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Nature of Suit Code: 830
Nature of Suit: Patent
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

PERSONAL AUDIO, LLC,

Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

CBS CORPORATION,

Defendant-Appellee

______________________ 

2018-2256

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Eastern District of Texas in No. 2:13-cv-00270-JRG, Judge 

J. Rodney Gilstrap.

______________________ 

Decided: January 10, 2020 

______________________ 

JEREMY SETH PITCOCK, The Pitcock Law Group, New 

York, NY, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented 

by JENNIFER ISHIMOTO, Banie & Ishimoto LLP, Menlo 

Park, CA; PAPOOL SUBHASH CHAUDHARI, Chaudhari Law, 

PLLC, Wylie, TX. 

 STEVEN M. LIEBERMAN, Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & 

Manbeck, PC, Washington, DC, argued for defendant-appellee. Also represented by SHARON DAVIS, JENNIFER 

MAISEL, DANIEL MCCALLUM, BRIAN S. ROSENBLOOM. 

 ______________________ 

Case: 18-2256 Document: 64 Page: 1 Filed: 01/10/2020
2 PERSONAL AUDIO, LLC v. CBS CORPORATION

Before MOORE, REYNA, and TARANTO, Circuit Judges.

TARANTO, Circuit Judge. 

Personal Audio, LLC brought this case against CBS 

Corporation, alleging that CBS infringed a Personal Audio 

patent. A jury found for Personal Audio on infringement 

and invalidity as to three claims of the patent. When the 

Patent Trial and Appeal Board (Board) of the United States 

Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) issued a final written 

decision determining that those claims are unpatentable, 

the district court, with the parties’ consent, stayed entry of 

its judgment in this case until completion of direct review 

of the Board’s decision in our court. We eventually affirmed the Board’s final written decision. The district court 

then asked Personal Audio and CBS how they wished to 

proceed, and they agreed that, under governing precedent,

CBS was entitled to entry of final judgment in its favor. 

The district court entered such a judgment.

Personal Audio appeals. To the extent that Personal 

Audio challenges the Board’s final written decision, the district court lacked jurisdiction to consider the challenges, 

and we have no jurisdiction to review them on appeal from 

the district court’s judgment. The exclusive avenue for review was a direct appeal from the final written decision. 

To the extent that Personal Audio challenges the district 

court’s determination of the consequences of the affirmed

final written decision for the proper disposition of this case, 

Personal Audio conceded that governing precedent required judgment for CBS. We therefore affirm the district 

court’s judgment. 

I 

 Personal Audio owns U.S. Patent No. 8,112,504, which 

describes a system for organizing audio files, by subject 

matter, into “program segments.” ’504 patent, Abstract. 

The system arranges the segments through a “session 

schedule” and allows a user to navigate through the 

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PERSONAL AUDIO, LLC v. CBS CORPORATION 3

schedule in various ways, such as skipping the remainder 

of a segment, restarting a segment from its beginning, listening to predetermined “highlight passages” within a segment, or jumping to a “cross-referenced position” within 

another segment. Id., col. 2, lines 21–56. 

In 2013, Personal Audio sued CBS, alleging infringement of the ’504 patent. Later that year, a third party (the 

Electronic Frontier Foundation) petitioned for an inter 

partes review (IPR) of claims 31–35 of the ’504 patent under 35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319. The Board instituted a review 

in April 2014, but the district court case proceeded to trial, 

with the issues limited to infringement and invalidity of 

claims 31–34. On September 14, 2014, a jury found that 

CBS had infringed claims 31–34 and that CBS had failed 

to establish by clear and convincing evidence that those 

claims were invalid. The jury awarded Personal Audio 

$1,300,000 as damages for CBS’s infringement.

On April 10, 2015, the Board issued a final written decision in the IPR under 35 U.S.C.§ 318(a), concluding that

claims 31–35 are unpatentable. Electronic Frontier Foundation v. Personal Audio, LLC, No. IPR2014-00070, 2015 

WL 13685137 (P.T.A.B.). Personal Audio and CBS agreed 

to stay proceedings in the district court case pending this 

court’s review of the Board’s decision pursuant to 35 U.S.C. 

§§ 141(c) and 319 and 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A). Before 

pressing the appeal of the Board’s decision in this court,

Personal Audio sought rehearing with the Board, making 

two arguments that are relevant to this appeal: (1) that the

Board, through its final written decision, violated the Seventh Amendment by reexamining jury findings and (2) that 

the final written decision was unlawful because the inter 

partes review scheme violates the Due Process Clause of 

the Fifth Amendment. J.A. 583–85. After the Board denied rehearing, Personal Audio appealed to this court. In 

its opening brief in this court, Personal Audio continued to 

assert that the Board’s final written decision violated the 

Seventh Amendment. J.A. 2118. 

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4 PERSONAL AUDIO, LLC v. CBS CORPORATION

On August 7, 2017, this court affirmed the Board’s final 

written decision. Personal Audio, LLC v. Electronic Frontier Foundation, 867 F.3d 1246, 1253 (Fed. Cir. 2017). The 

Supreme Court denied Personal Audio’s petition for a writ 

of certiorari on May 14, 2018. Personal Audio, LLC v. Electronic Frontier Foundation, 138 S. Ct. 1989 (2018). 

In December 2017, based on our decision affirming the 

Board, the district court asked Personal Audio and CBS to 

submit a joint status report. They did so on May 29, 2018, 

after the Supreme Court denied certiorari from our decision. In the joint status report, Personal Audio stated that 

it “continue[d] to believe that overturning the verdict of the 

jury with a later IPR proceeding violates the Seventh 

Amendment of the Constitution” and that “the outcome of 

the IPR should not be given collateral estoppel effect, since 

it was filed by a third party under a different standard.” 

J.A. 423. But Personal Audio agreed to judgment against 

it because “current authority supports rendering a judgment in favor of the Defendant CBS.” Id. 

The district court entered judgment for CBS on July 11, 

2018. One week later, on July 18, 2018, the PTO performed 

the ministerial act, under 35 U.S.C. § 318(b), of issuing a 

certificate that cancelled claims 31–35. Personal Audio 

timely appealed to this court.

II

Personal Audio does not challenge the IPR scheme or 

even a particular provision of that scheme, or regulation 

under the scheme, on its face. It alleges injury only from 

the particular final written decision of the Board that ruled 

claims 31−35 of its ’504 patent unpatentable. Personal Audio presents challenges of two types involving the Board 

decision, while invoking four constitutional bases and one 

non-constitutional basis. First, Personal Audio presents 

various challenges to the lawfulness of the Board’s final 

written decision itself. Second, Personal Audio challenges 

the district court’s ruling on the consequence of the 

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PERSONAL AUDIO, LLC v. CBS CORPORATION 5

affirmed Board decision for this case—namely, that termination of Personal Audio’s assertion of the patent claims in 

this still-live patent case is a required result of the affirmed 

Board decision, even though the jury rendered a verdict in 

Personal Audio’s favor.

We do not have jurisdiction to hear challenges of the 

first type, which squarely attack the validity of the Board’s 

final written decision. The exclusive vehicle for bringing 

such challenges is a direct appeal to this court from the final written decision. As to challenges of the second type, 

Personal Audio forfeited any argument that existing precedent allows this panel to do anything but reject them. We 

therefore affirm the district court’s judgment for CBS. 

A 

Personal Audio contends that the Board, by issuing its 

final written decision, violated the Reexamination Clause 

of the Seventh Amendment, the Ex Post Facto Clause of 

Article I, the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and 

the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.1 Of those 

grounds, Personal Audio mentioned in the district court 

only the Seventh Amendment ground. J.A. 423–24. We 

consider the other grounds to be forfeited. Fresenius USA, 

Inc. v. Baxter Int'l, Inc., 582 F.3d 1288, 1296 (Fed. Cir. 

2009) (“If a party fails to raise an argument before the trial 

court, or presents only a skeletal or undeveloped argument 

 

1 After briefing was complete, Personal Audio submitted a supplemental letter asserting an Appointments 

Clause challenge to the Board’s decision. We have held 

that any such challenge, even when made in a direct appeal 

from the Board, is forfeited when not made in, or prior to 

the filing of, the opening brief in this court. Customedia 

Techs., LLC v. Dish Network Corp., 941 F.3d 1173, 1174 

(Fed. Cir. 2019). The challenge is also, in any event, subject to the exclusive-jurisdiction bar discussed infra. 

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6 PERSONAL AUDIO, LLC v. CBS CORPORATION

to the trial court, we may deem that argument waived on 

appeal.”). But even if those grounds were not forfeited, 

they would fail for the same reason that the Seventh 

Amendment challenge to the Board decision fails: the district court did not have jurisdiction to consider challenges 

to the legality of the Board decision. We so conclude in fulfilling our “independent obligation to determine whether 

subject-matter jurisdiction exists.” Hertz Corp. v. Friend, 

559 U.S. 77, 94 (2010). 

The Constitution gives Congress a broad power to define the jurisdiction of particular lower federal courts. Article III vests the “judicial power of the United States . . . 

in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the 

Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” 

Art. III § 1. In turn, Article I grants Congress the power to 

“constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme court.” Art. I 

§ 8, cl. 9. The Supreme Court long ago held that the power 

to create the lower federal courts includes a lesser power—

to define the jurisdiction of lower federal courts it creates. 

Sheldon v. Sill, 49 U.S. 441, 448 (1850) (explaining that 

“Congress, having the power to establish the courts, must 

define their respective jurisdiction”); id. at 449 (“[H]aving 

a right to prescribe, Congress may withhold from any court 

of its creation jurisdiction of any of the enumerated controversies.”); see Keene v. United States, 508 U.S. 200, 207 

(1993). 

Congress has exercised this power to channel judicial 

review of certain agency actions to specified lower federal

courts. The Administrative Procedure Act confirms this 

fact when it commands that “[t]he form of proceeding for 

judicial review is the special statutory review proceeding 

relevant to the subject matter in a court specified by statute

or, in the absence or inadequacy thereof, any applicable 

form of legal action . . . in a court of competent jurisdiction.” 

5 U.S.C. § 703 (emphasis added). Congress has made different choices in different contexts about the channeling of 

judicial review of agency action. Compare, e.g., 42 U.S.C. 

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PERSONAL AUDIO, LLC v. CBS CORPORATION 7

§ 7607(b)(1) (providing for review of certain Environmental 

Protection Agency decisions “only in the United States 

Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia”) with, e.g., 

15 U.S.C. § 45(c) (providing for review of certain Federal 

Trade Commission orders “within any circuit where the 

method of competition or the act or practice in question was 

used or where such person, partnership, or corporation resides or carries on business”). 

While there is a “strong presumption that Congress intends judicial review of administrative action,” Bowen v. 

Michigan Acad. of Family Physicians, 476 U.S. 667, 670 

(1986), that review may be exclusively routed to a specified 

court of appeals. Where Congress has provided for decision 

by an administrative body followed by appellate review in 

a court of appeals, we must ask whether it is “‘fairly discernible in the statutory scheme’” that Congress has “precluded district court jurisdiction.” Thunder Basin Coal Co. 

v. Reich, 510 U.S. 200, 207 (1994) (quoting Block v. Community Nutrition Institute, 467 U.S. 340, 351 (1984)). To 

make that determination, we assess “the statute’s language, structure, and purpose, its legislative history, . . . 

and whether the claims can be afforded meaningful review.” Id. 

In Elgin v. Department of Treasury, the Supreme Court 

considered whether the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) 

precludes district court review of an agency’s final adverse 

action. 567 U.S. 1, 6 (2012). When an agency takes a final 

adverse action against an employee, the employee is “entitled to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.” 5 

U.S.C. § 7513(d). In turn, the CSRA gives our court “exclusive jurisdiction” of, among other things, “an appeal from a 

final order or final decision of the Merit Systems Protection

Board, pursuant to sections 7703(b)(1) and 7703(d) of title 

5.” 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(9); see also 5 U.S.C. § 7703(b)(1)(A)

(“[A] petition to review a final order or final decision of the 

Board shall be filed in the United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit.”). Interpreting these provisions 

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8 PERSONAL AUDIO, LLC v. CBS CORPORATION

together, the Supreme Court determined that “extrastatutory review is not available to those employees to whom the 

CSRA grants administrative and judicial review.” Elgin, 

567 U.S. at 11. The Court summarized the CSRA’s procedural protections and explained that “[g]iven the painstaking detail with which the CSRA sets out the method for 

covered employees to obtain review of adverse employment 

actions, it is fairly discernible that Congress intended to 

deny such employees an additional avenue of review in district court.” Id. at 11–12. 

We draw a comparable conclusion about the exclusivity 

of appeal to this court as the mechanism for judicial review 

of Personal Audio’s challenge to the final written decision

of the Board in the IPR here. Congress has provided that 

a “party dissatisfied with the final written decision . . . under section 318(a) may appeal the decision pursuant to sections 141 through 144.” 35 U.S.C. § 319. Under section 

141(c), a “party to an inter partes review . . . who is dissatisfied with the final written decision of the [Board] under 

section 318(a) . . . may appeal the Board’s decision only to

the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.” 

35 U.S.C. § 141(c) (emphasis added). Sections 142–144 detail how this appeal must proceed, with each provision expressly referring to this court only. 35 U.S.C. § 142 (“When 

an appeal is taken to the United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit, the appellant shall file . . . a written 

notice of appeal” within a prescribed time . . . .”); id. § 143 

(providing that “the Director shall transmit to the United 

States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit a certified 

list of the documents comprising the record” and “shall 

have the right to intervene in an appeal”); id. § 144 (“The 

United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 

shall review the decision . . . [and] [u]pon its determination 

the court shall issue . . . its mandate and opinion . . . .”). 

Finally, Congress has expressly given this court “exclusive

jurisdiction” to hear “an appeal from a decision of . . . the 

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PERSONAL AUDIO, LLC v. CBS CORPORATION 9

[Board] with respect to a[n] . . . inter partes review under

title 35.” 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A) (emphasis added). 

Those provisions make it more than “fairly discernible,” Elgin, 567 U.S. at 10, that judicial review of the lawfulness of the Board’s final written decision here was 

limited to an appeal to this court under the just-recited provisions. That is enough in a case like this, where Congress 

has provided an adequate channel for review rather than 

foreclosed judicial review altogether or of particular constitutional or other claims. See id. at 8−10. As described 

above, Personal Audio took such an appeal, and there is no 

basis for any conclusion that the opportunity provided in 

that appeal was inadequate for the assertion and adjudication of any properly preserved challenge to the final written 

decision as unlawful. We conclude that Congress’s affirmative grant of an exclusive, direct-review procedure for final written decisions deprives the district court of 

jurisdiction to hear Personal Audio’s collateral attack on 

the final written decision in this case. 

B 

Personal Audio also challenges the district court’s holding that the necessary consequence of the affirmed final 

written decision was termination of this case in favor of 

CBS. This challenge is not to the final written decision, but 

to the application of the decision, once affirmed, to dispose 

of the patent infringement and invalidity assertions in this 

case—and, now, to the application of the PTO’s ministerial 

cancellation of the claims at issue a week after the district 

court’s judgment was entered. This challenge was not jurisdictionally foreclosed to the district court by the exclusive review scheme we have discussed, and we have 

jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1) to hear Personal Audio’s appeal on this point. 

Personal Audio, however, forfeited any argument that 

our existing precedent is not determinative against it. In 

the status report submitted to the district court, Personal 

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10 PERSONAL AUDIO, LLC v. CBS CORPORATION

Audio made no argument at all for distinguishing this case 

from the cases in which we held that district court actions 

had to terminate when a Board unpatentability ruling as 

to the relevant patent claims was affirmed on appeal. See, 

e.g., XY, LLC v. Trans Ova Genetics, 890 F.3d 1282, 1294 

(Fed. Cir. 2018); Dow Chemical Co. v. Nova Chemicals 

Corp. (Canada), 803 F.3d 620, 628 (Fed. Cir. 2015); ePlus, 

Inc. v. Lawson Software, Inc., 789 F.3d 1349, 1358 (Fed. 

Cir. 2015); Fresenius USA, Inc. v. Baxter Int’l, Inc., 721 

F.3d 1330 (Fed. Cir. 2013). To the contrary, in the joint 

status report, Personal Audio agreed that “current authority supports rendering a judgment in favor of the Defendant CBS” and that “there is no current precedent for doing 

otherwise at this time.” J.A. 423.

The panel lacks authority to reconsider the precedent

that Personal Audio agrees was adverse and controlling. 

Only the en banc court may reconsider this precedent

within this court. We therefore affirm the district court’s 

judgment.

III

 The judgment of the district court is affirmed.

AFFIRMED

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