Court Opinion

ID: 9956183
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-01 13:01:37.677316+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:15:26.461645
License: Public Domain

Case: 23-1313   Document: 36     Page: 1   Filed: 03/13/2024

        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.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, ar-
 gued 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,
Case: 23-1313    Document: 36      Page: 2    Filed: 03/13/2024

 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 un-
 patentable 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 policy-
     based data management system, the method com-
     prising:

     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.
Case: 23-1313     Document: 36      Page: 3    Filed: 03/13/2024

 DAEDALUS BLUE LLC v. VIDAL                                   3

     providing a policy set comprising at least one ser-
     vice 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 ac-
     cording to the service class.
 ’132 patent at claim 15 (emphasis added).
      We begin with Daedalus’s not-reasonably-pertinent ar-
 gument. The Board agreed with Daedalus that one prob-
 lem 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 perfor-
 mance requirements or equipment with varying capacities
 and performance levels.’” J.A. 22 (first alteration in origi-
 nal) (first quoting ’132 patent col. 1 l. 47 – col. 2 l. 3; and
 then quoting J.A. 573). Relying in part on Gelb’s specifica-
 tion, the Board reasonably found that Gelb addresses the
 same problem: “namely that prior art storage access meth-
 ods 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-con-
 struction argument were correct, that construction would
 not undermine the Board’s factual findings for reasonable
Case: 23-1313     Document: 36      Page: 4    Filed: 03/13/2024

 4                                 DAEDALUS BLUE LLC v. VIDAL

 pertinence, as the identified problem is agnostic to whether
 the clients are in a networked environment. As to Daeda-
 lus’s field-of-endeavor argument, the Board’s reasonable-
 pertinence 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 refer-
 ence is analogous art if it is either in the same “field of en-
 deavor” 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