NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

 

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

DAEDALUS BLUE LLC,

Appellant

v.

KATHERINE K. VIDAL, UNDER SECRETARY OF 

COMMERCE FOR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 

AND DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED STATES 

PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE,

Intervenor

______________________ 

2023-1313

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark 

Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. IPR2021-

00831.

______________________ 

Decided: March 13, 2024

______________________ 

KEVIN KENT MCNISH, McNish PLLC, Portland, ME, argued for appellant. Also represented by DENISE MARIE DE 

MORY, Bunsow De Mory LLP, Redwood City, CA.

 MICHAEL S. FORMAN, Office of the Solicitor, United 

States Patent and Trademark Office, Alexandria, VA, 

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2 DAEDALUS BLUE LLC v. VIDAL

argued for intervenor. Also represented by FARHEENA 

YASMEEN RASHEED, MEREDITH HOPE SCHOENFELD. 

 ______________________ 

Before TARANTO, CHEN, and STOLL, Circuit Judges.

CHEN, Circuit Judge. 

Daedalus Blue LLC (Daedalus) appeals a Patent Trial 

and Appeal Board (Board) decision that determined claims 

15–25 of U.S. Patent No. 8,671,132 (’132 patent) are unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over combinations of 

Gelb,1 Tivoli,2 and Callaghan.3 We have jurisdiction under 

28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A). 

Daedalus raises three arguments on appeal: (1) the 

Board erred by not construing the claim term “plurality of 

clients” as “clients in a networked environment”; (2) Gelb 

is not analogous art because it is not in the same field of 

endeavor as the ’132 patent; and (3) Gelb is not analogous 

art because it is not reasonably pertinent to the problems 

identified in the ’132 patent. Because substantial evidence 

supports the Board’s finding that Gelb is analogous art, we 

affirm. 

Claim 15 is representative for purposes of this appeal

and recites:

15. A method for handling files within a policybased data management system, the method comprising:

1 U.S. Patent No. 5,018,060, J.A. 1500–15. 2 Roland Leins, Tivoli Storage Manager: A Technical 

Introduction (2d ed. 2001), J.A. 1516–45.

3 Brent Callaghan, NFS Illustrated (2000), 

J.A. 1546–57. 

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DAEDALUS BLUE LLC v. VIDAL 3

providing a policy set comprising at least one service class rule;

receiving one or more attributes of a file from one 

of a plurality of clients, the clients comprising at 

least two different computing platforms;

applying the service class rule to the file to assign 

a service class to the file; and

conducting operations on the file in a manner according to the service class.

’132 patent at claim 15 (emphasis added).

We begin with Daedalus’s not-reasonably-pertinent argument. The Board agreed with Daedalus that one problem identified in the ’132 patent is “‘not permit[ting] a user 

to automatically select between multiple storage options’ 

and not addressing ‘[files] with varying storage or performance requirements or equipment with varying capacities 

and performance levels.’” J.A. 22 (first alteration in original) (first quoting ’132 patent col. 1 l. 47 – col. 2 l. 3; and 

then quoting J.A. 573). Relying in part on Gelb’s specification, the Board reasonably found that Gelb addresses the 

same problem: “namely that prior art storage access methods did not permit programmers to write code that would 

allow users to automatically select the appropriate storage 

devices based on ‘high or logical level’ concepts, such as 

‘data sets, data bases and the like.’” J.A. 22 (quoting 

J.A. 645); see also J.A. 1504 col. 1 ll. 33–37, 60–65, col. 2 

ll. 19–21; J.A. 1512 col. 18 ll. 23–27. Substantial evidence 

therefore supports the Board’s finding that Gelb would be 

reasonably pertinent to at least one problem identified in 

the ’132 patent.

Because the Board’s reasonable-pertinence finding is 

supported by substantial evidence, we need not address 

Daedalus’s other arguments. Even if Daedalus’s claim-construction argument were correct, that construction would 

not undermine the Board’s factual findings for reasonable 

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4 DAEDALUS BLUE LLC v. VIDAL

pertinence, as the identified problem is agnostic to whether 

the clients are in a networked environment. As to Daedalus’s field-of-endeavor argument, the Board’s reasonablepertinence finding was sufficient for Gelb to be analogous 

art. See Donner Tech., LLC v. Pro Stage Gear, LLC, 979 

F.3d 1353, 1359 (Fed. Cir. 2020) (explaining that a reference is analogous art if it is either in the same “field of endeavor” or “reasonably pertinent to the particular problem 

with which the inventor is involved” (quoting In re Bigio, 

381 F.3d 1320, 1325 (Fed. Cir. 2004))). 

We have considered Daedalus’s remaining arguments 

and find them unpersuasive. For the foregoing reasons, we 

affirm.

AFFIRMED

Case: 23-1313 Document: 36 Page: 4 Filed: 03/13/2024