Library Indexing Insufficient To Establish Public Accessibility

In Salesforce.com, Inc. v. WSOU Investments, LLC d/b/a Brazos Licensing and Development, the Board denied institution of inter partes review of a patent directed to providing content to a limited display terminal (e.g., a PDA) because petitioner failed to show that a 2002 conference presentation was a printed publication. In particular, the petitioner engaged an expert in library science to support the argument that the printed publication was available based on such publication being received, cataloged, and indexed at a German library using the MARC library catalog system and the catalog record of a conference being available online. The patent owner argued that the petitioner put forth insufficient evidence of indexing at the German library to support the proposition that an ordinarily skilled artisan exercising reasonable diligence would have found the reference in question due, in large part, to only a volume and page number for the publication being available.