Bright Data Ltd. v. Code200, Uab, Teso Lt, Uab, Metacluster Lt, Uab, Oxysales, Uab, the Data Company…

N OTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
BRIGHT DATA LTD.,
Appellant
v.
CODE200, UAB, TESO LT, UAB, METACLUSTER
LT, UAB, OXYSALES, UAB, THE DATA COMPANY
TECHNOLOGIES INC., MAJOR DATA UAB,
CORETECH LT, UAB,
Appellees
______________________
2023-2144, 2023-2145, 2023-2146, 2023-2147, 2023-2414,
2023-2415, 2023-2442, 2023-2443
______________________
Appeals from the United States Patent and Trademark
Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in Nos. IPR2021-
01492, IPR2021-01493, IPR2022-00103, IPR2022-00135,
IPR2022-00138, IPR2022-00353, IPR2022-00861,
IPR2022-00862, IPR2022-00915, IPR2022-00916.
______________________
Decided: August 1, 2025
______________________
ROBERT M. HARKINS , J R., Cherian LLP, Berkeley, CA,
argued for appellant. Also represented by K ORULA T.
CHERIAN; T HOMAS M. D UNHAM , RONALD WIELKOPOLSKI,
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BRIGHT DATA LTD. v. CODE200, UAB 2
Washington, DC.
D ANIEL L EVENTHAL , Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP,
Houston, TX, argued for all appellees. Appellees Code200,
UAB, Teso LT, UAB, Metacluster LT, UAB, Oxysales,
UAB, coretech lt, UAB also represented by STEPHANIE
D EBROW , MARK T. G ARRETT , Austin, TX; J ONATHAN S.
F RANKLIN, Washington, DC.
MICHAEL N. RADER, Wolf Greenfield & Sacks, PC, New
York, NY, for appellee The Data Company Technologies
Inc. Also represented by ADAM R. WICHMAN, Boston, MA.
J ASON R. BARTLETT , Maschoff Brennan, San Francisco,
CA, for appellee Major Data UAB. Also represented by
WENSHENG MA.
______________________
Before H UGHES , C UNNINGHAM , and STARK, Circuit Judges.
STARK, Circuit Judge.
Patent Owner Bright Data Ltd. (“Bright Data”) appeals
the decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”)
in ten inter partes reviews (“IPRs”), finding the challenged
claims of four of its patents unpatentable.1 Bright Data
argues that the Board erred in its constructions of two
claim terms, its reading of prior art references, and its find-
ings regarding secondary considerations of non-obvious-
ness. We disagree and affirm the Board.
1 IPR2022-00861 and IPR2022-00862 were joined to
IPR2021-01492 and IPR2021-01493, respectively, and then
terminated. J.A. 39297, J.A. 46356.
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BRIGHT DATA LTD. v. CODE200, UAB 3
I
The patents at issue – U.S. Patent Nos. 11,044,342;
10,257,319; 10,484,510; and 11,044,344 – are part of the
same family. They share a common specification.
Each of the four patents is directed to a “system de-
signed for increasing network communication speed for us-
ers,” by “releasing congestion from the Web by fetching
[user requested] information from multiple sources, and re-
lieving traffic from Web servers by offloading the data
transfers from them to nearby peers.” J.A. 1137 (’342 pat.
abstract).2 The claimed system includes “multiple commu-
nication devices,” each of which may, at various times,
“serve as a client, peer, or agent, depending upon require-
ments of the network.” J.A. 1160 (’342 pat. col. 4:44-50);
see also J.A. 1163 (’342 pat. col. 9:20-25 (“separate [soft-
ware] modules that run in parallel” are activated depend-
ing on “specific role that the communication device 200 is
partaking in . . . at a given time”). The patents purport to
reduce “infrastructure costs” faced by internet service pro-
viders by eliminating the need for proxy servers “at every
point around the world where the Internet is being con-
sumed.” J.A. 1159 (’342 pat. cols. 1:50-53, 2:26-29).
Figure 3, reproduced below, shows an embodiment in
which several communication devices loaded with software
switch functions, with each device serving at times as a cli-
ent, peer, or agent. J.A. 1160-61 (’342 pat. cols. 4:54-5:48).
When a communication device is designated as a client de-
vice, it requests information from the internet through a
web browser. J.A. 1161, 1163 (’342 pat. cols. 5:21-25, 9:27-
2 We cite to the ’342 patent, J.A. 1137-69, and the
Board’s final written decision in IPR2022-00103, which
considered the ’342 patent, J.A. 1-75. The other patents
and final written decisions are not materially different
with respect to the issues presented in this appeal.
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BRIGHT DATA LTD. v. CODE200, UAB 4
36. An agent recognizes that the identical information has
been accessed recently from other communication devices,
which each have portions of the requested data. J.A. 1163
(’342 pat. col. 9:44-50) (describing job of “agent[] [as] ob-
tain[ing] a list of peers within the communication network
100 that contain requested information”). Those commu-
nication devices then are designated to work as peers and
supply their respective portions of information to the
agent. J.A. 1161 (’342 pat. col. 5:37-43).
J.A. 1146.
Claim 1 of the ’342 patent is representative and recites:
A method for use with a web server that responds
to Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests
and stores a first content that is identified by a first
Uniform Resource Locator (URL), the method by a
first client device comprising:
[a] executing, by the client device, a web
browser application or an email application;
[b] establishing a Transmission Control Proto-
col (TCP) connection with a second server;
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BRIGHT DATA LTD. v. CODE200, UAB 5
[c] receiving, the first content from the web
server over an Internet; and
[d] sending the received first content, to the
second server over the established TCP connection,
in response to the receiving of the first URL.
J.A. 1168 (emphasis added to show disputed limitations).
Several entities, including Code200 (“Petitioner”), peti-
tioned for, and the Board instituted, IPRs. E.g., J.A. 1-150.
As part of its proceedings, the Board construed two dis-
puted claim terms: “client device” and “second server.” The
parties’ fundamental dispute with respect to both terms
was whether they should be construed based on their func-
tion, as Petitioner contended was their plain and ordinary
meaning, or if they should instead be more narrowly con-
strued to require each have a different structure, as Bright
Data preferred. J.A. 10-40. The Board rejected Bright
Data’s proposal and construed “client device” to mean “a
‘communication device that is operating in the role of a cli-
ent’” and “second server” to mean “a ‘server that is not the
client device.’” J.A. 38-39.3
3 In doing so, the Board reached the same construction
that a district court had reached when handling three suits
involving Bright Data’s patents. See Bright Data v. Ox-
ylabs f/k/a Teso LT, UAB et al., No. 2:19-cv-00395, ECF
No. 191 (E.D. Tex. Dec. 7, 2020) (court disagreeing with
Bright Data’s hardware-based distinctions, instead finding
specification teaches use of structurally identical “commu-
nication devices” that can serve in different roles at differ-
ent times); Bright Data v. Code200, UAB, et al., No. 2:19-
cv-00396, ECF No. 97 (E.D. Tex. Feb. 8, 2021) (adhering to
same constructions adopted in Oxylabs); Bright Data v.
NetNut Ltd., No. 2:21-cv-225, ECF No. 146 (E.D. Tex. May
10, 2022) (same); see also J.A. 2944-48, 2971-73, 3009-11,
6588-99.
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Here, after resolving the parties’ claim construction
disputes, the Board analyzed Petitioner’s prior art. Perti-
nent to this appeal is an article by Michael K. Reiter enti-
tled “Crowds: Anonymity for Web Transactions,” ACM
T RANSACTIONS ON I NFORMATION AND SYSTEM SECURITY ,
Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1998, at 66–92 (“Crowds”). J.A.
2391-417. Crowds proposes a system for web transactions
allowing a user to join a crowd of users, “that collectively
issues requests on behalf of its members,” to protect users’
anonymity. J.A. 2391. The Board found that Crowds both
anticipated and rendered obvious the claims at issue on ap-
peal.4 In reaching its conclusion as to obviousness, the
Board considered Bright Data’s evidence of secondary con-
siderations of non-obviousness. It found that Bright Data’s
evidence lacked probative value because Bright Data failed
to demonstrate the requisite nexus between its evidence
and its claims.
Bright Data timely appealed. We have jurisdiction un-
der 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A).
II
“The Board’s claim constructions . . . are determina-
tions of law reviewed de novo where based on intrinsic evi-
dence, with any Board findings about facts extrinsic to the
patent record reviewed for substantial-evidence support.”
St. Jude Med., LLC v. Snyders Heart Valve LLC, 977 F.3d
1232, 1238 (Fed. Cir. 2020). “Anticipation is a question of
fact subject to substantial evidence review.” IOENGINE,
LLC v. Ingenico Inc., 100 F.4th 1395, 1402 (Fed. Cir. 2024)
(internal quotation marks omitted). “Substantial evidence
4 On appeal, Bright Data limits its arguments to the
independent claims of the challenged patents, all of which
the Board determined were unpatentable based on Crowds.
See Open. Br. at 3, 53-66; J.A. 73; J.A. 234; J.A. 407–08;
J.A. 567; J.A. 710–11; J.A. 798–99; J.A. 1042; J.A. 1134.
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BRIGHT DATA LTD. v. CODE200, UAB 7
is such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might ac-
cept as adequate to support a conclusion.” Id. (internal
quotation marks omitted). “[T]he possibility of drawing
two inconsistent conclusions from the evidence does not
prevent an administrative agency’s finding from being sup-
ported by substantial evidence.” Consolo v. Fed. Mar.
Comm’n, 383 U.S. 607, 620 (1966). We “defer to the Board’s
findings concerning the credibility of expert witnesses.” In-
cept LLC v. Palette Life Scis., 77 F.4th 1366, 1377 (Fed. Cir.
2023).
“The ultimate question of obviousness is a legal ques-
tion that we review de novo with underlying factual find-
ings that we review for substantial evidence.” Roku, Inc.
v. Universal Elecs., Inc., 63 F.4th 1319, 1324 (Fed. Cir.
2023). “What the prior art discloses and whether a person
of ordinary skill would have been motivated to combine
prior art references are both fact questions that we review
for substantial evidence.” Intel Corp. v. PACT XPP
Schweiz AG, 61 F.4th 1373, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2023). Findings
relating to secondary considerations (i.e., objective indicia)
of non-obviousness are reviewed for substantial evidence.
See Finisar Corp. v. DirecTV Grp., Inc., 523 F.3d 1323,
1338-39 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (citing Graham v. John Deere Co.,
383 U.S. 1, 17-18 (1966)).
III
Bright Data challenges the Board’s claim construc-
tions, its understanding of Crowds, and its findings regard-
ing secondary considerations of non-obviousness. We
address each issue in turn.
A
We agree with the Board’s constructions of “client de-
vice” and “second server.” As the Board explained, a person
of ordinary skill in the art would understand that these
terms, as used in Bright Data’s patents, refer to the role a
device is playing, and not to its particular structure (i.e.,
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BRIGHT DATA LTD. v. CODE200, UAB 8
hardware). Thus, the Board properly construed “client de-
vice” as a “communication device that is operating in the
role of a client.” J.A. 38. It properly construed “second
server” as a “device that is operating in the role of a server”
and is “not the client device.” J.A. 38-39.
The Board rejected Bright Data’s contention that the
disputed terms should be construed as hardware-based, in-
stead of role-based. The specification explains that a com-
munication device has software that allows it to toggle
between roles as a client, peer, or agent. See, e.g., J.A. 1160
(’342 pat. col. 4:41-50) (“software stored within each com-
munication device” allows each device to serve in different
roles “depending upon the requirements of the network”).
The specification also expressly notes: “The acceleration
application 220 also contains three separate modules that
run in parallel, namely, a client module 224, a peer module
226, and an agent module 228, each of which comes into
play according to the specific role that the communication
device 200 is partaking in the communication network 100
at a given time.” J.A. 1163 (’342 pat. col. 9:20-25) (emphasis
added). These statements provide strong support for a
role-based construction as opposed to a hardware-based
construction.
The Board was not persuaded by Bright Data’s argu-
ment that role-based constructions would be unworkable
because they would somehow imply that the “first client
device” must operate as both a client and server. See J.A.
31-32. As the Board correctly explained, Bright Data’s ar-
gument mistakenly presumes that the Board’s construc-
tions require that a device “act exclusively in only one role
. . . at all times,” which they do not. J.A. 31. We agree with
the Board on these points.
Bright Data’s far narrower proposed constructions –
which would limit “client device” to a “consumer computer”
and “second server” to a commercial server – are not cor-
rect. The only reference to “client device” that refers to a
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BRIGHT DATA LTD. v. CODE200, UAB 9
“consumer computer” appears in a background example,
which even Bright Data agrees discusses a prior art system
and not the claimed system. See J.A. 1159 (’342 pat. col.
2:43-46). All subsequent references to “client device”
throughout the specification use the term based on its role.
Bright Data argues that its construction is nonetheless
correct because the patentee acted as its own lexicogra-
pher. We disagree.
As the Board concluded, the record here does not meet
the high standard for lexicography. Lexicography involves
“clearly set[ting] forth a definition of the disputed claim
term” and “clearly express[ing] an intent to redefine the
term.” Thorner v. Sony Comput. Ent. Am., LLC, 669 F.3d
1362, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (internal quotation marks
omitted). The only support Bright Data cites for its pur-
ported lexicography defines not the “client devices” of its
claims but, instead, the “client devices” of the prior art.
In the background portion of the specification, the pa-
tent states: “Fig. 2 is a schematic diagram providing an ex-
ample of a peer-to-peer file transfer network 50. In the
network 50, files are stored on computers of consumers, re-
ferred to herein as client devices 60.” J.A. 1159 (’342 pat.
col. 2:43-46). While it is true that terms like “referred to
herein as” can be used to signal lexicography, see, e.g.,
Kyocera Senco Indus. Tools Inc. v. Int’l Trade Comm’n, 22
F.4th 1369, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2022); Abbott Lab’ys v. Andrx
Pharms., Inc., 473 F.3d 1196, 1210 (Fed. Cir. 2007), they
do not always do so. It is necessary to examine precisely
how the term is used and its place in the full context of the
specification and in relation to the claims. Here, the lan-
guage on which Bright Data relies provides a definition of,
if anything, “client devices 60,” not “client devices” gener-
ally and throughout the patent, including in the claims.
The claims are not drawn to “client devices 60” but, in-
stead, to “client devices,” and this claim term is not defined
in the patent. The passing reference in the background
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BRIGHT DATA LTD. v. CODE200, UAB 10
section of the patent to “client devices 60” would not be read
by a skilled artisan as carrying through to the claims but,
rather, as limited to describing the prior art. See J.A. 33
(Board noting Bright Data’s purported lexicographic decla-
ration was used only in reference to describing prior art
peer-to-peer file sharing system, not in reference to claimed
invention). There is simply no “clear” definition or expres-
sion of intent to use “client devices” in the claims in the
manner Bright Data argues.
Bright Data also directs us to the prosecution history,
but it is no more helpful to it. Bright Data relies principally
on statements made by the applicant to an examiner in
prosecution of a great-grandfather patent to the ’342.
There, the applicant described the prior art as follows:
Client devices, such as client 105 in the [prior art]
Garcia reference, are end-units that request infor-
mation from servers, use client-related software
such as Web browser software, communicate over
the Internet using ISP connection, and are typi-
cally consumer owned and operated . . . . In con-
trast, server devices are known in the art to be
dedicated devices to store information objects, to be
provided to clients upon request.
J.A. 3410.
In this statement, the applicant was distinguishing its
invention from a prior art reference known as Garcia. In
context, a person of ordinary skill in the art would under-
stand the applicant to have been distinguishing its client
devices and servers from Garcia’s, not defining devices and
servers more generally. Specifically, the applicant ex-
plained that while a client device in Garcia was “typically
consumer owned and operated,” this was not the case with
the claimed invention’s client devices. See id. (Applicant
arguing “[t]he Garcia reference is silent, and [e]ffectively
teaches away, from using clients as content source for other
clients”).
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Thus, again, we agree with the Board’s constructions
and reject Bright Data’s arguments to the contrary.
B
Applying its constructions of the disputed terms, the
Board held that Crowds either anticipates the appealed
claims or, in combination with other references or alone,
renders them obvious. Substantial evidence supports the
Board’s findings and, therefore, we agree that Petitioner
proved the challenged claims are obvious.
Crowds teaches a system for web transactions allowing
a user to join a crowd of users, to anonymize a search re-
quest. In Crowds, a request from a user is passed on to at
least one random member of the crowd before being sub-
mitted to an end server. In this way, the request is anony-
mized. The anonymous users (shown as circled numbers in
Figure 2 from Crowds, reproduced below) are known as
“jondo’s” (short for “John Doe’s”). J.A. 2398-99.
The Board found that the first jondo will send a request
to a second jondo to anonymize it; in the example above,
jondo 5 sends a request to jondo 4. J.A. 44 (relying on an-
notated figure from Petitioner). Then the second jondo,
jondo 4, will act as a second server passing along the
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BRIGHT DATA LTD. v. CODE200, UAB 12
request to a client device, jondo 6, which passes it to a web
server (shown as boxes in Figure 2). See J.A. 42. Jondo 6,
the Board found, “is operating in the role of a client execut-
ing a web browser application because jondo 6 serves as a
client of web server 5 when web requests originating at
jondo 5 are sent by jondo 6 to web server 5 in the mapped
path.” J.A. 46. Thus, because jondo 6 acts as a client,
Crowds teaches the claimed client device of the appealed
claims. In reaching this conclusion, the Board relied on
Crowds’ disclosure as well as the declaration of Petitioner’s
expert, as it is free to do. J.A. 45 (citing Exhibits 1003 and
1004).
The Board also relied on Crowds’ disclosure and Peti-
tioner’s expert to find that Crowds teaches a jondo acting
as a second server. As the Board found, a person having
ordinary skill in the art would understand that, in Crowds,
the client device (jondo 6) establishes a TCP connection
with the second server (jondo 4). See J.A. 46, 50. Because
jondo 4 sends the “received jondo 5’s web request on to
jondo 6 and send[s] web server 5’s response back to jondo
5,” it “operates in the role of a server.” J.A. 48.
In addressing Bright Data’s arguments about the prior
art, the Board recognized that “most of the[m] . . . are based
on claim constructions that we have not adopted.” J.A. 49.
Bright Data does the same on appeal and it fares no better.
See, e.g., Open. Br. at 54 (arguing Crowds disclosure “indi-
cates that servers are different from user computers”); id.
at 58 (arguing another piece of prior art fails to teach ap-
pealed claims because its servers are “not different types of
network components”). The Board’s analysis in its final
written decisions was consistent with the correctly con-
strued claim language and was supported by substantial
evidence.
C
Substantial evidence also supports the Board’s finding
that Bright Data failed to introduce evidence of secondary
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BRIGHT DATA LTD. v. CODE200, UAB 13
considerations of non-obviousness sufficient to overcome
Petitioner’s showing of obviousness. The Board concluded
that Bright Data’s evidence did not satisfy the nexus re-
quirement. Its evidence of commercial success, for in-
stance, reflects the marketplace success of “residential
proxy service[s], residential consumer computers, and res-
idential IP addresses,” which are not limitations of any of
the claims. J.A. 62. Because the features of the products
it relies on to show commercial success are not claimed,
Bright Data “failed to establish a nexus between the chal-
lenged claims and the products” relied on. J.A. 61-63. The
product neither embodies nor is coextensive with the chal-
lenged claims. J.A. 62. The Board similarly rejected Bright
Data’s assertions of long-felt need, copying, and industry
praise, again for lack of nexus. J.A. 64-67.
The Board’s findings are supported by the evidence it
cited. See J.A. 58-68. The Board committed no error.
IV
We have considered Bright Data’s remaining argu-
ments and find them unpersuasive. Accordingly, for the
foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the Board.
AFFIRMED
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