the file, you may proceed directly to the court's system using your government issued username and password.


Access Government Site

We are redirecting you
to a mobile optimized page.





Document Unreadable or Corrupt

Refresh this Document
Go to the Docket

We are unable to display this document.

Refresh this Document
Go to the Docket