Opinion ID: 6342105
Heading Depth: 1
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Heading: facts

Text: The ’115 and ’560 patents relate to a “software-based architecture . . . for supporting cooperative task completion by flexible, dynamic configurations of autonomous electronic agents.” J.A. 95; see also J.A. 131. In particular, the patents disclose that “[c]ommunications and cooperation between agents are brokered by one or more facilitators” and that “[t]he facilitators employ strategic reasoning for generating a goal satisfaction plan to fulfill arbitrarily complex goals by users and service requesting agents.” J.A. 95. Both patents list David L. Martin and Adam J. Cheyer as inventors. Claim 22 of the ’560 patent, which is representative for purposes of the discussion in this opinion, requires, among other things, a “facilitator agent” that performs various functions. ’560 patent, col. 31, l. 61–col. 32, l. 16. The patent applications resulting in the ’115 and ’560 patents were filed on January 5, 1999, and March 17, 1999 respectively. The underlying technology, known as the Open Agent Architecture (“OAA”), was conceived at SRI International (“SRI”) in the 1990s. Martin, Cheyer, (both SRI employees) and a third SRI employee, Dr. Douglas B. Moran, had earlier co-authored an academic paper entitled “Building Distributed Software Systems with the Open Agent Architecture” (“the Martin reference”) that Case: 21-1179 Document: 48 Page: 3 Filed: 05/19/2022 GOOGLE LLC v. IPA TECHNOLOGIES INC. 3 was published in the Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Technology, which took place March 23–25, 1998. The Martin reference describes the OAA project developed at SRI and, significantly for present purposes, at least some of the technology embodied in the claims of the ’115 and ’560 patents. During the prosecution of the ’115 patent, various claims were rejected based on the Martin reference, which the examiner identified as being prior art. In response, SRI contested the prior art status of the reference by submitting inventor declarations by Martin and Cheyer under 37 C.F.R. § 1.132, asserting that Dr. Moran was “not a co-inventor of the subject matter described in the subject matter disclosed and claimed in the instant application[s].” J.A. 11172–75. If Dr. Moran was not a co-inventor of the Martin reference, the Martin reference was not prior art because it was made by the same inventive entity as the ’115 and ’560 patents and not “by others.” 35 U.S.C. § 102(a) (pre-AIA). 1 After receiving the declarations, the examiner withdrew the rejections based on the Martin reference and continued examining the applications. The patents were granted and ultimately assigned to appellee IPA Technologies, Inc. (“IPA”). In February 2019, Google petitioned the Board for inter partes review of various claims of the ’115 and ’560 patents, relying primarily on the Martin reference to argue that the claims would have been obvious. Google contended that the Martin reference was prior art as work “by others” because it described the work of an inventive entity (Martin, Cheyer and Dr. Moran) different from the inventive entity of the challenged patents (Martin and Cheyer). The Board 1 Because the patents at issue were filed before March 16, 2013, pre-AIA provisions apply. 35 U.S.C. § 100 (note). Case: 21-1179 Document: 48 Page: 4 Filed: 05/19/2022 4 GOOGLE LLC v. IPA TECHNOLOGIES INC. instituted review but concluded after the trial proceedings that Google “ha[d] not provided sufficient support to explain how Dr. Moran’s contribution [wa]s sufficient to establish he [wa]s an inventive entity with respect to the Martin reference by a preponderance of the evidence” and that Google thus failed to “establish[] that Martin was prior art under § 102(a) to the ’560 Patent.” J.A. 26. 2 Because each of Google’s grounds in its petition relied on the Martin reference, the Board concluded that Google did not establish that any of the challenged claims was unpatentable. Google appeals. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A).