Board decisions involving the Wayback Machine to show status as prior art (Part I)

Long ago I wrote a series of post discussing the use of web pages as prior art. In one of those posts (here), I mentioned the use of www.archive.org  (a.k.a. the "Wayback Machine"), which is an archive site of web pages as they existed in the past. An Examiner can't allege that a web page was available as of your application's past filing date if all he has is the page retrieved as of the examination date, However, he can use the Wayback Machine to navigate to that same web page, retrieve a copy as it existed as of a particular past date, and use the page retrieved via the Wayback Machine as the reference.

Since my original post back in 2009, I've come across a few more cases where the Applicant tried to disqualify a reference on the basis of its retrieval via the Wayback Machine. Generally, it's a losing battle: as long as the Examiner identifies the page and retrieval date in the proper manner, the Board views such references as "printed publications" under § 102(b) or § 102(a).  In today's post, I'll discuss a few of these Board decisions, and highlight some unpersuasive arguments made by Applicants.

To qualify as a "printed publication," case law requires that the reference be disseminated to persons in the art. For example, MPEP § 2128 states that "[a] reference is proven to be a 'printed publication' 'upon a satisfactory showing that such document has been disseminated or otherwise made available to the extent that persons interested and ordinarily skilled in the subject matter or art, exercising reasonable diligence, can locate it. In re Wyer, 655 F.2d 221, 210 USPQ 790 (CCPA 1981)."

In Ex parte Rowse, the Applicant attacked the Examiner's use of the Wayback Machine on this basis. The Applicant argued that "the Examiner has provided no evidence that the Xactware reference qualifies as a printed publication other than asserting that 'the Internet Archive is a tool used to access internet pages that were published and publicly accessible in the well-documented past.' " Next, the Applicant referred to the "dissemination" requirement in MPEP § 2128, and then continued as follows:

Regarding "public dissemination," pages on the World Wide Web are not "disseminated" - they are "browsed" using a "Web browser" - the antithesis of dissemination. Many web pages are never even browsed. Regardless, the Examiner has submitted no evidence to show that the Xactware reference was ever "disseminated" to members of the public, or "browsed" by members of the public, prior to the applicants' date of invention. Regarding "public availability," the Examiner has made no showing that the Xactware reference was catalogued, indexed or searchable in any publically-available database prior to the applicants' date of invention.
(Emphasis added.)

The Board in Rowse found that the Examiner had made a prima facie case of the reference's status as prior art. The Board did not specifically address the dissemination argument, addressing instead the general argument that the Examiner had not provided evidence of publication. The Board first noted that in an ex parte proceeding, the rules of evidence are relaxed when demonstrating prima facie unpatentability. The Board then explained that

Appellants have not provided any evidence to show that the website from which Xactware was retrieved is not reliable as to presumed dates of publication. Nor have Appellants provided any other evidence tending to show that the content described by Xactware was not publicly available on the presumed dates.
(Emphasis added.)

The Board has also been unpersuaded by Applicant arguments that the Wayback Machine is not appropriate to show prior art status because it's not reliable. In Ex parte Hicks, the Applicant argued that “per the explicit terms of use for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine [mentioned on the archive site itself], the January 21, 2005 archive is not guaranteed to be accurate, current, complete, reliable, secure or error-free.” (Emphasis added.) The Applicant further asserted that "the Internet Archive does not guarantee that the data listed for January 21, 2005 is what was actually archived or if anything at all was even archived for that date." The Applicant concluded that the Wayback Machine is therefore "not a valid or reliable resource for establishing prior art."

The Examiner's Answer noted that Applicant had not provided any evidence to demonstrate that the archive date was invalid or that the web page was not accessible to persons of skill in the art. The Applicant filed a Reply Brief stating that:

Notwithstanding the well-recognized difficulty of proving a negative, Appellants' representative has performed an Internet search and has been unable to locate any other evidence indicating that the FFHD reference was  published  prior  to Appellants'  filing date. The only evidence of record in support of a prior publication date is from a single third party source that per it's own terms of use may not be accurate.

The Board in Hicks appeared to address the Applicant's unreliability argument by shifting the burden to the Applicant:

Electronic documents are archived on the Wayback Machine and are dated as of the archived date of the website. Appellants do not indicate that the archive date provided for FFHD by the Wayback Machine was generated other than in the normal course of operation of this site. There is no indication that this date was arbitrarily assigned or that the origin of document itself is suspect.

The Applicant in Hicks also tried another argument, characterizing the "URL date indicated by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine" as "nothing more than a third party assertion."

A publication date cannot be established based on an uncorroborated third party assertion unsupported by any affidavit or declaration. If all that was required to establish a publication date was a third party assertion unsupported by any affidavit or declaration, then any reference could be turned into prior art merely by finding a third party willing to place a prior publication date on the document. Such uncorroborated third party assertions unsupported by any affidavit or declaration are not sufficient evidence.  If an Applicant  wishes  to  submit an assertion by a third  party as evidence, e.g., in support of a Rule 131 or 132 submission, then the third party assertion is required to be supported by an affidavit or declaration. The Examiner should be held to no less of a standard. Here, the Examiner has not obtained any affidavit or declaration from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine supporting the publication date of  the FFHD reference. Nor has any other corroborating evidence been supplied by the Examiner despite repeated challenges  by the Applicant.

The Board in Hicks was not persuaded by this argument either. After noting that a PTO proceeding is not bound by the stricter rules of evidence of a judicial proceeding, the Board concluded that "without more, we decline to agree with Appellants that reliance by the Examiner on FFHD was improper."

As noted above, the Board generally allows the use of the Wayback Machine to show prior art status,
as long as the Examiner identifies the page and retrieval date in the proper manner. In a future post, I'll discuss a few cases where proper identification was at issue.