Weekly PTAB Review: Application 16/720,969 – Cerner Innovation (Oracle)

Austin Walters Avatar
Austin Walters

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2–3 minutes

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This week we look at a recent PTAB decision. I pulled one at random from the Board’s docket. The case is Appeal 2025-001075 on Application 16/720,969. The decision’s notification date is September 12, 2025; the real party in interest is Oracle International Corporation.

Detailed table showing the overview of a PTAB decision including proceeding number, document type, titles, filing date, and related patent information.

To start, we ran an Invalidity Chart (used here to analyze unpatentability of the pending claims). In IP Copilot: Search → Invalidity Chart, enter the application number, and select the claims.

IP Copilot estimates runtime, lets you pick which claims to analyze and how many references to display, then it runs. Setup takes seconds; this job estimated ~15-125 minutes, so I grabbed a coffee or lunch.

I received the completion email shortly after the evaluation completed, I believe it took ~30-35 minutes.

Notification of completed analysis for an invalidity chart in IP Copilot, indicating the analysis ID: 4212.

The results showed one very high-relevance reference, several high, and multiple medium hits. The top reference looks particularly strong.

A summary of prior art references related to debugging application processes at runtime, including analysis and priority information.

The claim chart aligns each claim with the cited passages and shows specification-support counts (per claim and sub-claim) plus an overall tally.

A table displaying various patent claims, including claim numbers and descriptions related to debugging an application process, analyzing memory leaks in Java, tracking objects in virtual machines, and computing memory health metrics.

Toggling citation view highlights the exact text in context; many mappings include multiple supporting citations. Note, the column and line number pulled directly from the patent for citations.

A comparative analysis table showing patent claims from three different patents, including claim descriptions and corresponding columns for further details.

Clicking a citation opens the reference with inline highlights, so you can confirm context and harvest details for a case or report.

Illustration of an application process and its components, including a debug process, application object, heap dump, and heap dump reader in a virtual machine environment.

Within ~30-35 minutes, the results suggested a solid §103 case against the pending claims of US application 16/720,969. Now, let’s compare to the actual PTAB decision.

PTAB Decision vs IP Copilot

First, let’s open up the decision. In this case, it’s affirming an examiner’s rejections. The PTAB affirmed all §103 rejections of claims 1–20. (Decision on Appeal; Decision Summary.) If you’d like to review the decision yourself, feel free to review and download it here.

Table summarizing claims rejected, legal basis, references, and outcomes in a patent decision.

The examiner particularly relied heavily on Brady to cover most of the claims.

Text from a legal decision discussing the Appellant's arguments against the Examiner's findings.

Nice, first let’s look for the Brady reference, which is the granted patent US 7,743,280 B2, here’s a link to Google Patents. One of the top results, (#2) is Brady, although IP Copilot identified US 7,757,217 B2 (Google Patents) as a better match, not sure if it wasn’t found in the initial search or selected not to be used for another reason.

A comparison table displaying patent claims, highlighting US 7,743,280 B2 by Brady and US 7,757,217 B2 by Sivaram, with descriptions of the respective inventions.

Conclusion

A random pull from the PTAB docket and in minutes, IP Copilot’s Invalidity Chart surfaced the same primary art the examiner and Appeal Board relied on mapped claim-by-claim with inline evidence.

We admittedly, did miss some of the secondary support, but with limitation-focused search it’s fast to close gaps and pressure-test any claim set.

The takeaway is teams can triage faster, focus expert time where it matters, and determine if there’s a solid invalidity case rapidly. If you want to see this on your own portfolio (or a competitor’s), try an IP Copilot Invalidity Chart on your next case.

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