Apple Inc. v. Mph Technologies Oy

Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit·Decided March 9, 2022·No. 21-1532·Published

Opinion

Case: 21-1532 Document: 46 Page: 1 Filed: 03/09/2022

United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________

APPLE INC., Appellant

v.

MPH TECHNOLOGIES OY, Appellee ______________________

2021-1532, 2021-1533, 2021-1534 ______________________

Appeals from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in Nos. IPR2019- 00823, IPR2019-00824, IPR2019-00826. ______________________

Decided: March 9, 2022 ______________________

JOSEPH R. PALMORE, Morrison & Foerster LLP, Wash- ington, DC, argued for appellant. Also represented by SETH W. LLOYD, BRIAN ROBERT MATSUI; LENA HUGHES; New York, NY; RICHARD HUNG, San Francisco, CA; BITA RAHEBI, Los Angeles, CA.

BRIAN ERIK HAAN, Lee Sheikh Megley & Haan LLC, Chicago, IL, argued for appellee. Also represented by ASHLEY E. LAVALLEY, CHRISTOPHER LEE, RICHARD BURNS MEGLEY, JR.; JAMES CARMICHAEL, STEPHEN TERRY SCHREINER, Carmichael IP, PLLC, Tysons Corner, VA. ______________________ Case: 21-1532 Document: 46 Page: 2 Filed: 03/09/2022

Before MOORE, Chief Judge, PROST and TARANTO, Circuit Judges. MOORE, Chief Judge. Apple appeals from three Patent Trial and Appeal Board inter partes review final written decisions collec- tively holding Apple failed to show claims 2, 4, 9, and 11 of U.S. Patent No. 9,712,494; claims 7–9 of U.S. Patent No. 9,712,502; and claims 3, 5, 10, and 12–16 of U.S. Patent No. 9,838,362 would have been obvious. For the following rea- sons, we affirm. BACKGROUND I The challenged patents share a written description and purport to improve secure messaging between arbitrary hosts (e.g., messaging across local area networks (LANs), private and public wide area networks (WANs), or the in- ternet) utilizing Internet Protocol (IP) security protocols. ’494 patent at 1:54–57; 7:38–45. 1 IP security protocols re- quire establishing a security association, id. at 2:39–49, that costs computation time and increases network la- tency, id. at 4:44–45. They are purportedly designed for static connections and, thus, not well suited for communi- cations with mobile computers, leading to poor quality of service for communication over wireless links. Id. at 4:39– 43; 5:7–14. To solve these problems, systems commonly utilize an intermediate host that facilitates communication between a mobile terminal and its communication target (e.g., a security gateway). Id. at 5:15–6:14. These common solutions, however, heavily rely on a concept known as tun- neling. In tunneling, typically an entire data packet, in- cluding its outer header, is encapsulated and a new outer

1 For simplicity, we cite to the ’494 patent. Case: 21-1532 Document: 46 Page: 3 Filed: 03/09/2022

APPLE INC. v. MPH TECHNOLOGIES OY 3

header is added. Id. at 3:21–49. The use of tunneling in the known solutions can cause extra packet size overhead, or require the intermediate computer to decrypt the packet, which could cause potential security problems. Id. at 6:21– 24. The patents disclose a method for secure forwarding of a message from a first computer to a second computer via an intermediate computer in a telecommunication network that purportedly avoids these disadvantages. Id. at Ab- stract; 6:28–31. Preferably, a first computer “processes [a] formed message using a security protocol and encapsulates the message at least in an outer IP header,” which is sent to an intermediate computer. Id. at 6:54–59. The interme- diate computer “matches the outer IP header address fields together with a unique identifier used by the security pro- tocol, and performs a translation of the outer addresses and the unique identity used by the security profile.” Id. at 6:59–63. The translated packet is then sent to a second computer, which processes it using a standard security pro- tocol. This method does not use any “extra encapsulation overhead” typical of prior-art solutions. Id. at 6:65–67. The claims of the ’494 and ’362 patents cover the inter- mediate computer. Claim 1 of the ’494 patent is a repre- sentative independent claim for those patents: 1. An intermediate computer for secure forwarding of messages in a telecommunication network, com- prising: an intermediate computer configured to connect to a telecommunication network; the intermediate computer configured to be assigned with a first network address in the telecommunication network; the intermediate computer configured to re- ceive from a mobile computer a secure mes- sage sent to the first network address Case: 21-1532 Document: 46 Page: 4 Filed: 03/09/2022

having an encrypted data payload of a mes- sage and a unique identity, the data pay- load encrypted with a cryptographic key derived from a key exchange protocol; the intermediate computer configured to read the unique identity from the secure message sent to the first network address; and the intermediate computer configured to access a translation table, to find a destina- tion address from the translation table us- ing the unique identity, and to securely forward the encrypted data pay- load to the destination address using a net- work address of the intermediate computer as a source address of a forwarded message containing the encrypted data payload wherein the intermediate computer does not have the cryptographic key to decrypt the encrypted data payload. (emphasis added). The ’502 patent claims the mobile computer that sends the secure message to the intermediate computer. Claim 1 is a representative independent claim: 1. A computer for sending secure messages, and for enabling secure forwarding of messages in a tele- communication network by an intermediate com- puter to a recipient computer, comprising: a computer configured to connect to a tele- communication network; the computer configured to be assigned with a network address in the telecommu- nication network, wherein the computer is Case: 21-1532 Document: 46 Page: 5 Filed: 03/09/2022

APPLE INC. v. MPH TECHNOLOGIES OY 5

a mobile computer in that the address of the mobile computer changes; the computer configured to form a secure message by encrypting the data payload of a message and giving the message a unique identity and a destination address of an in- termediate computer, wherein the unique identity and the destination address are ca- pable of being used by the intermediate computer to find an address to a recipient computer; the computer configured to send the secure message to the intermediate computer for forwarding of the encrypted data payload to the recipient computer; and the computer configured to set up a secure connection using a key exchange protocol. II MPH asserted claims of the challenged patents against Apple in the Northern District of California. Apple peti- tioned for inter partes review of each claim of the three pa- tents, relying primarily on a combination of Request for Comments 3104 (RFC3104) 2 and U.S. Patent No. 7,032,242 (Grabelsky) (collectively, the combination). The Board held that Apple failed to show that several dependent claims of each patent would have been obvious in view of the combi- nation. Apple challenges each of these determinations. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A).

2 G. Montenegro & M. Borella, RSIP Support for End-to-end IPsec, Request for Comments 3104, The Inter- net Society (Oct. 2001). Case: 21-1532 Document: 46 Page: 6 Filed: 03/09/2022

DISCUSSION We review claim construction de novo and any subsid- iary factual findings based on extrinsic evidence for sub- stantial evidence. Cisco Sys., Inc. v. Int’l Trade Comm’n, 873 F.3d 1354, 1360 (Fed. Cir. 2017).

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