## Facts

- SRI International owned four patents on network intrusion detection and monitoring methods (U.S. Patent Nos. 6,484,203; 6,708,212; 6,321,338; 6,711,615), sharing a common application filed November 9, 1998.
- SRI sued Internet Security Systems and Symantec for infringement based on accused intrusion-detection products.
- Defendants sought summary judgment that the patents were invalid as anticipated under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) by SRI-authored research papers.
- Two SRI papers were central:
  - “Live Traffic Analysis of TCP/IP Gateways” (“Live Traffic”), stored in an “Emerald” subdirectory on SRI’s open FTP server; the subdirectory was unindexed and filenames were not descriptive.
  - “EMERALD: Event Monitoring Enabling Responses to Anomalous Live Disturbances” (“EMERALD 1997”), which had been disseminated as a published reference.
- Before the critical date (one year before filing), SRI personnel emailed the FTP path and filenames for EMERALD-related papers to colleagues multiple times; on one occasion an inventor provided the address to the subdirectory as a place to find cybersecurity research.
- Live Traffic was uploaded to the FTP subdirectory for about seven days as a backup for a symposium submission, and the symposium chair was given the FTP address.
- The district court granted summary judgment that Live Traffic anticipated all four patents and that EMERALD 1997 also anticipated the ’212 patent.
- SRI appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether Live Traffic was a “printed publication” under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) because it was sufficiently publicly accessible on an unindexed FTP server before the critical date.
2. Whether EMERALD 1997 qualified as prior art and anticipated the ’212 patent on summary judgment.
3. Whether disputes about Live Traffic’s public accessibility created genuine issues of material fact barring summary judgment of invalidity.

## Decision

- The court affirmed summary judgment that EMERALD 1997 anticipated the ’212 patent.
- The court vacated summary judgment that Live Traffic anticipated the patents and remanded because genuine issues of material fact existed as to whether Live Traffic was publicly accessible before the critical date.
- The court held the record did not compel the conclusion that a person of ordinary skill could locate Live Traffic through reasonable diligence given the lack of indexing and the manner of access (primarily by direct instructions).
- A partial dissent would have affirmed invalidity based on Live Traffic, viewing the record as establishing public accessibility.

## Legal Principles

- A reference qualifies as a “printed publication” under § 102(b) if it was disseminated or otherwise made available such that interested persons of ordinary skill, exercising reasonable diligence, could locate it.
- Public accessibility is a question of fact; summary judgment is improper where evidence permits competing reasonable findings on accessibility.
- Electronic availability can constitute a printed publication, but mere placement on an open server is not enough absent evidence that the material was meaningfully indexed, cataloged, or otherwise discoverable through reasonable diligence.
- Summary judgment of anticipation requires no genuine dispute of material fact and entitlement to judgment as a matter of law.

## Conclusion

The Federal Circuit required a fact-specific inquiry into whether an unindexed FTP posting was publicly accessible for § 102(b) purposes, vacating the Live Traffic-based invalidity rulings, but it sustained summary judgment that a separately disseminated publication anticipated the ’212 patent.


SRI Int'l, Inc. v. Internet Sec. Sys., Inc., 511 F.3d 1186 (Fed. Cir. 2008)