Cisco found liable for infringing cybersecurity patent
The Federal Circuit has affirmed a patent infringement victory for a US nonprofit research organisation over California-based tech company Cisco.
In its ruling, issued yesterday, March 20, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that SRI International’s ‘Emerald’ network defence system for preventing large-scale cyber attacks amounted to more than an abstract idea.
‘Emerald’, which the US Department of Defense termed a “gem in the world of cyber defence”, is a program for monitoring network intrusion across many computers or systems.
The program is protected by SRI’s “Hierarchical Event Monitoring and Analysis” (US number 6,711,615) patent.
SRI sued Cisco for infringing the ‘615 patent in 2013. Cisco claimed that the patent was ineligible based on prior art, citing a paper SRI presented in 1997 outlining the main concepts of SRI’s research.
The paper was listed as a reference in SRI’s initial patent application and was reviewed by the US Patent and Trademark Office at the time.
The US District Court for the District of Delaware rejected Cisco’s motion for summary judgment on the patent’s ineligibility in 2016, before a jury trial found the California company liable for patent infringement the following year.
Cisco appealed the denial of summary judgment on the patent’s ineligibility to the Federal Circuit, arguing that the processes covered by the patent were “simply directed to generic steps required to collect and analyse data”.
The company also argued that ‘Emerald’ did not constitute an improvement in computer functionality and merely used the computer as a tool, and that the asserted claims were abstract steps that people could “go through in their minds”.
In yesterday’s ruling, the Federal Circuit rejected Cisco’s arguments, noting that the asserted claims marked an improvement in the “technical functioning of the computer”, and a “specific technique for improving computer network security”.
“We tend to agree with SRI that the human mind is not equipped to detect suspicious activity by using network monitors and analysing network packets”, the ruling said.
The appeals court also rejected Cisco’s argument that the patent was anticipated by SRI’s 1997 paper.
“Anticipation requires that a single prior art reference disclose each and every limitation of the claimed invention”, the court said, finding that the paper did not disclose “detection of any of the network traffic data categories” recited by claim 1 of the patent.
In a partial defeat for SRI, the Federal Circuit vacated the district court’s finding of wilful infringement.
The case has been remanded to the lower court for recalculation of attorneys fees, and further consideration of wilful infringement and damages.
In a statement sent to WIPR, a spokesperson for CISCO said that the company was "disappointed the full panel did not find the patent invalid".
"In light of the divided panel decision, we are evaluating seeking en banc review of the validity decision", the statement added.
SRI declined to comment on the story.
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