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NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.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

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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

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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

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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