The First Three Winners from Cloudflare’s Project Jengo 2 Share $20,000

Cloudflare names first Project Jengo 2 winners, pays out $20,000

Cloudflare has announced the first three winners of its revived Project Jengo prior art search contest, awarding a combined $20,000 in cash prizes. The company launched the contest in April in response to a lawsuit from patent-holding firm Sable Networks, which Cloudflare says is asserting patents far broader than what its technology actually describes.

Sable has sued Cloudflare and five other technology companies this year, after suing seven others under the same patents last year. Cloudflare's response is the same strategy it used in its earlier Project Jengo campaign: invite the public to find prior art that invalidates Sable's patent claims rather than settle.

The first round of the contest drew nearly 400 prior art references covering Sable's ten identified patents. More than 80 percent of those submissions targeted the four patents Sable asserted against Cloudflare. The contest remains open, with $80,000 in prize money still available.

The winning submissions

Cloudflare reviewed all eligible entries and scored them on the strength of the prior art, the difficulty of the search, the entrant's written explanation, and its clarity. The top submission earned $10,000; two others received $5,000 each.

IETF RFC 2702 and a $10,000 find

Matthew M., a fintech team lead with a degree in computer networking and cybersecurity, submitted 17 prior art references. Cloudflare highlights his finding of IETF RFC 2702 (Requirements for Traffic Engineering Over MPLS) as a particularly strong piece of evidence.

The RFC documents industry work by engineers from MCI Worldcom, Cisco, IBM, Juniper, and Ascend, all of which were already familiar with concepts Sable now claims as its own inventions, including "micro-flows," label-switched paths, and selecting a network path based on QoS information in a packet. Cloudflare argues this type of documentation shows Sable's patents are overreaching.

Matthew told Cloudflare he wasn't motivated by money alone: "I quickly learned just how vague you can make a patent and it's quite disgusting." He added, "I can't stand blockers to true American ingenuity and patent trolls stand to destroy hard-earned work using minuscule technicalities in our broken justice system."

RFC 1953 and a trip down memory lane

Pedro S., a Bay Area cybersecurity professional with 20 years in technical roles, submitted prior art tying IETF RFC 1953 (Ipsilon Flow Management Protocol Specification for IPv4) to actual products from Ipsilon Networks and Ascend Communications. During the 1990s, Pedro worked at Ascend and became familiar with those products.

The connection matters because those products appear to predate Sable's claims, including those in the '919 patent. Ipsilon and Ascend were both acquired, which may make tracking down additional product details harder, but Cloudflare says it will attempt to do so. Pedro said he participated because he "hate[s] patent trolls" and "enjoyed the trip down memory lane."

A self-taught prior art searcher earns $5,000

Stephen F., a web developer at a managed IT company, submitted U.S. Patent No. 7,107,356 (Translator for enabling logical partitioning of a network switch) as prior art against Sable's U.S. Patent No. 7,630,358 (Mechanism for implementing multiple logical routers within a single physical router). That Sable patent has not been asserted against Cloudflare, but Cloudflare welcomes the proactive search.

Stephen had never done a prior art search before. He decided to participate after a coworker shared the Project Jengo announcement, then spent a full day on research. "I've had to learn a lot more about routing and patent law today," he said. "I stand firmly against patent trolls like Sable, and decided to spend my day looking into prior art for the sake of Cloudflare's continued success."

Public prior art database now available

Cloudflare has published all submitted prior art references on its website, covering any of Sable's ten patents, not just the four asserted against the company. The company hopes the public collection will help any other organization that Sable targets in the future.

The contest continues while Sable's case is pending. Submissions are evaluated in multiple rounds, so earlier entries get more chances to win. Cloudflare plans to announce its next round of winners in November.

The IPR Push and District Court Progress

Five months into the lawsuit Sable Networks filed in Waco, Texas, Cloudflare has filed four petitions with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office seeking inter partes review (IPR) of the four asserted patents. IPR is intended as a faster, cheaper alternative to district court litigation for challenging patent validity — though "faster and cheaper" is relative. The process still takes roughly 18 months, and filing fees alone for the four petitions exceeded $200,000. These costs illustrate why patent trolls can thrive and why many companies opt for a quick settlement instead of fighting.

In parallel, the district court case moves forward. Sable has served its preliminary infringement contentions, laying out its theory of how Cloudflare's products allegedly infringe the four patents. Cloudflare will soon serve its preliminary invalidity contentions in response.

Of the six companies Sable sued earlier this year, three have already settled and exited the litigation. Cloudflare intends to keep fighting and encourages others in the industry to do the same. The next update is expected in three months.