N OTE : This disposition is nonprecedential. 

# United States **Court of Appeals**  **for the Federal Circuit**

______________________ AMERICAN RADIO LLC, Plaintiff

- Appellant,

v.

QUALCOMM INCORPORATED, Defendant

- Appellee,

AND

CISCO SYSTEMS, INC., Defendant

- Appellee,

AND

INTEL CORPORATION, Defendant

- Appellee,

AND

BROADCOM CORPORATION , Defendant

- Appellee.

______________________

2013

- 1641,

- 1642,

- 1643,

- 1644

______________________ App eals from the United States District Court for the Central District of California in No s

. 12

- CV

- 1123, 12

- CV

-AMERICAN RADIO LLC v. QUALCOMM INC

. 2

5908, 12

- CV

- 5909, and 12

- CV

- 5910, Senior Judge Mari ana R. Pfaelzer.

______________________

Decided: August 2 2 , 2014

______________________

T HOMAS G. P ASTERNAK , Steptoe & Johnson LLP, of Chicago, Illinois, argued for plaintiff

- appellant. With him on the brief were M EREDITH M ARTIN A DDY and T HOMAS A. R AMMER , II.

D AVID C. M ARCUS , Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, of Los Angeles, California , argued for all d efendant s- appellees. With him on the brief were A NDREA W EISS J EFFRIES , of Los Angeles, C alifornia, G REGORY P. T ERAN , L AUREN B. F LETCHER , K EVIN A. G OLDMAN , and P ROSHANTO M UKHERJI , of Boston

, Massachusetts, for Intel Corporation. On the b rief were L. N ORWOOD J AMESON , M ATTHEW S. Y UNGWIRTH and J OHN R. G IBSON , Duane Morris, LLP, of Atlanta, Georgia , for Cisco Systems, Inc. ; D AVID A. N ELSON and M ARC L. K APLAN , Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sul livan LLP, of Chicago, Illinois, J USTIN C. G RIFFIN , of Los Ange les, California, and J ENNIFER A. K

ASH , of San Francisco, California

, for Qualcomm Inco rporated ; and D ARIN W. S NYDER and M ELODY D RUMMOND

H ANSEN , O’Melveny & Myers LLP, of San Francisco, California, for Broadcom Corporation. Of counsel for Intel Cor poration was J ORDAN L AWRENCE H IRSCH , Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, of Boston, Massach usetts.

______________________
Before L OURIE , O’M ALLEY , and C HEN , Circuit Judges.

L OURIE , Circuit Judge.

American Radio LLC (“American Radio”) appeals from the judgment of noninfringement of the United StatesAMERICAN RADIO LLC v. QUALCOMM INC

. 3

District Court for the Central District of California follo wing stipulation by the parties after the court constru ed several claim limitations of U.S. Patents 5,864,754 (the “’754 patent”), 7,831,233 (the “’233 patent”), 8,045,942 (the “’942 patent”), 8,170,519 (the “’519 patent”), and 8,280,334 (the “’334 patent”) (collective ly , “ the Hotto patents”)

. See Am

. Radio, LLC v. Qualcomm Inc. , No. CV

12

- 5908

- MRP ( C.D. Cal. Aug. 29, 2013), ECF No. 78 (“ Stipulation of Noninfringement ” ); Am. Radio, LLC v. Qualcomm Inc. , No. CV

- 12

- 5908

- MRP, 2013 WL 3270404 ( C.D. Cal. May 23, 2013) (“ Claim Construction Order ”). Because the district court did not err in construing the claims of the Hotto patents, and it s consequent judgment of noninfringement, we affirm

. B ACKGROUND In radio technology, digital information is transmitted by : (1) convert ing that infor mation into a low frequency analog signal known as the baseband signal ; (2) upco nverting the baseband signal into a high frequency signal known as the carrier signal by changing, or “modulating,” the baseband signal with a higher frequency one ; (3) transmitting the modulated carrier signal; (4) receiving the transmitted modulated carrier sign al; and (5) downconverting the received carrier signal in one or more steps to the baseband signal to extract the information. See Claim Construction Order , 2013 WL 3270404, at *2.

For the downconversion of the carrier signal, the r eceiving system can e ither directly downconvert it to the baseband frequency, or it can downconvert it to another frequency using a process involving two or more step s before extracting the baseband signal. Receivers that directly downconvert the carrier signal are referred t o as “homo dyne” or “zero

- IF” (“ intermediate frequency ” ) receivers ; those that downconvert a signal using two or more steps are referred to as “superheterodyne” receivers

. See id. at *11.AMERICAN RADIO LLC v. QUALCOMM INC

. 4

Received r adio frequency ( “ rf ” ) signals can be infl uenced by outsi de signals and environmental factors , which introduce distortion to the transmit ted signal

. ’754 patent col. 1 ll. 20

– 22. After the radio signal has been received, the receiver can use a variety of techniques to remove the distortion, or noise

, from that signal. See, e.g.

, id. col. 7 l. 13

– col. 8 l. 11.

American Radio owns the Hotto patents, which share a common specificat ion; all derive from the same initial application

. * The patents discl ose systems and methods for correcting noisy signals by repl acing the distorted sections of the signal with undistorted portions

. E.g.

, id. col. 5 ll. 59

– 65 (de scribing a method of identifying the distorted portions of a received waveform and replacing those portions with undistorted portions); id. col. 1 ll. 51

– 5 8 (describing a method of analyzing both “halves” of the signal and replacing the distorted half with the undistor ted half) . The Hotto patents refer to the method of repla cing distorted portions of a signal with undistorted portion s as “reconstruction.”

Claim 1 0 of the ’754 patent is representative of the claims at issue and recites a receiver that receives an analog signal, digitizes that signal, and “reconstructs” the signal to remove distortion. That claim reads as follows :
10. An rf receiver, comprising:

an antenna; a reconstruction circuit electrically connected to the antenna for receiving an analog rf signal

* The district court and the parties each treat the specification of the ’754 patent as representative of all of the Hotto patents. See Appellant’s Br. 3 n.1. Accordingly,

we also treat the ’754 patent specification as represent ative.AMERICAN RADIO LLC v. QUALCOMM INC

. 5

from the antenna and generating a reco nstructed waveform having substantially no distortions therein, wherein the reconstru ction circuit includes:
an analog to digital converter (ADC) electr ically connected to the antenna for recei ving the analog rf signal therefrom and outputting a digitized rf signal in r esponse; a digital processor electrically connected to the A DC for receiving the digitized rf signal and in response outputting the r econstructed waveform in accordance with a predetermined reconstruction par adigm.

Id. col. 9 l. 63

– col. 10 l. 11.
Claim 1 of the ’942 patent is representative of other claims at iss ue and recites a receiver that is similar to the one that is recited in claim 10 of the ’754 patent, but also requires that the received signal
not be downconverted to IF before it is digitized ; it reads as follows :

1. A receiver, comprising:

a n analog to digital converter (ADC) receiving as input an rf signal that has not been downconverted in the analog domain to IF by the receiver, the ADC outputting a digi tized signal representing the rf signal; and

a digital processor electrically connected to the ADC, the digital processor being pr ogrammed with software to decode and e xtract baseband information from the digitized signal.AMERICAN RADIO LLC v. QUALCOMM INC

. 6

’942 patent col. 8 ll. 38

– 46. All of the contested claim limitations are in the above

- recited claims.

A merican Radio sued Qualcomm Inc. , Cisco Systems Inc. , Intel Corp. , and Broadcom Corp. (collectively “Qua lcomm”) asserting that Qualcomm infringed claim 1 of the ’754 patent; claims 1, 2, and 3 of the ’519 patent; claim 10 of the ’233 patent; claims 1, 2, and 3 of the ’942 patent;

an d claim 29 of the ’334 patent. The district court co nstrued the claim terms “analog signal,” “digitized signa l,” “IF,” and “reconstruc tion. ” Claim Construction Order

, 2013 WL 3270404, at *3 –1 6.
First, the district court construed the terms “analog rf signal,” “rf signal,” “analog sinusoidal signal,” and “ele ctromagnetic sign al ” (collectively “analog signal limit ations”) to mean the “waveform at the carrier frequency

, ” relying on the Hotto patents ’ use of the analog signal limitations to describe the c arrier signal received by the
antenna

. Id. at *11. Secondly, t he court construed the “digitized signal” limitation to mean the digitized version of the analog signal. Id. Third, the court construed “IF” to mean any “frequency to which the input signal is shifted, including shifting the signal to zero Hertz

, ” which it gleaned from usage of IF in the prior art

. Id. at *12

– 13. Finally, t he court construed the “reconstruction” limit ation to mean “ replacing a distorted portion of the input waveform at the carrier frequency with an undistorted portion , wherein the operand of the reconstruction oper ation represents one full wave or cycle

, ” in view of the consistent use of the term in the specification. Id. at *16. After the court issued its claim construction opinion

, the parties stipulated to a judgment of noninfringement of all asserted claims

. Stipulation of Noninfringement at 2

– 3. American Radio timely appealed . W e have jurisdi ction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).AMERICAN RADIO LLC v. QUALCOMM INC

. 7

D ISCUSSION
The words of a claim in a patent are generally given their ordinary and customary meaning, which is the meaning that a term would have to a person of ordinary skill in the art after reviewing the intrinsic record at the time of the invention

, i.e. , as of the effective filing date of the patent application

. Phillips v. AWH Corp. , 415 F.3d 1303, 1312

– 13 (Fed. Cir. 2005)

. T he intrinsic record includes the claims, the specification, and the prosecution history. E.g.

, Vitronics Corp. v. Conceptronic, Inc. , 90 F.3d 1576, 1 582 (Fed. Cir. 1996). The claims “‘must be read in view of the specification, of which they are a part.’” Phillips , 415 F.3d at 1315 (quoting Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc. , 52 F.3d 967, 979 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (en banc), aff’d , 517 U.S. 370 (1996)).

A.
We first consider the construction of the analog signal limitations and the digitized signal limitation. American R adio argues that the district court erred in const ruing both the analog signal a nd digitized signal claim terms as limited to “the waveform at the carrier frequency.” Ame rican Radio contends that the limitations should be co nstrued in accordance with the plain meaning of the term

“ signal ,” which is “ a waveform that carries information. ” Appellant’s Br. 44

– 45. Qu alcomm responds that each asserted claim uses the analog signal limitations to describe a signal that is received and then digitized. Qualcomm further argues that although the term signal may simply relate to a waveform, the Hotto patents use “analog sign al” to d escribe a specific type of waveform , namely the waveform at the carrier frequency, and use “digitized signal” to describe the digitized version of that analog signal.
We agree with Qualcomm and the district court regarding the proper construction of the analog signalAMERICAN RADIO LLC v. QUALCOMM INC

. 8

limitations and the claim term “digitized signal ,” because the Hotto patents consistently use the signal limitations to describe a waveform at the carrier frequency. As an initial matter, although American Radio argues that the district court misconstrued the plain meaning of the term

“ signal, ” the court separately construed the analog signal limitations

, Claim Construction Order , 2013 WL 3270404, at *3, and then addr essed the digitized signal limitation, i d. at *10

– 11. Accordingly, we address tho se limitations separately

. Regarding the analog signal limitations , the written description of the ’754 patent consistently uses the analog signal limitations to refer to the analog signal at the carrier frequency. See, e.g. , ’754 patent col. 1 ll. 20

– 22 (referring to the fact that “rf signals are corrupted by environmental factors during transmission”); id. col. 4 ll. 6– 11 (referring to the rf signal as “an analog, sinusoida lly

shaped signal that is relatively smooth and undistorted when transmitted”); id. col. 4 ll. 40

– 45 (describing an analog

- to

- digital converter as connected to th e antenn a “for receiving the analog signal therefrom”)

. It is i mportant to recognize that the se references in the specific ation to “rf signal” and analog signals received by the antenna necessarily mean a signal at the carrier freque ncy. Id. col. 1 ll. 19

– 20 (noting that the modulated info rmation “is carried by the received rf signal”); id. col. 1 ll. 21

– 23 (noting that “rf signals are corrupted by enviro nmental factors during transmission”).
Additionally, the figu res of the ’754 patent describe the “rf signal” as propagating until it is received by the
antenna , further supporting the district cou rt’s constru ction

. Id. col. 4 ll. 3

– 19. T he asserted claims , likewise, consistently use the analog signal limitations in the same

manner. See, e.g.

, id. col. 9 l. 9

– col. 10 l. 10 (requiring an antenna “for receiving an analog rf signal”).AMERICAN RADIO LLC v. QUALCOMM INC

. 9

Moreover, t h e ’754 patent consistently refers to a “ di gitized signal ” as the digitized version of the analog signal. See, e.g.

, id. col. 4 ll. 42

– 45 (describing an ADC converter that receives the “analog rf signal” and “outputs a digi tized rf signal”); id. col. 4 ll. 47

– 48 (referring to a comp onent that “receives the digitized signal from the ADC”). Additionally, t he asserted claims support the district court’s construction of digit ized signal. See

, e.g. , id. col. 10 ll. 3

– 6 (requiring an ADC for “receiving the anal og signal . . . and outputting a digitized rf signal in response”).
The patent thus consistently uses the analog signal limitation s to refer to the analog signal at the carrier frequency and uses digitized signal to refer to the digi tized version of that analog signal. The district court thus did not err in construing those limitations accordingly. See Honeywell Intern., Inc. v. ITT Indus., Inc. , 452 F.3d 1312, 1318 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (affirming the district court’s construction of a c laim term because of the consistent use of that term in the written description ).

B.

We next consider the construction of the IF limitation. American Radio argues that the IF limitation should be construed as any intermediate frequency between the

car rier frequency and the baseband frequency, but not including the baseband frequency. American Radio contends that the specification consistently distinguishes the invention of the Hotto patents from prior art superheterodyne receivers . Additionally, it a rgues that allo wing a direct downconver sion ignores the “intermediate” aspect of intermediate frequency.
Qualcomm responds that the district court’s constru ction is consistent with the plain and ordinary meaning of IF and that the intrinsic record highligh ts that shifting the frequency directly to the baseband frequency of zero Hertz nonetheless produces an “IF” frequency

. Qualcomm
argues that a dopting American Radio’s constructionAMERICAN RADIO LLC v. QUALCOMM INC

. 10

would necessarily broaden the claim scope to encompass a directly downconve rted signal. Specifically, Qualcomm contends that because claim 1 of the ’942 patent recites IF as a negative limitation, i.e.

, requiring that the signal not have been downconverted to IF, American Radio’s co nstruction broadens the scope of the claim s by allowing them to cover a signal that has been directly downco nverted to the baseband frequency, but not one that has been downconverted to some frequency between the carrier frequency and the baseband frequency

. We agree with Qualcomm and the district court that the meaning of the claim term IF , as understood by those skilled in the art, in cludes shifting the signal to the baseband frequency or zero Hertz . “[P]rior art . . . whet her or not cited in the specification or the file history .

. . can often help to demonstrate how a disputed term is used by those skilled in the art

. ” Vitronics , 90 F.3d at 1584. U.S. P atent 4,733,403 , cited in the ’942 patent states that “[g]enerally, any receiver with an intermediate frequency of zero Hertz is referred to as a direct conve rsion receiver.” U.S. Patent 4,733,403 col. 1 ll. 20

– 22. Th e district court also relied on U.S. Patent 4,709,402, which states that “ [t] he description is also applicable where the receiver is of the homodyne type, i.e. , its intermediate frequency is zero [Hertz].” U.S. Patent 4,709,402 col. 5 ll. 64

– 65. Although that patent was not cited in the ’942 patent, it is nonetheless relevant to determining how IF would be read by those skilled in the art. Vitronics , 90 F.3d at 158 4. Based on these disclosures, the district court concluded that one skilled in the art at the time would understand that IF can include a frequency of zero Hertz. Additionally, the portions of the specification that American Radio relies on to different iate the invention of the Hotto patents from conventional uses of IF do not alter that definition. T he written description of the ’754 patent includes the statement that conventional supe r-AMERICAN RADIO LLC v. QUALCOMM INC

. 11

heterodyne structures downconvert “the received signal down to an i ntermediate frequency (IF) [that] is then sent through a bandpass filter and demodulated . . . to recover the information (colloquially referred to as ‘baseband’) that is carried by the received rf signal.” ’754 patent col. 1 ll. 13

– 19. However, that statement highlight s that downconverting to an intermediate frequency before error correction can cause some of the signal information to be permanently lost

, and teaches that the invention of the ’754 patent performs error correction before downconver tin g the signal

. Id. col. 1 ll. 55

– 63 (“[I]t would be advant ageous to accomplish [reconstruction] prior to the non

linear transformation of the rf signal to the IF signal during mixing by the oscillator . . . since the mixing function causes certain data in the signal to be irrecove rable and therefore precludes identification of some disto rtion and corruption in the ‘true’ signal post

- mixing.”). Accordingly, the district court did not err in relying on the prior art to construe IF to mean any “frequency to w hich the input signal is shifted, including shifting the signal to zero Hertz.”

C.

We finally consider the district court’s construction of the claim term “reconstruction.” American Radio argues that the r econstruction limitation shou ld be construed as “r educing errors in communication signals ” in accordance with the plain meaning of the term. Appellant’s Br. 55

– 56. American Radio contends that the district court imported limitations from the specification into its co nstruction to require replacing a par t of the wavefo rm. It also argues that the district court’s construction renders several dependent claims of the patent superfluous.
Qualcomm responds that t he term “ reconstruction ” h as no plain meaning in the art and that the specification consistent ly uses reconstruction to refer to instances where parts of the received signal are replaced withAMERICAN RADIO LLC v. QUALCOMM INC

. 12

undistorted portions of the received signal. Qualcomm contends that although the other limitations the district court read into the term “reconstruction”

— “at the carrier frequency” and “wherein the operand of the reconstru ction cycle re presents one full wave or cycle ”— are properly part of the term as used in claim 10 of the ’754 patent, it need not rely on those limitations because the accused devices simply d o not replace distorted portions of the input waveform with undistorted ones. American Radio does not disagree that the district court’s conclusion that distorted portions of the input waveform must be replaced with undistorted ones is determinative of it s infringement claims, without reference to the additional limitations.

We again agree with Qualcomm and the district court that the claim term “reconstruction” refers to replacing a distorted portion of the signal with undistorted ones. T he specification consistently uses reconstruction to mean replacing the distorted portion of the input waveform. The written description of the ’754 patent repeatedly describes reconstruction as being accomplished by repla cing distorted portions of the wa veform with undistorted

ones

. See, e.g.

, id. col. 1 ll. 51

– 55 (“[I]t would be advant ageous to analyze both the positive and negative halves of an rf signal cycle and determine which half is the ‘best’ half, and then extract the useful signal from the ‘bes t’ half.”); id. col. 7 ll. 24

– 46 (describing comparing the halves of the waveform to determine which is the u ndistorted half, after which “the distorted portion is r eplaced with the inverse of the corresponding waveform portion” one wave at a time) ; id. co l. 7 ll. 48

– 60 (descri bing a fast Fourier transform reconstruction wherein distorted portions of the waveform are replaced by smooth portions of the waveform); id. col. 7 l. 61

– col. 8 l. 11 (d escribing replacing distorted portions of the input wav eform wit h smooth portions based on a “wavelet analysis”).
Additionally, the district court’s construction of the claim term “reconstruction” does not render any depend-AMERICAN RADIO LLC v. QUALCOMM INC

. 13

ent claims of the asserted patents superfluous. American Radio points to claims 3 and 4 of the ’942 patent to argue that under the district court’s const ruction , claim 3’s reconstruction limitation requires replacing distorted portions of the signal with undistorted portions. Accor ding to American Radio, that construction renders superfluous the l anguage of claim 4 , which depends from claim 3, requiring“ replacing at least one distorted por tion of the signal with a replacement portion that is based on at least some undistorted portions of the signal .” ’942 patent col. 8 ll. 64

– 67

. However, the district court’s construction of the claim term “reconstruction” only requires that a distorted portion of the signal be replaced with an u ndistorted portion and does not limit the source of that undistorted portion . Claim 4 , on the other hand, requires
t hat the replacement portion of the signal be based on at least some undistorted portions of the received signal

, and is therefore narrower than the district court’s construction of the reconstruction limitation. The district court thus did not err in cons truing reconstruction to mean “ replacing a distorted portion of the input waveform with an undistorted portion .”
The parties in this case stipulated that, under the di strict court’s claim construction s , Qualcomm does not infringe the asserted claims. Be cause we have affirmed the court’s relevant claim construction s , we accordingly affirm the judgment of noninfringement.

C ONCLUSION For the foregoing reasons, the decision of the district court construing the analog signal , digitized signal, IF, and reconstruction limitation s of the Hotto patents, and hence the judgment of noninfringement, are affirmed.

AFFIRMED