The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has denied Juniper
Networks' second petition for inter partes review (IPR)
challenging claims of Orckit Corporation's US Patent
10,652,111, which covers deep packet inspection methods in
software-defined networks. The decision, issued on December 11,
2024, was based on the Board's discretionary powers under 35
U.S.C. § 314(a).
The Board's denial relied heavily on the
precedential General Plastic factors, which are
non-exhaustive and guide decisions about multiple petitions against
the same patent. In a detailed analysis of those factors, the Board
found that Juniper's second petition targeted essentially the
same claims as its first petition, despite Juniper's
arguments to the contrary. The Board conducted a careful comparison
of the challenged claims 32-54 with previously challenged claims
1-31, determining that they were either identical or had no
material differences in scope.
